Bill Grabe outlined twelve ideas for future research in second language/ESL writing during his plenary talk at the Symposium on Second Language Writing today. His list included:

1. The importance of summary writing
2. The importance of exploring lexical, grammatical, and textual features contributing (or not contributing) to writing development
3. The need to move beyond the t-unit as a measure of writing complexity
4. The need to carry out more training studies with larger groups of students—the need to build a repository of controlled results across and within student groups, tasks, and topics
5. The need to build principled and controlled student writing corpora that multiple researchers can access for multiple issues and multiple studies (ICLE is not good enough)
6. The need to carry out (near) replications of highly-cited (and other) studies and have the replications published regularly
7. The need to study in more depth the linkages between vocabulary knowledge (both receptive and productive) and writing abilities
8. The need to study writing variability due to L1 language transfer factors, linguistic or textual
9. The need to expand research on writing assessment practices, particularly in classroom settings, and particularly with respect to “assessment for learning”
10. The need for controlled research on the impact of different media on writing, or using different media as part of writing development
11. The need to expand research on effective ways to carry out teacher training for more effective writing instruction (action research)
12. The need to examine relations between writing abilities (& development) and brain functioning

Admittedly empirically-focused. But thought-provoking. I’m interested, of course, in the implications of #10. What might such research look like? What kinds of questions should we be asking about the impact of different media on writing and writing development? So often administrators still ask whether or not computers are beneficial to students’ language learning and writing development. I’m just not convinced anymore that it’s interesting to ask whether or not the use of computers in the classroom is beneficial to teaching students to write. To me, that’s like asking 50 years ago whether or not it would be beneficial to students’ long-term writing to give them pencils. But what kinds of questions should we ask, especially in relation to L2 writers?

My co-author, Shelley Rodrigo, just found our textbook, the Wadsworth Guide to Research, on Google Books. Hmm. I can’t decide how I feel about that. Flattered? Offended? It certainly seems like a violation of copyright. Isn’t it?

And a Google search for our book brings up the Google Books link on the front page. Surprise, surprise.

Apparently our publisher, Cengage, along with many others, has filed a lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement. Now publishers around the world are getting into the fight. Thankfully the US Register of Copyrights is on the authors’ side. Am I missing something here? Is there a valid argument for allowing Google to scan and make millions of books available for free? Google claims that they’re like a sort of “online library.” This seems like a flimsy defense.

I guess I understand the whole Napster issue on a different level now.

Well, the new iPhone looks fantastic…if only Apple would hook up with a real cell phone provider that doesn’t drop calls constantly! Sigh. My entire neighborhood is an AT&T dead zone…right smack in the middle of Raleigh. I just can’t give my money to Apple if I have to switch cell phone providers. And it’s killing me.

I don’t think I’ve ever had an article written about anything I’ve done before. But, lo and behold, this morning Shelley and I made the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and–I guess–several other papers. Who would have thought that research in college writing classes would be interesting outside of the academy?

I think I’ve figured out why I don’t prefer to read online. I like to read books and articles on paper. This week I’ve been reading a lot of online publications, and I’ve found that the problem for me is not the same as what I’ve heard a lot of teachers say when they protest the idea of designing a paperless classroom, posting readings online and responding to student writing on the screen instead of on paper. I don’t mind reading from the screen. It doesn’t hurt my eyes, and I actually prefer commenting on student writing on a computer than on paper. I type a lot faster than I write, and the older I get, the faster the hand cramps seem to start when I’m writing with a pen.

The problem for me with reading online is the DISTRACTION.

I guess I’m not as good at multi-tasking as I’d like to believe. This week I would start with The Horizon Report, but somehow end up in Facebook (yes, there really is a string of connections that can lead there).
Or I would open up an article, like Prensky’s Digital Natives piece, and wind up with five different tabs open, chatting with a friend while I’m trying to put a blog together and–yes–check Facebook at the same time.

Sometimes it feels like I can spend hours at my computer and get very little done. On the other hand, I might come away with several different ideas to follow up on. I guess online reading can be a kind of invention for me, but I always end up feeling like I need to chastise myself for not staying more focused.

But perhaps I’m missing the point.

I presented at the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators’ meeting in Charlotte last Friday with my good friend, Tony Atkins. (We were also scheduled to present with Paula Rosinski, but her baby is due any day now and she was ordered by her doctor to stay close to home. We missed you, Paula!) Tony and I talked about using new media for teaching writing–Tony focused on visual arguments and using Facebook, and I talked about using new media to help students conduct research (drawing on much of the work I’ve been doing with Shelley Rodrigo that is posted on this month’s Teaching Composition blog).

Tony’s resource website for his talk includes some wonderful assignments for video composition and some great resources for incorporating multimedia into a writing classroom. Great stuff!

Right now I feel like I spend an awful lot of my time learning to use technologies instead of having them save me the time I think they will because of how efficient I’ll (eventually?) become.

I don’t think I can say it any better than Alan Levine did, so I’ll point you to his blog. Now THAT saves me time.

This week in our graduate class we read several articles dealing with the use of sound in composing. I’m fascinated by the potential connections between orality and writing, especially when technology is involved. As I read this week, though, I found myself coming back to the same question over and over again: where are the disciplinary boundaries now?

And what really counts as writing?

If I teach students to write with sound (oral composing?), then is it writing anymore?

Of course, the principles of rhetoric apply in all of these contexts, and perhaps the boundaries aren’t really the most important (or interesting) thing to consider. But the fact remains that universities are modernist, hierarchical institutions where we spend a lot of our time acknowledging and protecting disciplinary territory…and I’m a product of that context. I can’t help but wonder whether this “counts” as writing.

As I read this week, I felt like I had stumbled across an interesting kind of mashup in the form of sonic literacy (Comstock and Hocks, 2006)…one of a disciplinary kind. I realized that I need to be able to draw on all sorts of disciplines to talk about writing in a digital age. And what I was struck by the most today was my lack of knowledge about communication studies and media production. Man, I’ve got a lot to learn.

And I still can’t figure out what writing is.

Well, I figured out one way to force myself to blog…I assigned blogged reading/technology responses in my graduate seminar and then told the students that I would blog along with them. So, I have no more excuses.

I’m trying to decide how I feel about forced blogging, or compelled public writing of any kind. NC State has a pretty conservative policy on the issue, and students who blog or write in a wiki in class must sign a FERPA disclaimer before participating. What kind of ethical responsibilities does a teacher have when asking students to write, or communicate in any way, in a public forum? Is that a potential violation of student privacy? Is it an integral part of education? I can think of arguments for both, and for many possibilities in between.

For now, I’m going to just try to get in the habit of blogging myself. I can theorize about privacy issues and writing in the public sphere, but with very little personal experience in this medium, I don’t have much ethos on which to base any argument or theory I might come up with.

So, let the blogging begin!

So…I’ve waited over a month to write another post to my blog. And there’s a reason. I’m frustrated with the technology, and I’m realizing how overwhelming it is to learn something new when you’re behind the curve. There are so many potential things I can do with my blog that my mind is spinning. I start looking at other blogs, widgets, and tools…and then I start thinking about the dozen things I need to do with my blog in order for it to even be functional…and then I give up and do something else.

Perhaps this is a good lesson for me as a teacher. Technology can be exciting and fun, but it can also be overwhelming. I know that in my head, but it’s good for me to be reminded by immersion.

So…if there’s anybody out there who actually read my first blog post (Shelley?), I’ll try to pick up the pace a bit. And I promise to work on cleaning up my sidebar.