Erin Priest Priest 1
William Tucker
ENGL 408W
19 March 2018
Priest 2
Persuasive Essay – Composing Occurs in Different Modalities and Technologies
With the ever-changing advancement of technology, it is no surprise that adaptions must be made in the way teachers construct their classrooms. In a world that once consisted of paper report cards that went home in a sealed envelope to being able to access a student’s grades at any given time on the internet. As teachers, it is our responsibility to utilize different technologies in order to prepare students to compose their writing in various ways throughout their schooling and career. Whether it is to post on a social media website, an online portfolio for a class, or simply compile their thoughts in a word processing document on a computer.
The students in high school today are all digital natives. This means they have grown up with and are completely accustomed to social networking, text messages and basically anything that might involve the internet. Video games, instant messaging and cell phones are a part of their everyday lives. As a teacher who might be considered a digital immigrant, it is your job to adapt to the ways of technology because according to Marc Prensky, this is how students now learn best. In his journal article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” Prensky writes “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach” (1). People have often said that you cannot possibly learn while listening to music or watching TV, but does this still apply when digital natives have been gathering information this way their entire lives? The journal article “Visual Learning Styles Among Digital Natives,” conducts a study in which the various ways of utilizing information can be obtained by digital natives. The results suggest that information was obtained better through a multimodal presentation rather than simply through text (Palmer, 2011). If students are obtaining information better when it is presented to them in a multimodal fashion, it would make sense, as a teacher, to use various forms of media in order to keep students engaged.
Actually, many teachers have already adjusted their platforms where they communicate classroom announcements, post grades, or give feedback on a draft. In the journal article “What’s Going On?: Challenged and Opportunities for Social Media Use in the Writing Classroom,” a survey of college instructors showed that nearly 90% use some form of social media in their teaching. One instructor’s response to why he/she uses social media is “We live in a world where social media is used all the time and our classrooms should reflect that use.” The number one website being used is YouTube (Vie, 36).
Going further than presenting a relevant video found on YouTube, it can be helpful to create a classroom blog or website. Creating a private blog or website for a class not only can help engage studen...
