Concise and collaborative

For a project in my qualitative data analysis class, I interviewed two colleagues that I respect beyond words (and, coincidentally, who both blog).  I asked how writing changes as technology advances.  Both gave different responses in some areas, but both agreed that writing in the high school classroom has become more concise and collaborative.

I was reminded of these interviews today when the New York Times tweeted about using social media to teach concise writing.  The article contains great links to activities to use while teaching writing including the six word story, the twaiku (a twitter haiku), and literary response activities using Twitter or Facebook.   As I read the article, my mind raced with ideas about how I might incorporate some of these social-media-based activities in my classes.  And then I remembered the internet filter.

See, last year, after two years of suggestions by most tech savvy colleague, I embarked on a journey of technology immersion in my classroom.  Devon had explained to me numerous times how to use blogs with my students, how to use Google docs for students to collaborate on writing, and about a million other ideas, but I never fancied myself tech savvy enough to implement such lessons.  When I wrote a paper about technology as culturally relevant pedagogy, I argued that secondary teachers are hesitant to try different technologies with students because they are used to possessing the most knowledge in the room where content is concerned.  With technology, teachers know they won't know the most--the students will.  It's a control issue, and so last year I let go, knowing that I would likely know the least about the technology I would be using.

The good news is, I survived.  The bad news is that my school, as with many other public schools, has internet filters that block content.  Unable to score the student authored blogs during my prep, I spent countless hours at home reading what amounted to their entire research process, from proposal through final draft, from my couch.  My school's filter blocked all blogs.  So, today, when I saw the tweet about using social media (another area that is a category for filter blocks) to teach students how to collaborate and write concisely, I was at the same time excited at the idea and sad that I could not likely access the technologies in my classroom.

I'm not going to question how and why, but today I was able to access Twitter for the New York Times link, Facebook to reread part of the paper I referenced, and, *gasp* Blogger.  I will count the time from my prep hour used to blog as payback for last year's hours of grading from home.  I'm also going back to the article to click on a few of the links for the lessons, now that I see they may be possible in my classroom.