Myth-busting about Education and Technology

If you believe, as I do, that when it comes to learning, adults are children in big bodies, then you might find helpful a recently published report by Walden University. The report,

Educators, Technology and 21st Century Skills: Dispelling Five Myths—A Study on the Connection Between K–12 Technology Use and 21st Century Skills, claims that the more K–12 teachers use technology, the more they value its strong positive effects on student learning and engagement and its connection to 21st century skills.

The myths, related to teacher preparedness and student engagement, are only the beginning of the report. The implications of Dispelling Five Myths are far-reaching across the curriculum and most contemporary education themes, such as global awareness, entrepreneurial literacy, and health literacy. The report concludes with 12 specific recommendations for teachers, administrators, postsecondary educators, and legislators form all levels of government. It also lists excellent technology-related resources.

Books by Philip Vassallo

• How to Write Fast Under Pressure
• The Art of E-mail Writing
• The Art of On-the-Job Writing
• The Inwardness of the Outward Gaze: Learning and Teaching Through Philosophy

Excellent Administrator's Guide to Teaching Writing

The National Council of Teachers of English provides a useful four-page précis, An Administrator’s Guide to Writing Instruction, which can be of use not only to English supervisors but teachers and learners as well. The policy brief focuses on three areas of writing management: questions for hiring writing instructors, guide for observation of writing classes, and guidelines for institutional support of writing instruction.

The paper states that key areas for probing prospective writing teachers include knowledge of the writing process, technology, and diverse instructional strategies; and ability to connect reading and writing, instruction and assessment, and writing and learning.

In terms of observing teachers in action, the study asks 18 questions focused on type, frequency, and duration of student writing activities; use of computers for research and writing; display and evaluation of gold standards in writing; and development of learning and communication skills through writing instruction.

As for administering the writing classroom, the report notes that vitals points to consider are class size, technology, writing across the curriculum, effectiveness of evaluation, opportunities for professional development, and diversity of learners.

Books by Philip Vassallo

• How to Write Fast Under Pressure
• The Art of E-mail Writing
• The Art of On-the-Job Writing
• The Inwardness of the Outward Gaze: Learning and Teaching Through Philosophy

Writing Is Everywhere and by Everyone

Everybody’s a writer these days. Not only do we expect journalists, attorneys, and novelists to be good writers, but we want quality prose from engineers, nurses, information technology professionals, equity research analysts, and managers of any stripe. The National Council of Teachers of English has rightly, albeit belatedly, expanded its definition of writing in a provocative white paper by Lorna Collier, Everyday Writing: Words Matter More Than Ever in 21st Century Workplace. This 10-page report covers the writing experiences of people in professions from student to military officer, from stay-at-home-parent to match teacher.

Because of the prevalence of web-based communication, people from all fields—restaurateurs, plumbers, nurses, paralegals, zookeepers, whatever—are now seeking creative ways to engage their audiences through the written word. The ten people surveyed in this paper offer insights you’re not likely to get from English professors.

Try Virtual Training!

Sometimes the best way to do research is to be the subject of your own research—and I'm pleased to say that I like the results.

Tomorrow I will end a four-week virtual writing class for the American Management Association. It ran on Tuesday afternoons for three hours using an AdobeConnect platform. We had people tuning in from coast to coast and as far away as Greece. The technology makes for engaging lectures, robust class participation, and relevant writing and editing activities. This is the third training organization for which I've done an online training program over the past decade, so I have seen quite an evolution in the quality of real-time instruction available to learners.

I wholeheartedly endorse this program to anyone not willing or able to invest the time and money involved in traveling to a training center for such a course. Feel free to check in if you have questions about this virtual training class.


You can purchase any of my books on sale at Amazon.

Core Standards a Practical Business Guide

I was reviewing the National Governors Association’s common core standards, in particular their English Language Arts Standards for college and career readiness (www.corestandards.org/Standards/index.htm). The association lists a broad range of competencies in reading, writing, listening, and speaking for adults. The competencies seem practical for managers who need to establish benchmarks for their staff's language skills.

Having traveled the country as a writing consultant for numerous businesses, government agencies, and academic institutions, I see great value in this website. I would suggest that corporate directors of human resources and training administrators study these standards. The site can inform business managers and department supervisors in assessing staff, planning training, and setting expectations.

Writing Ain’t What It Used to Be

These are exciting times for writers and writing teachers—that is, if you’re open to change. Remarkably, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has published a report urging writing instructors to develop new strategies in harmony with web-based technologies. The NCTE, a leading authority on effective communication, traditionally has served as the guardian of the “five-paragraph essay”; however, its recent publication, Writing in the 21st Century, concludes with a clarion call to create new models of writing and to design curricula and teaching strategies that address those models.

Adding to the credibility of the study is the status of its author, Kathleen Blake Yancey, who is a past president of the NCTE and a distinguished professor English and Director of the graduate program in rhetoric and composition at Florida State University. Yancey is a renowned speaker on composition theory, an award-winning author or 12 books and 65 articles and book chapters on writing, and the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Assessing Writing.

Writing in the 21st Century traces the history of writing and writing instruction in America, beginning with a description of how science and progressivism influenced rhetorical theory. By the end of the twentieth century, the greatest movers of writing instruction were the introduction of the writing process and the personal computer in the classroom. Thus ended what Yancey calls the “Age of Composition.”

Today, digital technologies, assembled under the term “Web 2.0,” have created the next great wave. Web 2.0, whose definition remains arguable, refers to the pervasiveness of websites like Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, which have inarguably and irrevocably altered communication in at least four vital ways:

• Everyone is an author. To count the number of blogs, or online journals, in the world is to state an instantly outdated statistic. At least 113 million blogs have popped up in a matter of a few years, and that number increases with every word you read in this article. Blogs on any topic are available: world leaders broadcasting weekly messages to constituents, couples proclaiming their love for each other, self-appointed consumer experts pushing for more synthetic fabrics, wannabe health authorities countering the best advice of the medical establishment, bikers relating adventures from their most recent cross-country trip, terrorists exhorting comrades to arms, parent groups extolling the virtues of homeschooling, elementary school children ranting about their teachers, and aimless writers advancing pointless arguments. Indeed, Web 2.0 has given the world an attitude that screams “I don’t need anyone’s approval to write the way I see fit.” In turn, this attitude has fashioned new approaches to written expression.
• Everyone can evaluate. Anyone can stake a claim to immortality by adding a review of a book or CD on Amazon.com, praising or condemning a teacher on RateMyTeacher.com, rebutting postings on any of these websites, or posting their poetry on a number of amateur literary websites. Limited controls at these electronic community bulletin boards ensure that anyone can assert their anonymous opinions about anything they like or don’t. These assessments seem to matter even more than the A’s or F’s that teachers bestow on student papers.
• Information is easily accessible. A natural extension of the billion-writer planet is the abundance of information on any imaginable topic. Faster than I can type “cut and paste,” students can cut and paste relevant content for their essays. This practice renders obsolete the instructional materials and assessment tools of even the most proactive teachers.
• Words are not enough. Videos, PowerPoint decks, photos, animation, icons, hyperlinks, and a whole host of other visually stimulating gimmicks accompany most web-based writing. People now tend to read in smaller chunks, clicking on links that depart from the original story they’d been reading. On the surface, this exercise may appear to be the ultimate manifestation of the Attention Deficit Disorder Age. Upon closer examination, however, one would find that readers are not always looking for transitions in stories—by clicking on those hyperlinks, they’re creating their own transitions.

Anyone challenging the assumption that reading habits have changed as a result of Web 2.0 had better take note of the bad news hitting the newspaper industry: The Denver Rocky Mountain News closed, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has stopped printing only to maintain a scaled-down web presence, the Tucson Citizen may soon fold, and many others are facing their demise. People don’t need it on paper if they’ve can get it on the BlackBerry.

How will Web 2.0 affect writing instruction? Who knows for sure, since we’re still trying to define what it means to write these days. But one thing is for sure: the word and the image have become inextricably linked, so we communicators have to deal with this new reality.

Training Remains a Hot Topic

Despite the adage, “In a recession, the first thing to bite the dust is training,” how interesting that training remains a hot topic these days. Businesses seem to be seeking more support for their shrinking ranks to ensure that the best among them get even better. In fact, even individuals are seeking coaches out of their own pocket in a broad range of disciplines. Evidently, these proactive folks believe that they have to be ready for any opportunity that might pop up in these unstable days—and my experience over these past few months have shown that they are popping up all the time and all over the place. Therefore, one must always be “in training,” even outside the training room.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (“Lessons Learned” by Harry J. Martin, December 14, 2008) draws the same conclusion. The author, an associate professor of management and labor relations at Cleveland State University, mentions some excellent pointers for employees to keep on top of their game, including:

• Logging what they have learned and turning into a concrete action plan
• Seeking help from their peers and managers in tracking and developing their skills
• Accessing experts in the specific skills they aim to improve.

For sure, companies have to make training real for their staff by conducting post-training assessments and monitoring their skill development. Once the educational opportunity is sought by the employee, supported by the manager, and evaluated by the company, training becomes a winning proposition.

Thanks to Peter Aviles of New York City Transit for bringing the article to my attention.