Digital Writing: is it hurting? Or is it helping?

Digital writing has become very popular over the years and is continuing to grow in popularity.  Students are very familiar and comfortable using technology since they all have grown up with it.  I believe using digital writing such as; powerpoints, Perzis, blogs and creating mind maps are great for students to use and they will learn and be able to recall the information with more ease since they are comfortable with and enjoy using technology.  Hicks agrees with alternative projects and that digital writing is good for students, so I believe all teachers should at least give it a try!

Student Diary

Today in class we got to do this fun new writing exercise on the computers.  I got to type up a story and add in pictures and we got to record our stories to go with the typing!  I had so much fun doing something other than just writing on a sheet of paper.  I hope that we get to do more fun writing activities on the computer in the future!

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Let’s CELLabrate Interactive Learning

What do you remember most about from your time in school?  For me, it is definitely the hands-on fun projects, not the research papers and boring worksheets.  All students have different learning styles so for a majority of them they will not learn to their highest potential if they are not interacting with their work.  I am a kinesthetic learner so interacting with my work is how I learn the best, so some students will learn how I do but others will learn more visually, or auditorily.

Imagine you are teaching elementary students and you are teaching them the different parts of a cell.  Usually to learn the parts we give them a fill in the blank worksheet that they rush through and then they don’t remember the parts later on during the assessment.  If you changed the assignment and have the students create the cell either out of playdough or food the students will not only have fun learning about the cells, but they will have an easier time remembering the needed information.