Study: Technology in the classroom helps writing (sort of)

By Amrita Jayakumar, 

Technology in the classroom has made students better collaborators, but not necessarily better writers, a new study says.

The survey by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that most teachers thought the use of technology — from tablet devices to Google Docs — encouraged collaboration among students in middle and high schools. But teachers were worried about students using informal language and improper citations in their writing. 

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The use of shared blogs in classrooms led students to work together, teachers said. Forty percent of teachers said they made students write on classroom wikis or Web sites, while nearly 30 percent said they made students edit one another’s writing.

Some common complaints about technology — the use of abbreviated texting language and an inability to focus on longer pieces — were also brought up in the study. Nearly 70 percent of teachers thought digital tools made students more likely to “take shortcuts and put less effort into their writing,” according to the report. Students were rated poorly on their ability to “read and digest long or complicated texts.”

But that didn’t mean teachers were averse to using technology. In fact, half of all teachers in the study said digital tools made it easier to teach writing, according to the report. Eighteen percent thought technology made teaching more difficult, while 31 percent said it had no impact.

Conducted in 2012, the study surveyed more than 2,000 middle and high-school teachers across the country, mostly from public schools.

The report found that the Internet’s vast maze of resources had mixed implications for writing.

On one hand, students’ ease of access to multiple sources raised concerns about intellectual property. A majority of teachers said they devoted class time to explain the concepts of fair use, copyright and citation. The challenge facing teachers was how to help students navigate the murky world of attribution, the report said.

“There tends to be a perception that students willfully copy and paste intellectual property out of laziness and disregard,” said Kristen Purcell, director of research at the center and lead author of the study. “But teachers emphasized to us that more often than not, it’s genuine lack of understanding.”

On the other hand, the plethora of online sources made teachers rate students highly on the ability to incorporate multiple viewpoints in their writing. In addition, the ease of self-publishing on the Internet — and reaching a potentially vast audience — made students concentrate on what they chose to write about, teachers said.

“When everything is shareable, students pay a lot more attention to the message they’re sharing,” said Joel Malley, an English teacher at Cheektowaga Central High School outside of Buffalo who participated in the survey.

The idea of their peers or people they don’t know reading their work made students more thoughtful, said Jennifer Woollven, a high school English teacher in Austin who also participated in the survey. Nearly 80 percent of teachers in the study said digital tools “encourage student creativity and personal expression.”

But teachers weren’t thrilled about students using casual writing in formal assignments.

“It does take some work to get them out of ‘tech talk,’ ” Woollven said. “They’ve grown up in this world of shortening.”

Both Malley and Woollven said their students often had trouble with capitalization. Purcell added that teachers promoted writing by hand when they wanted students to slow down and think about the process of writing.

Although Pew’s study examined the increased use of technology in the classroom, Purcell said it also highlighted a persistent digital divide. There still exists a stark difference in children’s access to technology at home — and teachers in the survey thought it was widening.

“We heard consistently from the teachers of the lowest income schools that they have very different experiences using technology in the classroom,” she said.

Those teachers have to design their lessons to accommodate different skill levels because — unlike the commonly held perception — not all young people are ‘digital natives,’ the report said.

Malley, who teaches in a school where 43 percent of students are economically disadvantaged, agreed.

“I get kids in my district, some of whom live in McMansions and some that live in neighborhoods that border the city,” he said. “There is not equal access to digital tools.”

The Washington Post, 16/7/2013

Study: Technology Sparks Kids' Creative Writing, But They're More Likely To Take Shortcuts, too (Audio)

Stella M. Chavez, KERA News

Jul 16, 2013

A new study by the Pew Research Center finds that technology is helping middle and high school students be more creative and collaborate with others. But the same survey of teachers also finds that kids are more likely to take shortcuts and have a hard time understanding complicated and longer material. Listen online

The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing is Taught in Schools

by Kristen Purcell, Judy Buchanan, Linda Friedrich

Jul 16, 2013

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OVERVIEW

A survey of teachers who instruct American middle and high school students finds that digital technologies are impacting student writing in myriad ways and there are significant advantages from tech-based learning.

Some 78% of the 2,462 advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project say digital tools such as the internet, social media, and cell phones “encourage student creativity and personal expression.” In addition:

• 96% agree digital technologies “allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience”
• 79% agree that these tools “encourage greater collaboration among students”

According to teachers, students’ exposure to a broader audience for their work and more feedback from peers encourages greater student investment in what they write and in the writing process as a whole.

At the same time, these teachers give their students modest marks when it comes to writing and highlight some areas needing attention. Asked to assess their students’ performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students “good” or “fair” as opposed to “excellent” or “very good.” Students received the best ratings on their ability to “effectively organize and structure writing assignments” and their ability to “understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue.” Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to “navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition” and “reading and digesting long or complicated texts.”

ABOUT THE SURVEY

These are among the main findings of an online survey of a non-probability sample of 2,462 middle and high school teachers currently teaching in the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, conducted between March 7 and April 23, 2012.  Some 1,750 of the teachers are drawn from a sample of advanced placement (AP) high school teachers, while the remaining 712 are from a sample of National Writing Project teachers.  Survey findings are complemented by insights from a series of online and in-person focus groups with middle and high school teachers and students in grades 9-12, conducted between November, 2011 and February, 2012.

This particular sample is quite diverse geographically, by subject matter taught, and by school size and community characteristics.  But it skews towards educators who teach some of the most academically successful students in the country. Thus, the findings reported here reflect the realities of their special place in American education, and are not necessarily representative of all teachers in all schools. At the same time, these findings are especially powerful given that these teachers’ observations and judgments emerge from some of the nation’s most advanced classrooms.

In addition to the survey, Pew Internet conducted a series of online and offline focus groups with middle and high school teachers and some of their students and their voices are included in this report.

Internet estimula criatividade, mas afeta a escrita dos jovens, diz estudo

Entre os problemas, alunos precisam distinguir linguagem formal e informal.
Pesquisa foi realizada com 2.462 professores de escolas norte-americanas.

Do G1, em São Paulo

Crianças usam tablet em escola brasileira
(Foto: Cristina Boeckel/G1)

Internet, redes sociais e celulares conectados ajudam estudantes a melhorar a criatividade e a se expressarem melhor. Por outro lado, os jovens têm problemas na escrita, como a troca da linguagem formal pela informal, a cópia de textos publicados por outros autores e a dificuldade em ler e compreender textos longos ou complexos.

As conclusões fazem parte de um estudo divulgado nesta terça-feira (16) pelo Centro Pew de Pesquisas de Internet. A pesquisa foi feita com 2.462 professores do Ensino Fundamental e do Ensino Médio nos Estados Unidos, em Porto Rico e nas Ilhas Virgens.

Dos professores entrevistados, 96% afirmam que as ferramentas digitais permitem aos estudantes compartilhar o que escrevem com um grupo maior e mais variado de pessoas, enquanto 79% também apontam o aumento da colaboração positiva entre os alunos. O aumento da exposição do trabalho incentiva os jovens a investirem mais tempo e atenção no que escrevem.Entre nove habilidades de escrita avaliadas, os estudantes tiveram melhor desempenho em estruturar raciocínios ao escrever textos  e em considerar diferentes pontos de vista na hora de tratar de determinado assunto.