Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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CHAPTER OVERVIEW

6.1 Preamble
6.2 Using websites in writing
instruction
6.3 Using blogs in writing
6.4 Using wikis in writing


Summary
References
C
Chapter 1: Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)
Chapter 2: Materials Development
Chapter 3: Visual Learning
Chapter 4: Language Games
5 Chapter 5: Reading and Technology
Chapter 6: Writing and Technology
Chapter 7: Listening and Technology
Chapter 8: Speaking and Technology




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Technology has definitely changed the way I write, in both quality and quantity. For me writing is more
of a chore than an enjoyable activity. To be honest, I hate writing; essays, and assignments, even long
e-mails sometimes bother me. When I sit down with my laptop to write an essay I look at the word
processing screen and all I see is how much I haven't written and how much I have left to write. The
task in front of me becomes more daunting and frustrating. I feel like when I write on the computer my
words are chosen to simply fill a page. Handwriting provides an escape from the looming word counts
and page numbers. We discussed in class how writing by hand forces you to think out your sentences
and chose your words more carefully. I agree that while typing we simply type whatever comes to mind
and don't think through our ideas completely. This creates less effective points and poorer results.
A main problem I notice when I write essays on my laptop, is all of the distractions that come along with
using the computer. I have music and internet at my fingertips and this can dramatically change the
quality of writing. With the ability to distract yourself with entertainment it is far too easy to ignore your
assignment and encourage writers block. The screen also is tiring to look at and gives me a headache
after a while.
There are benefits of writing on the computer with word processing software. The writing process is
much faster than hand writing. Making corrections and editing your essay is much easier on the
computer. While writing Microsoft Word automatically corrects minor spelling errors and capitalizes
words for you. This helps me immensely. When I type I hardly ever stop to capitalize and without spell
check I would leave many words misspelled and have many more fragmented sentences. By typing on
a computer you can get all of your ideas onto your page without having to be distracted by grammar
and punctuation because the word processor will do the work for you and fix your mistakes. I also like
that you can highlight and move sentences and paragraphs in a way that you cannot do on paper.
The downside to becoming so used to the computer working for you is when the computer misses your
mistakes. The word processing software is not perfect and often misses mistakes that we over look and
assume have been corrected. Personally, I struggle with this and tend not to proof read as carefully as I
should. Another problem is when you are writing on paper and use improper grammar and misspell
words there is nothing there to remind you of your mistakes but yourself. Whenever I write by hand I
have to think a lot harder about how to spell certain words. I notice that my friends also do the same
thing and we have to ask each other how words are spelt or if sentences make sense. We have
become sort of dependent on word processing.
Because of technology my writing has gotten more informal and it's easier to write in a personal or
informal tone. Because I use technology so much to communicate to friends and family it is sometimes
difficult to transition to scholarly and formal writing styles. This class has helped me practice writing in
different tones. I have really learned to write to a specific audience instead of just writing to anyone. We
have practiced scholarly writing and writing longer more serious papers than those I had written in high
school.
Comments by a Blogger on Writing
Do you agree with the views of the blogger?
6.1 Preamble
Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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How can the internet be used in writing instruction? Jarek Krajka
Stefan Batory and Adam Mickiewicz (2000) in their article Using the Internet in Writing
Instruction in ESL suggest ways in which students analyse writing genres available on the
Web, develop cultural awareness and integrating all the other skills with writing.
However, they caution that the Internet is not a goal in itself, but it is rather a useful teaching
aid, and it should be subjected to the general syllabus to enrich and give variety and
authenticity to learning English. The authors propose THREE approaches serving three
different purposes:
WEBSITES - serving students with information they need, to be later used in writing
E-MAIL - connecting with students of their age, sending letters) and
WEB PUBLISHING - creating a students' website where they can publish their own
writing, serving also as a kind of bulletin board).
A) Writing a Newspaper Report
Online newspapers the best source of current
information virtually for free. On-line newspapers
could be used as the great resource of materials for
reading, analysing language, gaining information
about the world or increasing cultural awareness.
Teachers could ask students to:
read stories
summarise them to the class
read headlines and making them into full
sentences
predict and reconstruct the content of the
articles from the headlines
compare the presentation of the same topic
in newspapers from different countries
(preferably involved on the opposite sides
of the conflict);
analyse the style, language and the way of presentation of the topic

Finally, after all these exercises, students could be asked to write a newspaper report,
preferably of some event that is close to them, in the sense that it happened in their
surrounding (either school, town or country). Students could be asked to prepare a news
bulletin in English, with one part of the class writing in the tabloid fashion (subjective and
sensational), while the other half about the same events in the quality way (objective,
6.2 Using Websites in Writing Instruction
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impersonal), to be put on the class website. After one issue, students could change sides, with
the tabloid team writing quality stories and vice versa.
One of the many benefits of this activity is that students learn how to write a newspaper
report about authentic events, at the same time gaining greater knowledge of the world and
expanding their vocabulary inventory, with free and quick access to the news from different
parts of the world. What is more, the writing tasks described above give students insight into
the business of journalism, teach them how to manipulate information to convey personal
opinions, and let them experience the effect of propaganda and relativity of truth first hand.
B) Writing a Letter to a Friend
The prerequisite for this technique is that students have their
individual e-mail accounts to enable them to send an email to a
friend. Before that, they are asked to go to websites where they can
send free greeting cards, animated pictures, accompanying music,
etc. The activity is great fun for students, when they choose from
among funny pictures, write a few lines to their friends and actually
send the cards. The lesson can be extremely motivating for
students, and apart from being great fun it introduces the formal
features of a letter to a friend in a friendly way.
C) Writing a Formal Letter
Students begin by visiting a particular website site such the World Wildlife
Fund and read about the real problems faced by endangered species;
focusing on the vocabulary and sentence structures. Students should
choose one case, read it and find out what the problem is about. The cases
may be summarised to the whole class (to integrate the element of
speaking and listening with reading and writing), so that all students can
get deeper understanding of issues and problems in Malaysia.
Then students prepare a letter to the Malaysian Minister of Environment
about the need for action to be taken to stop shark finning and
consuming shark-fins soup because of the decreasing number of sharks.
Even though they may not get a response, this activity makes the writing
process authentic and to give students the satisfaction of actually sending
their letter to the Minister.
The technique could motivate students in giving them a real purpose and
to gain insight on preserving wildlife and have a real say in the serious
matters of life. Such an activity is instruction is authentic, real, operates
on actual problems and students can feel proud to play a part in the matters of the world. The
major problem that occurs while using this technique is that students are not likely to receive
responses to their letters, so there is no feedback for them. This could be amended either by
having the teacher offering the feedback, or by students reading others' letters and discussing
them.
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D) A Biography
The Web is a great source of information, and students should be directed to sites which
contain ready-made biographies of film stars, pop singers or famous people, to choose
whoever they wish to read about. Teaching writing a biography should start with students
going to these websites focusing on structures, vocabulary and layout of the piece. This is the
element of choice and variety, which is the characteristic feature of the use of the Web in the
classroom, and which traditional textbook instruction usually lacks.
Here the issue of recency comes into play as well, and the Internet offers much more recent
information than existing textbooks, simply because of the time passing from their
publication. Also, by choosing a person who is known and contemporary to students, they are
likely to be more motivated to read than with a person whom they do not know. Students
search for relevant websites about famous people. Focus is on structure, style and language
used in writing about the biographies of people, to serve a model.
Then students are instructed to write a biography of a famous person
of their choice; for example, Malaysias first Prime Minister, Tengku
Abdul Rahman, well-know Finance Minister, Tan Siew Sin; actor
and singer P. Ramlee and so forth. The final product could be
published on the class or school website or blog to be read and
analysed in the next class. This activity makes use of the Web as the
source for models to choose from for reading, sharing the class and
reconstructing the ready-made biographies.


E) An Argumentative Essay
Students are presented with an issue in which they can
argue for and argue against. For example, The
Internet should be Censored or Removing the Death
Penalty will Lead to an Increase in Violent Crimes.
Students read and digest information from web pages to
give them a deeper understanding of the issues, to as to
make their arguments more serious and more mature.
What is usually a problem for learners, is what to write
about in some topics, especially the abstract ones.
Teachers grade essays not only for their grammatical
correctness and lexical richness, but for the content as
well.
In order to help students write more mature essays, and to give them the feeling of
authenticity and the real insight into the problems they are going to write about, referring to
websites is extremely helpful and useful. Students are encouraged to select and read
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websites that argues for and against an issue and to click on the links to websites of real
organisations.
STEPS:
a) Students explore various websites, reading and finding out information needed for
their argumentative essay. It might be too much work for one student to explore
websites that are both for and against the topic, so perhaps a good idea would be to
introduce the collaborative element in this writing lesson, and to assign one topic to
two students using separate computers.
b) After they have explored the websites and have found out the necessary information,
they should share both sides of the argument or story, decide whether the
advantages outweigh the disadvantages and choose the most suitable arguments. This
part of the writing instruction could be done by students at home.
c) The final stage would be to actually write the essays in pairs, and they could be
encouraged to correct their peers' parts, as it is widely known that peer correction is
usually less threatening and often more beneficial than teacher correction.
d) After such an on-line lesson, it would be advisable to have a discussion on the topics
students were assigned, so that the whole class could hear the arguments, evaluate
them and utter their own opinions on the matters.
e) Also, after the essays have been written and corrected, they could be put on the class
website or blog and read by students in class and discussed.
The web pages provide students with authentic and deep arguments, giving them the feeling
of first-hand experience, and to make their writing experience more purposeful and realistic.
The class website or blog, could be used for post-writing work, namely the analysis of the
language used, the extraction of arguments, the whole class discussion, reading
comprehension tasks, and many other activities.
F) An Advertisement
In this activity, students are given the task of writing an advertisement on a topic to be
determined by the teacher. The internet is filled with various kinds of advertisements.
Students are encouraged to visit the advertisements found in the classified ads of online
newspapers, companies and organisations. Then they choose one that is of interest to them,
simplify or expand them (if they are too long/difficult or short/easy for the level of this
particular class).
Students are given choices and variety not encountered in a textbook and from the very
beginning they have the feeling that the ads they read are real, and not just made up for
learning purposes. Newspaper ads can be a source of new useful vocabulary, and a teacher
may also focus students' attention on the layout, structures and characteristic features of the
the authentic examples from the website, instead of using the ones from the textbook. Then
students are encouraged to publish their advertisements on the class website or blog. Here
students learn that their advertisements should do not infringe on good manners, the policy of
the school, or hurt the feelings of others. On the other hand, students must in no way get the
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feeling that their work is censored, since this would immediately kill their spontaneity and
stifle their creativity.
Conclusion
Writing instruction can be enriched with Web Resources, in order to provide students with
choice, variety, authentic and up-to-date information. It also gives students a real purpose for
writing and experience authentic writing situations.






Generally, there are three components (see Figure above). Firstly, students surf the web for
varied, authentic and unabridged materials. Students read these websites with real purpose for
writing. Next, students write individually or collaboratively. Finally, the class website or blog
serves as a publishing medium for students' work to promote students' writing. While creating
this class website, more technologically advanced students could be selected to actively
involved as authors/webmasters/graphic designers (responsible for typing, designing,
updating), which would give them even more satisfaction and develop advanced computer
skills.







Students Write Essay
Individually
Essays are
published on the
Class or School
Website or Blog
Students Write Essay
Collaboratively
Students
assigned to
surf relevant
websites

a) Compare the different activities adopted in using web resources for
teaching writing.
b) Suggest other activities you could adopt in enhancing the writing skills of
learners using massive amount of web resources.
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Blogs, online personal journals that are frequently
updated, have existed in the cyberspace
community since 1998. In August of 1999 the
release of Blogger, a free blog hosting service,
fostered the rapid growth of blog sites (Blood,
2000). Later, blog genres extended into various professional realms especially journalism and
business. The cover story of the first issue of Fortune magazine in 2005 introduces 10 tech
trends to watch in 2005, and blog ranks the first one. According to blog search-engine and
measurement firm Technorati, Fortune reports, 23,000 new weblogs are created every day
or about one every three seconds (p. 34). No wonder the author claims that blogs have
become a force that business cant afford to ignore.

Blogs may be still strange to some English teachers. What is a blog? According to
Webopedia, a blog is defined as

Blog is defined as Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly
accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect
the personality of the author.


Word Press is another very popular
blog.


HOW DOES ONE SET UP A BLOG?
There are many websites featuring free blog hosting services. Creating a blog at Blogger will
be used as an example here to give clear instruction. After you enter Blogger website
(http://www.blogger.com), it will take you only about ten minutes to create a personal blog.
Blogger offers 3 easy steps to create a blog

(1) Create an account
(2) Name your blog
(3) Choose a template

In the first step, you only have to fill in all the basic information such as user name,
password, and email, etc.
Then, you have to give your blog a title and decide its URL address. If you would like
to host your blog at Blogger, you have to choose a unique name before blogspot.com.
For example, your could choose: zainalwriting; therefore, the complete URL
address of that blog is http://zainalwriting.blogspot.com. If you would like to put your
blog in your personal website, you then have to enter advanced blog setup to
configure some blog details.
6.3 Using Blogs to Teaching Writing
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Finally, after you pick up your favourite template, you can start writing down your
own thoughts and publish them in the cyberspace.



Posting on a blog















Most data you fill in except user name and password can be altered later if you change your
mind. Once you set up a blog, you are the administrator of that web site and own every right
to create, edit, and delete postings. Under the setting category, you can get into its sub-
categories to tune up functions such as publishing, formatting, commenting, and
archiving etc. For instance, you can decide who can comment your blog and whether you
want to show or hide readers comments. With some basic knowledge of HTML, users can
customise the layout of their blog, add photos, and even insert a piece of audio clip.


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WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF USING BLOGS IN ESL WRITINGs
Because blog design and maintenance is so easy compared to using other traditional web
creation software (e.g. Frontpage, Dreamweaver, etc.), it is an ideal tool for non-techie
teachers to construct and manage their own website. In addition to easy use, blogs in an ESL
writing class has the following advantages.

The application of blogs is a useful supplemental aid to teachers. From any computer
connected to the Internet, teachers can create, edit, or delete their teaching handouts
such as notes, homework assignment, and review materials. All these teachers
messages will be organised in a reversed chronological order with the latest postings
on the top (Johnson, 2004).

Blogs can promote exploration of English websites (Campbell, 2004). Since it is quite
simple for teachers to put materials on line with links to their source websites,
students have more chances to read related articles.

The feature of automatic date-stamping for each post is quite useful. Students
emails may, for some technical glitches, not reach their teachers or be carelessly
deleted by their teachers. With the automatic date-stamping function, both teachers
and students know clearly when students turned in their assignments. On the other
hand, the automatic archive of past posts by date or theme can help teachers and
students easily locate the message they are searching.

Teachers can easily use the blog to organise a collaborative learning environment in
which students can peer edit others postings. Students should be encouraged to
comment their partners postings, which can also be shared by other classmates.
Oravec (2002) claimed that blog development can empower students to become
more analytical and critical (p.618). Although she didnt present any statistical data
to prove that students using blogs would become more analytical and critical, it is
believed that students who are aware that their postings and comments will be read by
their classmates will be more careful before they post them






Set up a blog for your class. Explain how you will use it for teaching
writing in ESL

Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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Collaborative writing has recently been receiving considerable attention in terms of its
applicability in developing students' writing skills (Loudermilk & Hern, 2006). One benefit
of collaborative writing is that it motivates students to write because of the cooperation and
brainstorming that is involved. Various educators argue that through interacting, students can
learn from each other; this encourages them to contribute more detailed ideas than does
individual work.

What is a Wiki?

According to Leuf & Cunningham (2001), the word "wiki" is derived from a
Hawaiian word "wiki wiki" which means "fast, quick; to hurry, to hasten". It is used
to describe something which can be both formal and informal, with a sense of being
speedy.
Cunningham (2001) defines the concept of the wiki as a "freely expandable collection
of interlinked Web pages".

A wiki is therefore hypertext system for
storing and modifying information - a
database with each page being easily
editable by any user through a standard Web
browser. The features of a wiki offer the
potential to incorporate it into educational
contexts. These key features include a user-
friendly interface for editing the content,
history tracking, defining the size of
authoring groups, and a non-linear structure
for editing
Background

Constructivists such as Piaget have long argued that individuals are, from birth on, actively
involved in constructing personal meaning, with their personal understanding arising from
their experiences. Von Glasersfeld (1992) suggests that constructivism involves putting
learning into practice by presenting issues, concepts and tasks in the form of problems to be
explored in dialogue. He claims that teachers should not simply tell students what
concepts to construct or how to construct them but that, ideally, students should discover
concepts for themselves and develop their own understanding. The concept of the wiki is
therefore in line with constructivist perspectives; through interacting with each other, students
can construct their own knowledge bases. Wikis have great potential as educational tools as
they provide a format for the collaborative construction of knowledge.

6.4 Using Wikis to Teaching Writing
Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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Wikis can also provide a platform for group projects or problem-solving scenarios in that
they can be used to model and facilitate the exchange of ideas - something which is much
harder to accomplish individually. Wikis can provide meaningful interaction both with each
other and with the data students are uncovering. In other words, there will be interaction
between students, content and also teachers, with the collaborative environment providing
an opportunity for students to learn how to work with others and how to create a
community.

Preparing Students

While wikis may be able to enhance students' writing experience and further develop their writing
skills, adequate preparation needs to be in place before applying wikis to the teaching of writing
(McPherson, 2006). Students need to be equipped with the skills of negotiation, cooperation,
collaboration, and respect for others' work and thoughts. As students will be involved in a
considerable amount of interaction with group mates, they need to learn how to get along
with others in the writing process.

Roles
According to Leuf and Cunningham (2001), the adoption of wikis requires different roles such
as the following:
The Authors will be mainly students who add material, find new material, and
connect related material; they will be the main contributors to the wikis.

Peripheral Users are students who may not be actively involved in adding content to
the wikis and may just view material but not contribute anything.

Purpose agent is the teacher who gives a purpose to the learning, so that students have
goals or targets to work towards. The teacher encourages proper usage and specifies
usage context. The teacher initially creates a set of pages in the wiki to support certain
activities - e.g. group pages and discussion pages for students to post content and
comments. Some teachers may also serve as site designers in that they will tweak the
look and feel of the wiki site, perhaps editing the template, to better suit the needs of
users.


Students can add or delete content on the wiki; some of these changes reflect
newly-added ideas or feedback to others' ideas or reflections on others' work.
In addition to the collaborative side of students editing their own wiki content,
teachers can also participate by posting comments or evaluations of students'
work.


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Design of a Wiki
David Coniam and Mark Lee Wai Kit (2008) in their article I ncorporating Wikis into into the
Teaching of English Writing suggest the following steps in the design of a wiki.

The wiki website can be constructed by using the free online authorware PBwiki
(http://www.pbwiki.com), which allows users to create their own wiki site through simple,
ready-made tools [see PBWORKS below].







With the templates provided, users can easily create different pages such as syllabuses, group
projects and classrooms. Once a template has been selected, a screen with composing tools
appears. This is quite user-friendly in that the environment is similar in nature to that of a word
processor such as Microsoft Word (See example on the next page). Users can type in their content
along with features such as tables; they can adjust font sizes, insert pictures and even attach such as
tables; they can adjust font sizes, insert pictures and even attach files to the page.



Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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The Wiki Environment is similar to a Word Processor














Structure of the Wiki

By using these features, several pages are created for the wiki for Writing under the entry
point, the "Front Page". The structure is laid out in Figure above. The idea of the above
structure was that each group would have a space to compose their own survey report. While
Front Page
Writing Wiki Forum
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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each group had a page for their own work, they could, at the same time, view the work of
other groups. Students entered the wiki at the Front Page. This page contains a welcoming
message from the teacher, intended to encourage them to log on and move on to their own
wiki group page. Apart from the message, the Front Page also contains notices reminding
students of their tasks and providing links to the instructions on how to complete the tasks.
From the Front Page, students moved to the Writing Wiki Forum - a page listing the groups
and the name of group members.

In the Writing Forum, students click on the group they belonged to. As mentioned, groups
had are set up by the teacher based on students' varying levels of English competence and
their participation in lessons generally. Each group is assigned an able and a less able student
with the intention that more capable students would aid the less capable, and that with active
and passive learners grouped together, students would encourage each other.

Students begin working on their task. They are reminded to include their name and time of
editing the page as a clear reference for their group mates. This would then enable other
students to see who had done the last piece of editing and when. To help guide students
throughout the writing process, questions and headings are built in by the teacher. Where
appropriate the teacher also comments on some of the groups' pages and their contributions.
All components in the report were clearly defined with headings and subheadings so that
students had a clear picture of where they were to write their own parts.












Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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SUMMARY
Students analyse writing genres available on the Web, develop cultural awareness and
integrate all the other skills with writing.

On-line newspapers could be used as the great resource of materials for reading,
analysing language, gaining information about the world or increasing cultural
awareness.

One of the many benefits of writing a newspaper report is that students learn how to
write a newspaper report about authentic events, at the same time gaining greater
knowledge of the world and expanding their vocabulary inventory.

Writing an email to a friend can be extremely motivating for students, and apart from
being great fun it introduces the formal features of a letter to a friend in a friendly
way.

Writing a formal email letter is authentic, real, operates on actual problems and
students can feel proud to play a part in the matters of the world.

Students can be presented with an issue in which they can argue for and argue
against.

Blogs, online personal journals that are frequently updated, have existed in the
cyberspace community since 1998.

One benefit of collaborative writing is that it motivates students to write because of
the cooperation and brainstorming that is involved.

The word "wiki" is derived from a Hawaiian word "wiki wiki" which means "fast,
quick; to hurry, to hasten".

While wikis may be able to enhance students' writing experience and further develop
their writing skills, adequate preparation needs to be in place before applying wikis to
the teaching of writing.

Peripheral Users are students who may not be actively involved in adding content to
the wikis and may just view material but not contribute anything.'

Purpose agent is the teacher who gives a purpose to the learning, so that students have
goals or targets to work towards.


Chapter 6: Writing and Technology

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REFERENCES
Coniam, D. & Lee, W.K. (2008). Incorporating wikis in the teaching of English
writing. Hong Kong Teachers Centre Journal. 7 . 52-67.

Krajka, J. & Pallottine, S. (2000). Using the internet in ESL writing instruction. The
Internet TESL Journal. VI (11). 22-30.

Leuf, B., & Cunningham, W. (2001). The wiki way: Quick collaboration on the Web.
Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Loudermilk, S., & Hern, T. (2006). Using wikis as collaborative writing tools:
Something wiki this way comes or not! Kairos, 10(1).
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/10.1/index.html.

McPherson, K. (2006). Wikis and student writing. Teacher Librarian 34(2), 70-72.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for
classrooms. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Corwin Press.

Von Glasersfeld, E. (1992). Radical constructivism in mathematics education.
Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 23 (3), 290-29