When I was in high school I took a composition course that relied heavily on the feedback and discussion of my peers. I went to a fairly tech-saavy high school and every student was required to have the same laptop, so we had access to the internet.
As soon as I read the article by Robbins-Bell that class was the first one that popped in to my head. In the section entitled “The Social Media Rift,” She talks about more modern forms of communication between students as a result of the internet, and mentions blogs, and the way to comment and post on them. I though of how easy and accessible blogging would have been in my composition course. We would have work shopping days that required us to sit down and review the works of fellow students but the time restriction and classroom atmosphere was very distracting and did not make it easy to edit a work. If we had the option of blogging, we would have had the option to do all of our peer reviews online and would be able to give a more thoughtful, well thought out response. Not everyone gets their best ideas during the day or when someone tells them they need to, and blogging would have allowed students to access the assignment whenever they thought of something new.
On page 34 of the article, Robbins-Bell explains that one of the main things teachers need to accept is that they would not have total control over their students in a digital environment. Although this may be true, the need for teacher-student interaction will never fade, and internet communication will simply make it easier for students to communicate outside of the classroom, making it easier to work together on assignments and also to gain productive feedback from one another.
The whole idea of having an avatar would have also come in handy during my composition course. I went to a pretty large high school and it wasn’t uncommon to be in a class with students you weren’t very familiar with. An avatar would have allowed us to connect with these students, especially if it was an actual picture of themselves. Also, with the world’s increasing dependence on technology, it is not uncommon for students to feel much more comfortable voicing their opinions online under an avatar’s name then to speak up in class.
Overall, I feel lucky to have had the experience of working online in many of my college courses, and this article made me see how helpful certain internet sites could have been for some of my high school classes.
