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I\u2019d like you to think back to your days as a student. What kinds of writing did you do? Who read it? What made it important to you? And what made it important to the world?<\/p>\nI\u2019d like you to think back to your days as a student. What kinds of writing did you do? Who read it? What made it important to you? And what made it important to the world?<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re like most people, you\u2019re probably drawing a blank right now. Some of today\u2019s students, though, can clearly articulate just how and why their writing is important. And we don\u2019t mean writing as you might imagine, but rather digital composition: \u00a0digital stories, digital portfolios, documentary films, and of course, podcasts. For each of these, there is a real audience, one beyond the more typical audience of one, the teacher.<\/p>\n
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Full transcript appears below.<\/p>\n
Today we\u2019ll visit with writers Bonnie Kaplan and Barry Lane and some of my former high school students, all of whom discuss what they\u2019ve noticed about the power of these media and the importance of authentic audience. And along the way, we\u2019ll sample some of these powerful digital creations.<\/p>\n
Writing for an authentic audience has become something of a trend in the world of education. A quick Google search of those buzzwords yields nearly 67,000 hits. So, writing beyond the usual reasons we ask students to write \u2013 to express their ideas to their teacher for the purposes of a grade \u2013 has become paramount.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been thinking a lot lately about my own experience as a student of writing and have been trying to remember examples of writing I completed. So, I went through the list of teachers etched somehow indelibly in my mind, and wracked my brain for one paper, one story, I wrote \u2013 but I couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
It was 1969; I was in 3rd grade, and girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. My father was really active in his local union, and so even in 3rd grade, I thought about opportunities to organize.<\/p>\n
One morning after a particularly dull music class with Mrs. Angus at her piano, leading us in endless repetition of \u00a0\u201cDrill Ye Tarriers, Drill,\u201d my friends and I decided it was time to take action. \u00a0Taking my father\u2019s example, I drew up a petition, and out on the playground asked who would like to sign our request to be allowed to wear pants to school.<\/p>\n
Almost all the girls signed that petition — and I was really excited, I was energized, I was proud \u2013 but not for long. Instead of reading the next chapter of Charlotte\u2019s Web<\/i> after lunch, our teacher, Miss McKay, confiscated our petition.<\/p>\n
I remember sitting at my desk, absolutely deflated, as I had to listen to her lecture us about the virtues of femininity. The only girls she still respected, she said, were the two who had not signed our petition.<\/p>\n
My writing students had just set goals for the day, and I expected them to work on essays, poetry, fiction, maybe even embark on a research project, but I never expected this, from Palmer Legare. He wrote: <\/i><\/p>\n What good is writing if it just ends up sitting in a folder somewhere until it is recycled? I\u2019ve always seen myself as someone who wants to make a difference, to fight against injustice wherever I find it. I want to write to change the world.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n How could I help Palmer take real political action since I hadn\u2019t even tried since that \u00a0failed attempt in third grade? How, then, could I teach Palmer to do it?<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t. Of course I couldn\u2019t. All I could do was get out of his way. And so I became a midwife of sorts, an encourager, a supporter — but in the end, he was the one who would have to do the hard work of bringing some kind of new life into our school, to change our world.<\/p>\n And he did.<\/p>\n So, Palmer would bring me his latest draft early in the morning, and at the first break, he\u2019d pop in to ask what I thought. And after school, we\u2019d frequently talk about the issues and consider what strategies might work, and then he\u2019d write some more.<\/p>\n I watched as Palmer circulated his letter among fellow students. Some already knew the issues, a few firsthand. In the end, about \u00a040 students signatures appeared at the bottom of the page; almost half the student body at our small high school \u2013 in 1997.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Palmer\u2019s petition resulted in widespread publication of our district\u2019s anti-harassment policy. Our principal had highlighted the pertinent sections, and copies appeared on more bulletin boards than we knew we had. Sexual orientation was mentioned as just one of many categories against which our school did not discriminate and about which we would not permit harassment. And the policy had been in place for several years, but few students and only some teachers actually knew that sexual orientation was included. \u00a0That morning after April vacation, everybody knew, and the halls were just buzzing.<\/p>\n Obviously Palmer was really excited but tempered his enthusiasm. He knew full well that this was just the very first step in transforming our schooling to a safe place for everyone \u2014 something that had not yet been accomplished in mainstream American culture, let alone its teenage subculture.<\/p>\n When I look back on writing \u00a0a petition as Ms. McKay’s third grade student and on Palmer\u2019s experience of writing to change the culture of his high school, it becomes so clear that what made both instances significant was the presence of a real audience, an audience beyond the teacher.<\/p>\n Many teachers have recognized the value of such an audience, and I became curious about how this plays out in the lives and the work of my own students, so I talked to a number of them, and these conversations, combined with other research, have convinced me, today more than ever, \u00a0that it is absolutely imperative for our students to find a real audience for their writing.<\/p>\n They can publish digital stories on YouTube, create documentary films for perhaps a public evening screening, record podcasts to be aired on a local radio station, or curate digital portfolios of their best work. \u00a0And in all of these instances, students engaged in meaningful work for an audience beyond just their teachers are motivated and are inspired to produce effective writing.<\/p>\n For me, the excitement happens with the power of publishing for an authentic audience.<\/p>\n Students create their multi-modal pieces that will be presented to a community group of families and friends, other people\u2019s families and friends and teachers, strangers \u2013 and for some, their pieces are published on school websites. So there\u2019s that immediate need for their piece to be taken seriously. It\u2019s not a traditionally assigned essay that gets handed in to the teacher for a grade and bang, it\u2019s done! And maybe that\u2019s the key.<\/p>\n When a student presents a piece of digital writing, the audience has moved out of the classroom and the gradebook.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Cheryl pulls me aside when Cody struts out of the classroom. Maybe to get a drink of water, to flirt with his newest girlfriend, or to show off the new wolf tattoo on his forearm. No one knows for sure, but Cody pretty much does what Cody wants, and as his teacher, I am learning to work around it.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever you do, don\u2019t make Cody read out loud,\u201d Cheryl whispers. While she is a paraprofessional in the class to help another student, she knows everyone else\u2019s quirks, too; she\u2019s worked with this group for years. \u201cHe won\u2019t do it. It\u2019s only asking for trouble, and this is not a battle I would pick.\u201d<\/p>\n The leaves on the maple outside my classroom, tinged with yellow and red, flutter in the late afternoon breeze. I don\u2019t want to believe Cheryl, but this early in September, I don\u2019t push it.<\/p>\n By the end of December, students are sitting at computers in the library, writing, searching through photographs, and looking for music to accompany their digital stories \u2013 multimedia projects that combine images, music, and the spoken word to relate an important event or experience.<\/p>\n Cheryl looks over at us, incredulous. Her eyes widen as she lifts her hands slightly, palms upward, punctuating the air with a \u201cWhat\u2019s that about?\u201d gesture.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n Cody, who hates to read aloud, is adjusting his headset and getting ready not only to read \u2014 but also to record\u2014 his voice. \u00a0Hesitant but determined, he begins.<\/p>\n I sit next to Cody as he reads, sentence by sentence, so he\u2019ll end up with small sound bytes that can be moved to begin exactly when he has the right image on the screen. We work on this for the next few class periods, and finally his voiceover is complete.<\/p>\n When he matches the spoken word to the photographs he\u2019s chosen, he\u2019s pleased.<\/p>\n When we add an instrumental soundtrack, he\u2019s really pleased.<\/p>\n For Cody, this wait was tolerable because he was working toward a goal which was to to create something that would ultimately be shared with a real audience and that compelled him to revise his work, to re-record again and again, and to settle for nothing but his best.<\/p>\n Orion Lay-Sleeper, who was one of my first students to create a digital story, recently reflected on \u201cSledding,\u201d a powerful piece he created as a high school junior about 10 years ago.<\/p>\n This, he said, stood in contrast to other writing he did for a single audience: his teachers.<\/p>\nWow. No teacher-designed prompt could have elicited such a response. And I wondered what it was I was supposed to do.<\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nFortunately, Miss McKay was not nearby.<\/h3>\n
But something was clearly happening \u2014 \u00a0people were talking \u2014 \u00a0many, of course, were still openly hostile, but Palmer discovered allies he never knew he had \u2014 and it became clearer and clearer to him that his writing was having an effect, that he was doing what he set out to do: to write to change the world -\u2013 in this case one teacher, one student at a time.<\/h4>\n
And fortunately, the advent of digital technologies made this easier than ever.<\/h3>\n
National Writing project author Bonnie Kaplan:<\/h4>\n
Digital storytelling: Classroom snapshot 1.<\/h2>\n
And there, in the closed back office, I join Cody, the first student ready to record his voiceover.<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I first began a digital storytelling project, my students and I considered the importance of audience when we planned an evening screening of their work to which friends, family and community members would be invited.\u00a0
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