Collaborative tools, and Google Docs in particular, have shifted the way students write, collaborate, and get feedback and editing from teachers. It鈥檚 the first thing nearly all teachers interviewed for this story mentioned when asked about the use of educational technology in literature and writing instruction.
鈥淕oogle Docs and the whole G Suite system for English classrooms is revolutionizing the way we interact with each other and create,鈥� said Bill Bass, the innovation coordinator for instructional technology, information, and library media for the Parkway school district in Chesterfield, Mo., and a former English teacher. 鈥淭hat collaboration is key to helping kids make authentic connections with text and information.鈥�
Allowing teachers to provide electronic feedback within text鈥攊nstead of 鈥渞ed-lining鈥� papers鈥攑aves the way for more transparent revisions and more targeted comments, said Kristen Hawley Turner, the director of teacher education at Drew University in New Jersey and the co-author of several books about ed tech and reading, including .
Turner added that the ability for students to work with each other is just as important.
Group work extends to social-annotation tools, too, said Troy Hicks, a professor of English and education at Central Michigan University and the co-author of Connected Reading. Digital resources like allow teachers to upload texts and have students highlight, add questions, and create discussion threads with other students.
In a related vein, peer-review tools are also playing an important role. Sites like and 鈥擧icks has consulted for both鈥攕upport the peer-review process, provide step-by-step supports, and encourage effective feedback strategies, Hicks said.
Technology has also enabled personalization in english/language arts. Students have new ways of communicating knowledge, through presentations that might incorporate text, infographics, photos, and video.
Students now have 鈥渕ultiple mediums and modes of creation and consumption that have changed the landscape,鈥� Bass said. Creating movie trailers as book reviews is one example.
However, many English teachers still have concerns that overuse of multimedia can have the effect of dumbing down students鈥� writing.
The use of personalized digital products is also expanding. Commercial products, like and , make it easy for teachers to deliver the same texts but at different reading levels or to customize reading and writing assignments based on those levels. Web-based , for example, offers daily news articles adapted to reading levels in English and Spanish. Adaptive products like , which assesses students then provides customized exercises and lessons, are also gaining in popularity.
But teachers need to ensure that adaptive and customized resources push students to read 鈥渙utside their comfort zones,鈥� Hicks said. 鈥淲e still want to introduce students to challenging texts.鈥�
One of the biggest struggles for teachers these days is the unreliability of digital tools and infrastructure, Turner said. 鈥淭echnology fails. If your entire lesson is about students peer-reviewing and writing in Google Docs and the Wi-Fi goes down, you鈥檙e up a creek.鈥�
Bass said he sees a future that allows students many more options for reading, writing, and collaborating, and a structure that permits them to choose how to approach the subject. That may mean augmented-reality and video-reality tools with 360 video for telling stories and the ability to communicate and collaborate in 鈥渕ultiple modes.鈥� There鈥檚 likely to be more reliance on digital content鈥攆rom e-books to streaming video. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to ask kids to interact with the content in many different venues,鈥� he said.
