A new view on writing

NEA Today, Oct 1998

Videoconferencing with mentors has made kids eager to revise, revise, revise, revise.

Who:

Florence McGinn, English teacher Hunterdon Central High School Flemnington, New Jersey

E-mail:

Inspiration:

When McGinn wanted to find mentors to help students with their writing, she didn't let distance limit her.

Instead, she turned to videoconferencing technology-and now her 50 honors writing and literature students work across the miles with students from Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, using a combination of video, voice, and Internet tools.

McGinn's students and their mentors can talk to each other as they sit at computers, thanks to microphones and speakers. Small cameras perched on their computers transmit their live pictures to each other's screens.

The subject of their conversations is the Hunterdon student's latest short story, poem, or essay, also displayed on the screen. The student and mentor can both revise and rewrite the work from their keyboards.

"Videoconferencing started as a way to extend the written word," says McGinn. whose classroom innovations led Technology & Learning magazine to name her 1998 Teacher of the Year.

"I'm a published poet myself," McGinn continues, "and I wanted the kids to have a richer experience with words. I also wanted them to have a sense of audience. So I designed the course around that, and we were lucky to have the technology that meshed it all together."

Three computer stations in McGinn's classroom are equipped with the Intel ProShare software and hardware that allows for videoconferencing. The biggest expense isn't equipment, she says. It's the highspeed connection-at least an ISDN line-required to carry the images and sound over the Internet.

McGinn's students upload their writing to a password-protected Web site, and then E-mail their mentors to arrange a weekly work session.

"We wondered if the technology would be transparent enough, if you would be able to make a human connection," McGinn notes. "Our students have never met their mentors in person, but it's working out beautifully. They've become great friends."

Lesson:

By the end of the semester, each student has assembled a hefty portfolio of diverse writing.

"As I monitor videoconferences," McGinn says, "I'll recognize manuscripts that students have already handed in and received a grade forand they're still working with a mentor to polish it."

In fact, she says, the most important lesson students learn from working with their mentors isn't structure or mechanics, but "a sense that writing is a process, that they should go through many, many drafts and not be afraid to revise their work."

"For so long, kids have been taught that you hand in something, get a grade, and you're finished," McGinn adds. "For that attitude to change is like night and day.

"And they want to take risks now. They'll ask, `Do I have to write so stiffly? Can I use extended metaphor in my college application essay?"'

Click:

"So often I hear people ask, `Is technology good or bad?"' McGinn says.

"That's like asking if a hammer is a good or bad tool. It's what you do with technology that counts."