How do we define and assess digital composition?

Nuances by Paul (Dexx), used with a Creative Commons License, http://flic.kr/p/9KSLaG

Nuances by Paul (Dexx), used with a Creative Commons License

Buffy Hamilton has blogged her mid-year reflection on the creation of digital texts such as VoiceThread or Prezi. Some of the big takeaways for me:

  • Finding what I thought represented “exemplary” digital texts was challenging as I found it difficult to find examples I thought represented exemplary work in terms of the content quality (having depth, being more inquiry driven) and the actual design of the digital text…
  • I felt frustrated in the professional books I read this fall in that they never seemed to address concrete strategies for scaffolding the digital composition process or effective assessment strategies.  While the texts I read seemed to outline and give an overview of the digital composition mediums and provided rationales (which were quite good) for digital composition, they seemed to come up short in details that would help one teach these mediums and skills with depth and rigor.
  • Since these efforts at digital composition were the first efforts for most students, I felt torn as I was helping assess student work when teachers allowed me to help them in this phase of instruction.  Trying to balance the tension between holding standards for digital writing and keeping in mind that these efforts for the students was the first for most of them created a tremendous amount of angst on my part as I didn’t want to be too generous or too stingy in my expectations; some of the teachers I worked with shared this concern as well as they weren’t quite sure in their mind what exactly exemplary work would look like and didn’t want to be too hard on the students.    It’s a balancing act trying to help students and teachers alike begin to conceptualize what exemplary, original work might look like…  I’ve tried to help students and teachers consider the qualities of  texts that help create rich, nuanced nonfiction narratives that blend critical thinking, effective design elements (multimedia and traditional text), and thoughtful research to support the narrative.
  • Helping students work through the confusion and discomfort they may feel as they are being asked to compose in a new medium that is unfamiliar and very different from writing in a traditional text narrative (which is difficult for many students as well) … Additionally, some students felt tremendous anxiety that they were not writing a traditional report or research paper and were not being “prepared” for the work other teachers might ask them to do.

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These are the tough questions everyone is wrestling with. How do we know if it’s good? What are good examples of good?

Image credit:
Nuances by Paul (Dex) on Flickr; used with a Creative Commons license

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