Meeting Minutes: June 14

Wow! What a productive meeting. I can't believe how much ground we covered and I think we are really on our way to a focused project. I couldn't believe my watch when I left the library and saw how fast the afternoon had gone. I think that is just reinforcing the idea that this collaborative project is adding an element of excitement that wouldn't have been there.

So, I am going to briefly list some notes from our meeting so we can refer to them as needed.

We talked about justifications for why we wanted to study this issue. This included our own interest in using blogs as a part of the writing process with students, particularly our developmental writing classes. We also discussed that students are familiar with technology, but some may not be as familiar as they should be. We talked about the blog as a place for topic development and working through difficult stages of the writing process. The blog may give them a place to start focusing their topics.

We see ourselves as developmental writers because we are new to the demands of doctoral writing, as well as some of the terminology. We are confronted with difficult material, and for the first time in our education are feeling how our developmental students may feel as they approach college writing. We don't want to look unintelligent and use the terminology incorrectly, and we know we have much to learn.

We discussed our diverse backgrounds and how this has helped us generate ideas and approach the research in different ways. At the same time, this adds an element of interest, because on the surface people may say that we seem like unlikely (or even incompatible) partners due to our diverse backgrounds.

Our main goal with the paper is to write a paper collaboratively using a blog as a part of the writing process. We will analyze whether we felt it was a helpful tool for developmental writers.

We came up with some terms we need to define and theory ideas (social constructivism/pragmatism/collaborative ethnography) which will be reflected in upcoming posts.

We discussed how blogs could be used in the freewriting portion of the writing process, as well as each step along the way. We also discussed how the blog could be a place for students to not worry about the "how" of writing, but rather for them just to practice writing.

In the paper we will comment on first hand experience, what experts say, and using the blog as a partner in the writing process. We talked about the necessary format of the paper and how we can help students see the process through the blog and how it may help them further understand audience.

With today's students, the secondary discourse is technology. By integrating technology into the course, we show students we value their discourse and can help bridge this discourse into the classroom.

We talked about implications we have noticed so far for us as teachers, including breaking the paper into parts, how using the blog has forced us to "practice what I preach" and really participate in the writing process in a complete way, how it has made us more excited about collaborative learning. I also enjoyed your point about adding dimension to the writing process, and think this can be an excellent off shoot of our project. This third person/dimension gives us the opportunity to organize, record thoughts, the ability to "play" with our writing, ask questions and direct writing, and make writing more approachable.

We must keep in mind that not all students are as good with technology as we may expect. We also will need to help them learn how to use the blog effectively.