This is a request for thoughts and suggestions. This is sharing of new ideas and practices. Many people are probably currently using the techniques I’m going to write about. Please comment if you have thoughts about the concept of using podcasting and videos in the writing process for reflection; also if you have experiences to share, please do.
Reflective practice is a new buzz phrase in education. I find it funny that someone had to tell teachers that it was a good idea to reflect on their teaching; I’m pretty sure every teacher I’ve ever met that was worth a darn reflected on their teaching, but ya’ know… May be some people weren’t. Anyway, what is of greater interest to me isn’t teachers reflecting on practice, but rather students reflecting on practice. Last semester in English Seminar (the course people are “placed” in or dumped in by the administration), I played around a little with using podcasting and videos to have students reflect on their writing.
This was exciting to me, because I believe it is important for students to look back and think about the choices and decisions they made in their work. The problem I’ve always had with metacognitive assignments in a writing course is that you end up asking students to write about their writing. It isn’t a huge problem for some students, but for the reluctant writer this is a horrible task. After struggling and toiling to produce a piece of writing, the reluctant writer is asked to do what? Write some more! OUCH! So this time I decided to try some podcasting and videos in the reflection phase.
I will admit that I had no clear idea in mind when I asked my students to do it. I allowed students to choose between podcasts or videos. This worked well because some of them were burned out on podcasts from other classes and preferred to make short videos; others didn’t want people to see their faces and preferred podcasting. What you will see on the wiki is very raw material from the students. (Link to my wiki from the class.) But the outcome was clearly something that had room for growth in the future. The students enjoyed talking about their writing and recording it; instead of writing about their writing. I believe a list of twenty or twenty-five questions for students to choose from would help the process in the future; the questions would provide focus on different elements of the writing process.
