It’s Technology, Not My Identity
This school year, I’ve been observing my sophomore English students and thinking about the use of NoRedInk in creative and technical writing.
At this point, I notice that — while I spend a lot of time and focus with my students on noticing interpreting/analyzing/naming/referencing what experts think and write — there must comparable benefit in finding ways to help my students notice/interpret/analyze/name/reference what they themselves think and write, and how in that regard, they too are experts.
It seems like there is a shift that needs to occur and, while I’m not sure exactly where it is or how I will find it, we might as well go after it anyway. Unprecedented times right? Let’s just use that wherever and however we can.
To make a sweeping generalization, I will assume that my students usually approach using a writing assistance technology from the perspective of “This robot tool will tell me how GOOD or how BAD of a writer I am…” or maybe even “This robot tool will tell me who I am as a writer…(Good. Well that will be taken care of. Then I can just know and I won’t have to figure it out myself).”
Of course, oftentimes students’ perceptions of themselves as writers/learners/thinkers can also lean heavily on teacher feedback and interaction. This pattern or culture, of students being informed of how “good” — or not good — they are as writers and thinkers, founded on an autogenerated algorithm-based review, or even a subtle or misconstrued comment from a teacher, is where I’m seeing an opportunity for an essential shift.
More than ever, (unprecedented times, remember?) students are being asked, and to a degree, required to create their own agency in their learning experience. Show up of their own accord. Find a wifi lifeboat and hang on to it for the sake of their own education. Listen and look at instruction even when a teacher can’t hear and see them doing so. Herein lies the critical foundation of guiding students in fostering their own identity as thinkers and writers, at least enough so that they have a tiny inner flame that compels them to get out of bed and flip open a laptop at the designated time. Or to keep thinking, considering, and creating even after they’ve clicked “Leave Meeting.”
Without being able to smile and greet each student by name at the door, without being able to joke about the many ways to misuse literally, without being at school with 30 kids until 9 o’clock at night because they will voluntarily put that much work into getting the choreography right for “Telephone Hour”…without the traditional platform that is the physical school day and building, it’s hard to find ways to not only say, but also show a student, You matter. You matter enough to consider how you matter. And what matters to you. And how you think about those things matters. And so does how you will share those ideas with the world.
It’s hard.
Okay, wait. I believe we were discussing NoRedInk/writing assistance technologies. and finding a path to a meaningful shift in these times, unprecedented as they continue to be. What I want for my students is to actively consider, question, name, and ultimately, value, who they are as thinkers and writers so that they aren’t depending on a one-click revision assistant — or even a trusted teacher — to do that for them. All the work we do to identify and analyze the work of experts should ultimately lead to working as experts and seeing the expert in ourselves, right? So when Easy Bib provides feedback that directs: “add evidence to the claim” and the student writer’s response is that the suggestion is unhelpful since there is no claim in the poem she pasted in to copy edit, (true story, just try and “Check” your poem for grammar errors on EasyBib…) that student is, in essence, saying, “I am an expert here. I know this is a poem. I know that poems do not require claims and allow for divergence from technical writing rules.”
We want our students to possess this writer assuredness as well as the urge to question. Of course, we want it to extend beyond submitting a poem to EasyBib, but still — this is the shift I am looking to foster, ultimately in the traditional, as well as the virtual, classroom. Rather than relying on a tool like NoRedInk to tell me who I am/what I know as a writer, I can use what I know about myself as a writer to interpret the feedback from NoRedInk. I can also interpret feedback from such a tool and use it to further inform the writer and thinker I know myself to be. As I move forward in my work, I can take the feedback I am given, be it from teacher, tool, or peer, and decide how that input shapes my writing and thinking identity — or if it doesn’t.
The latter is not something these writing assistance technologies are going to do for our students, but it is something we can do with our students in conjunction with the tools. How? I’m still on the path to that answer.
And, it is unprecedented.
