Abstract:
My original framework for teaching freshman English composition in computer enhanced classrooms based on Socratic Methodology Model, student-directed learning, E-portfolio, blog and wiki in learning communities engages student voices. Create a classroom community where students participate as active learners by technological friendly models. Through my own experience of basing my newest novel entitled The Passing Light on a travel diary, I create strategies based on the travel journaling of Thoreau. My students create E- journals as primary sources for essays. Writing based on keen observation and self discovery as a part of learning to write. Information processing and blended learning generates active students.
Teaching Writing and Writing Juvenile Fiction Based on Journaling Concepts of Thoreau
Sub-Title
Travel Journals of Thoreau with Attention to Themes of Nature, Transcendentalism and Place Memory as a Framework for Teaching College Freshman English Composition and Literature and Writing Juvenile Fiction; Blog and Wiki Journaling and E-Portfolios about Themes of Nature and Place Memory Engage Student Voices
ACTIVE LEARNING DURING SESSION
1. Travel Journaling during the session to ignite discussions about Place Memory - Reflection on process and designing your own life history project about a living or deceased person’s home or vacation spot.
2. I also demonstrate one sound bite through video stream or online media like news transcript about how places help or hinder people.
3. Discussions with participants will show how to find a way to engage in storytelling, framing life histories, or remembrances about your own hometown in a travel journal. My thesis is to engage in remembering place.
Learning Objectives
To present my original framework for teaching freshman English composition in computer enhanced classrooms based on Socratic Methodology Model and to demonstrate participants in the method of creating their own frameworks
To demonstrate student-directed learning, E-portfolio, blog and wiki in learning communities to engage student voice
To create a classroom community of my participants during my session
To read excerpts from my newest novel entitled The Passing Light based on my travel diary and prove that journals engage voice
To teach writing based on keen observation and self discovery as a part of learning to write
To encourage teachers to use information processing to generates active students
Introduction
Through my own experience of basing a novel on a travel diary, I create strategies based on the travel journaling of Thoreau. In my freshman English classes, my students create travel journals as primary sources for essays.
My most recent travel journal entitled “Writing Between Rivers” which is the foundation of my newest publication, The Passing Light, a juvenile fiction work, demonstrates Travel Journaling based on keen observation and self discovery as a part of learning to write. In The Passing Light I tell a story based on my travel journals and deep pain. I apply my own travel journaling to my teaching of Freshman English. Educational research is favorable for the private journal as a way for literature students to progress in writing and to succeed in college English classes.
Furthermore, in the computer enhanced traditional classroom and the distance learning classroom, I apply travel journaling to Blog and Wiki Journaling and E-Portfolios about Themes of Nature and Place Memory to Engage Student Voices.
Nature journaling, transcendentalism, and place memory as a framework, encourage inquiry. Through reading and discussing literary texts, observing films, and participating in self-discovery journaling, I create strategies based on the travel journaling of Thoreau and the writing of my most recent travel journal entitled “Writing Between Rivers” which is the foundation of my newest publication, The Passing Light. The book demonstrates Travel Journaling based on keen observation and self-discovery as a part of learning to write. In The Passing Light I tell a story based on my travel journals and deep pain. I apply my own travel journaling to my teaching of Freshman English. Educational research is favorable for the private journal as a way for literature students to progress in writing and to succeed in college English classes. My students enjoy participating in every activity that they come across in the class experience including telephone or real face-to-face conferences, chat experiences, group talks, coffeehouse days, presentations of others, or web searches. ALL these activities are the stuff of writing as we write about our lives. Students write about the lectures, web experiences like video streaming searches and reviews, group research library searches, films, theatre, field trips to art museums library lessons online or in the library, group experiences, class happenings, chats, or author personality integration such as a letter to your author or a letter to your friend about your English study. After all, they are the writers now and are making history. Chats can be coffeehouse days where students write about your experiences in writing and share thoughts on life as writing topics or to add to writing topics.
Methodology
Students who write blog and wiki discussions succeed in college writing classes as these activities are themed on their own lives. Educational research is favorable for the private journal as a way for literature students to progress. Develop independent writers in technology based classes by blog and wiki discussions to reach the students via conversations that lead to writing process abilities.
Sample Assignment: Create a travel journal based on a personal experience and study of Thoreau’s travel journaling for Walden. Read Walden. As you explore the work and the writer, you are exploring travel journals as a new paradigm for life story writing. I am implementing this design in my traditional Lehigh University classes and my distance University of Maryland University College classes.
My presentation includes examples of methodology for student’s e-portfolios. I also include demonstrations of my original Blog and Wiki Planning Framework; Identify Blog and Wiki Protocol; Organize Blog and Wiki Structure; Compose Blog and Wiki; Formalize Structure of Content into Essay; Present Blog and Wiki Newsletter, Presentations, Essays; Conclude Blog and Wiki Project; Evaluate Blog and Wiki Student Performance. I offer samples of student Technology - digital photos of a special place or project or aspect of your place essay in an individual or group power point. I create hand outs to show how I use passages from Walden and analysis of ways of travel journaling that Thoreau applies in Walden. I ignite discussions about Place Memory - Reflection on process and designing your own life history project about a living or deceased person’s home or vacation spot. Interview friends or family members. I also demonstrate one sound bite through video stream or online media like news transcript about how places help or hinder people. I show how to find a way to engage in storytelling, framing life histories, or remembrances about your own hometown in a travel journal. My thesis is to engage in remembering place.
Other frameworks include writing about blog or wiki lectures, web experiences like video streaming searches and reviews linked to blog or wiki posts, group research library searches through blog links and wiki, after all, blogs and wikis create the new 21st century writer who is making history.
Blogs and Wikis are technology areas where students learn to share thoughts on life as writing topics or to add to writing topics. Save blog and wiki posts and refer to them daily; they are documents educators can refer to as citations or use as preliminary parts of papers. Blogs and Wikis can be poetry fiction drama presentations where students post a short set of web sites or literary terms or parts of writing and gain discussion journal points or use the experience actually to write a paper. Papers can be ABOUT blogs and wikis. Live internet experiences are life and students write about life or about others who understand aspects of the human condition. Blogs and Wikis are live writing process events as well.
Assertive blog and wiki activities include critiques of peer writing, group writing, and references to other students’ blogs and wiki posts and Professor conferences. The platform of blog and wiki can result in a series of thoughts that may become finished research essays. For instance, at Lehigh University and the University of Maryland, my students are working on blog and wiki quizzes that will become essays for final projects with the blog and wiki as the key component.
Design the blog and wiki framework as a planning tool based upon curriculum goals. For instance, in my English I classes at Lehigh University fall 2007, I used a wiki to generate quizzes that are the basis of a final group essay project. Based upon the research of Lev Vygotsky in the field of Activity Theory ( Vygotsky 1978), the sociocultural phenomenon of wiki explodes the development of the classroom in models that serve the students of the 21st century. Applicable to our varied student bodies both tradition and distance populations, activity theory works to ensure that students receive instructions that they can apply beyond writing in the classroom. Wiki serves educators as an integrating technology compatible with electronic portfolio, team newsletters, team papers, and frameworks that depend upon technology to enhance cognitive functions of students.
A public journal blog or wiki can be a part of any writing class and can be any type of writing that helps the student move forward with literary language skills. Collaborative discussion wikis create online journals as participation to earn grade points as well as paper points. The writing process is the focus; we use the blog or wiki to stimulate the transition from the thought or brainstorm to the page through wiki. In addition, we cohesively work during our blog or wiki experiences on a newsletter composed of all blog or wiki entries. Students thoughtfully write, then publish online as part of the class experience.
Encourage students to print the blog wiki document or save as a file to show ability to write online in a cooperative team. Students are asked to act as editors, cognitive mappers of ideas within the design of the wiki discussion newsletter, interpreters of website links, all to demonstrate adaptive strategies to address visual and special thinking of all class members with different modes and talents. Wiki teaches planning which is also journaling. Any time students write ideas save them either in a wiki discussion forum with conversations that are shared with other class or team members. Writing has a new meaning in the virtual setting. Every action is recorded for points. Topics can be one word for a first draft. The next draft may be a thesis. I suggest students draft at least two days per week and keep a record of al activity to show me on the electronic classrooms or in a private journal in wiki posts or even in a collection of wiki styles (private or public) that can be a journal. Journaling is a wonderful tool and allows us to be active in small groups or alone.
Discussion Teams and Group Collaborative Efforts
Even if students write alone, they participated as a team for a class publication on wiki. Students act as editors, cognitive mappers of ideas within the design of the wiki newsletter, interpreters of website links, all to demonstrate how strategies to address visual and special thinking of all class members with different modes and talents. Students will gain points for wiki adding editorial commentary on drafts, adding technical communications with outside experts, forming text, hypertext, and hypermedia to consider how we as readers act, interact, and think visually with new and evolving forms and structures. Thank students for participating in online internet experiences and applaud your efforts to make the wiki a wonderful enlightening event.
Dr. DiEdwardo’s Blog and Wiki Planning Framework
I. Identify Blog and Wiki Protocol
II. Organize Blog and Wiki Structure
III. Compose Blog and Wiki
IV. Formalize Structure of Content into Essay
V. Present Blog and Wiki Newsletter, Presentations, Essays
VI. Conclude Blog and Wiki Project
VII. Evaluate Blog and Wiki Student Performance
Illustration
Practice in the Self-Discovery Journal
The self discovery journal or a partial self discovery journal based on life stories prepares the writing student for analytical tasks. We compare and contrast, classify, process, argue, apply cause and effect, define or persuade.
Analytical Writing Process
1. Brainstorm to find a subject, find an emotional or intellectual connection to the subject, and select materials on the subject.
2. Begin with a tentative thesis, gather more materials like interviews, reformulate thesis, and supply a teaser or allusion that asks a question or offers a statement or metaphor that points to the thesis.
3. Summarize the problem by allowing historical cultural or biographical background according to your life history to unfold.
4. Use quotes to add authority and a sense of actuality.
5. Use a section of analysis to focus on faulty arguments and questionable research methods or opposite points of view.
6. Develop your own author voice, tone, theme and content style with DIDLS (diction imagery details language syntax) as literary coherence.
7. Include inner thoughts and feelings to balance narrative and provide information to add an impact and personal voice in first or third person.
8. Provide current data.
9. Impact the writing on others you may know.
10. Ask supportive feedback from Professor and group members.
11. Clarify via a conclusion.
12. Develop the analysis and expose the reader to several points of view.
13. Be aware of the relationship of your own voice, audience and message.
References
Egan, K. (1992). Imagination in Teaching and Learning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goodman, Russell. “Transcendentalism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
2008. Date of Access 02/23/2011.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/
Lewes, Jone Johnson. “What is Transcendentalism?” Women’s History Guide. Date of Access 02/23/2011. http://womenshistory.about.com/bltranscend.htm
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.