Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

4.20.09 | By Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and Christina Cantrill

The nature of authorship, audience, and knowledge—the essence of any writer’s world—is rapidly evolving in an instantly public, global communications world. Today’s young writers have greater access to a wider range of content, connectivity, and publishing opportunities than ever before. Yet access alone does not guarantee reflection and learning.

Educators play a vital role in helping young people to think critically about new media and to develop an understanding of social and ethical issues in communication. They help young writers grow from simple users of new media tools to accomplished creators.

For that reason, teachers of writing have often been among the first to advocate for new technologies and open Internet access in schools. They have worked to create student-focused, media-sharing environments, cobbled together platforms from a variety of consumer products, and educated themselves about legal issues and acceptable use.

Teacher-consultants in the National Writing Project, for example, have worked with developers to create blogging systems and classroom wikis specifically tailored to young writers. They have linked classrooms into podcast and video sharing networks and built publishing sites such as Youth Voices to connect student production to curriculum.

Currently, these teachers are only a small fraction of the profession. Most teachers have barely begun to consider how digital writing and new media practices relate to their subject matter, let alone to refine teaching practices, curriculum, and assessment.

New media environments are diverse and developing rapidly. The kinds of writing evolving in social networks and on content sites are new and rapidly changing as well. To promote effective teaching and real learning, educators need the opportunity to look beyond the simple “how to” of adopting new digital tools to the more challenging questions of practice, standards, and curriculum design that new media raise for schooling.

“Digital Is,” a program of the National Writing Project, is helping teachers to do just that. The MacArthur-supported program engages a wide range of NWP lead teachers and university faculty in becoming themselves more adept with digital media and in studying the most effective ways to help young people become accomplished writers in new media environments.

Together we will help to build a new professional knowledge-base to support effective practice in teaching digital-based writing and to disseminate that knowledge through teacher-focused websites, social networks, publications, and professional development programs.

Equally important, we are linking this knowledge to the distinctive ways that teachers learn and change their practices through model professional development programs at local sites.

In so doing, we hope to learn more about how the NWP model and network can be used to develop, share, and improve teaching practice, while also reaching out to new partners, such as those represented by our colleagues in the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

The NWP is a national network of more than 200 university-based and teacher-led local writing project sites supporting learning communities and professional development programs for teachers nationwide.