Many students
request the use of laptops even when that has not been part of the teaching and
learning plan. I don't blame them. For their generation the speed and fluency
in one mode of print text - typing - often exceeds their speed and fluency in
the other mode - handwriting.
When I
wrote essays by hand (in school and as an undergraduate), I wrote notes, then a
draft, and after that I used colours and numbers to help me label which
material from the draft would end up in the final version. This was the
drafting and editing process I found useful when my technology was paper and
pen. As a post-grad student, with laptop in hand, I tended to follow a similar
method, with a combination of typed and written notes before I started the
draft. In almost all of my post-grad essays, I found myself handwriting an
introduction before I started typing. And still today, when I read academic
articles, I take notes by hand. The neurons I use for handwriting must
stimulate my learning in some way. For many people my age, this may be true
also.
When I
choose not to handwrite, as I am doing now with this blog post, I use word
processing similarly to the way I approached my essays. I love the fact that
whilst I am word processing I can constantly review my writing; I use all the
tools the word processor has to change and rearrange as I compose. This is the
joy of drafting and editing with electronic text.
However,
as I observed in a previous
post, students do not use the many features of technology available to
them. One of the consequences of students' constant typing is the way it has
affected their understanding of the concept of drafting. Some younger students
seem to think that drafting is just about fixing spelling and punctuation. As word processing helps students achieve
this, they feel that if they are typing then those issues are covered. Consequently
the first draft, because it is typed, is frequently the only draft. Certainly
some errors are corrected such as changes to verb tense and paragraphing, but
on the whole, students submit their first thoughts because it looks 'finished'.
It would seem some teachers are so grateful to receive legible text that they
also accept the typed version without demurring.
It is
my job to help students learn to draft and edit, and use word processing more
effectively. This means actively teaching students the tools for drafting and
editing and possibly to balance that with the technology of paper and pen.
This was made apparent to me recently when students
were asked to compose a short story as part of their study of narrative. Despite
their incredible typing speeds and having used Word since they could read, not
one of the students knew about the Review
function, where they, or others, could add in comments on the text. After some
planning of character, setting and plot by hand in their books, students began
to type a narrative on the laptops. After the first lesson of typing, I showed
students how to use the Review function. Following this, students physically gave
their laptop to their partner whose job was to offer comments or pose questions
about the story as it currently stood. (We had been working all year on peer editing
so I knew they would be able to offer appropriate comments.) When their story
was returned to them, the students had to save the version with comments and consider
how they would take on board the feedback. Each lesson we worked on the story (12.5%
time) the same process would take place. Thus students were learning how to
use the technology to accomplish editing and rewriting.
Their
stories were better for it.
