Creating a Community of Writers Using Social Capital and Low-Stakes Writing

Badges, Blogs, and Google+: 

Social media offers many tools to support the creation of a learning community and foster the transformation to writer, but strategic planning is necessary to engage students in constructive learning. We will discuss tools and methods that can be used to create connections and foster active engagement.

Abstract:

One of the challenges we face with our own students is that they do not understand the importance of reading and writing to their own lives in the past, present, or future and they certainly do not understand the relevance of the assignments they typically complete for school or college to the development of these essential skills. Instead of telling them of the role literacy plays in their learning and success, as they have been told by countless teachers before, we focus on demonstrating it through reflection, discussion, and practice using social media.

We will bring examples of our own classroom practices and assignments and share feedback and examples from our students in developmental reading and writing classes as well as first year seminar and composition. We will then engage the audience in reflection and discussion of how these activities can be adapted to their unique classrooms and content. Our goal is to bridge the literacy gap by engaging students in constructive learning through social media, social capital, and lots and lots of literacy practice. We hope to learn as much, if not more, as the audience.

With Megan Ison – Accepted for 2014 KCTE Conference