Approaches To Computer Writing Classrooms

This text provides a variety of practical and theoretical approaches to computer classroom design. Pedagogical, ethical, and political issues are discussed as well as nuts-and-bolts construction, adapting teaching styles to a CAI environment, use of specific hardware and software, and speculation regarding future electronic learning environments.

These exciting and moving reports of a revolutionary composition pedagogy develop a common theme: the most profound changes wrought by computers in the composition classroom are social, political, and pedagogical, not technological.

Higher education spaces are undergoing radical transformations in an attempt to respond to the needs of 21st-century learners and a renewed interest in collaboration that spans beyond the walls of departments, colleges, and libraries. Cases on Higher Education Spaces: Innovation, Collaboration, and Technology highlights key innovations and collaborative ventures in space design from across campuses and institutions. Including writing and communication centers, studios, libraries, digital media labs, learning commons, and academic learning spaces, this collection is ideally suited for university and professional administrators.

This book takes on a daunting task: How do writing teachers continue to work toward preparing students for academic and real-world communication situations, while faced with the increasing use of standardized high-stakes testing? Teachers need both the technical ability to deal with this reality and the ideological means to critique the information technologies and assessment methods that are transforming the writing classroom. Teaching and Evaluating Writing in the Age of Computers and High-Stakes Testing serves this dual need by offering a theoretical framework, actual case studies, and practical methods for evaluating student writing. By examining issues in writing assessment--ranging from the development of electronic portfolios to the impact of state-wide, standards-based assessment methods on secondary and post-secondary courses--this book discovers four situated techniques of authentic assessment that are already in use at a number of locales throughout the United States. These techniques stress: *interacting with students as communicators using synchronous and asynchronous environments; *describing the processes and products of student learning rather than enumerating deficits; *situating pedagogy and evaluation within systems that incorporate rather than exclude local variables; and *distributing assessment among diverse audiences. By advocating for a flexible system of communication-based assessment in computer-mediated writing instruction, this book validates teachers' and students' experiences with writing and also acknowledges the real-world weight of the new writing components on the SAT and ACT, as well as on state-mandated standardized writing and proficiency exams.

In an insightful assessment of the study and teaching of writing against the larger theoretical, political, and technological upheavals of the past thirty years, Fragments of Rationality questions why composition studies has been less affected by postmodern theory than other humanities and social science disciplines.

Presents full-colour, easy-to-use books and a CD-ROM for CLAiT 2006, which focus on enthusing students and leading them to success. The modular approach allows students to choose a book per unit or one book covering the first three units.

Sharpen your students’ communication skills while integrating digital tools into writing instruction. Loaded with techniques for helping students brainstorm, plan, and organize their writing, this handbook troubleshoots issues students face when writing in a printed versus digital context and teaches them how to read in multiple mediums. You’ll find tips for sharing writing, getting interactive feedback, incorporating grammar instruction, and more.

Backed by solid research, Writing Instruction That Works answers the following question: What is writing instruction today and what can it be tomorrow? This up-to-date, comprehensive book identifies areas of concern for the ways that writing is being taught in todays secondary schools. The authors offer far-reaching direction for improving writing instruction that assist both student literacy and subject learning. They provide many examples of successful writing practices in each of the four core academic subjects (English, mathematics, science, and social studies/history), along with guidance for meeting the Common Core standards. The text also includes sections on Technology and the Teaching of Writing and English Language Learners.