Reflecting on Digital Writing

Creating a blog and posting a new blog almost every week was something very different for me as this was my first blog I have ever created! I have really learned a lot about myself as a writer, mainly that I tend to write more when I am writing about something I enjoy. I found that my favorite blog posts were when I talked about something I had done recently that was exciting, such as diving or going to a football game. I have also learned a lot about digital writing in general. Like I said, this was my first blog, so just figuring out the way blogs work and how to post a new blog was a learning experience alone. But I also learned how helpful blogs can be, in the professional world and in the classroom. This blog was a great experience because each week I had comments posted on my blogs. It was nice to get such instant feedback from my peers. I also learned that digital writing can be extremely useful in the classroom. In my future classrooms, I would love to use blogs as a means of revising. A blog can be a great space for revising a paper because you can go back and see your previous versions and reflect on the progress you have made. This would be great for students because they could make revisions based on the comments their peers and their teacher have made on their drafts, then use those comments to revise and make a new draft.

Overall, I had a great experience digital writing. Considering this was my first blog, I am pleased with what I have created in my weekly posts. I think that the hardest part for me was deciding what to write about on the open post weeks. When it comes to writing in general, I think that one of my weaknesses is coming up with an idea. However, I think with the right guidance, digital writing could be very successful in a high school English classroom.

Professional Text

For the professional text, I chose The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks. I chose to read this text because I was interested in how I can use digital writing in my future classroom. I definitely learned a lot about how digital writing should be used in a classroom, all of which I could implement into my own classroom. Out of everything I learned, I think the most important was that digital writing should not simply be mimicking normal writing in the classroom, only doing it on the computer. Instead, teachers should become innovative in creating new ways to use technology for writing. One of my favorite techniques mentioned in this book was the use of blogs for draft writing. Hicks explained that blogs can show progress over time, so if a blog is used to save different drafts of writing, students can easily scroll through and see how far they have come in writing. Before reading this text, I had never put much thought into how technology can be used for drafting. In most of my high school experience, your rough draft was written on notebook paper, edited, then resubmitted corrected and typed. But the notion of blog drafting is a great concept because students do not just throw away their old drafts, and they can get comments from their peers and teacher on their drafts as well. Aside from this, another important aspect of digital writing which I was reminded of was using web documents such as google docs. I used google docs for group projects in school and enjoyed it because we could work “together” without physically being together. However, what I learned from this text was that google docs saves all of the drafts created so that students can go back to any previous version at any time.

Overall, I learned that digital writing can be beneficial in many aspects of writing. It can help students plan, draft, and look back on previous versions of their work. It can show students how far they have come in their progression of writing over a period of time. Digital writing not only improves student’s writing capabilities, but also their technology skills, both of which could ultimately help them to be successful in future careers.

“Holidays”

I have worked in a restaurant since my senior year of high school. While the money and flexible hours makes it the perfect job to get me through college, there are definitely a few drawbacks to the job. To me, the biggest drawback is not having weekends and holidays off. Not having weekends off is bad enough because you get off of work and go on instagram to see pictures of your friends doing all kinds of fun weekend stuff (it helps to have best friends who also work in the restaurant industry). But holidays are the worst because this is the time when my family spends time together. Granted, I do have Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day off, which I am thankful for. However, I have worked just about every Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, New Years Day, 4th of July, Easter, Memorial Day, and Labor Day for the past five years. The only time I have these holidays off is if I request off at least a month in advance. It’s frustrating to see families coming in together on these days because it makes you wish you were spending time with your own family. Although this has been frustrating for me over the past few years, it has also been a motivating factor for me to hurry up and graduate so that I can start teaching and have weekends, holidays, and even Summer off!