Memo #5

As I am finishing up my research for my I-Search, I feel pretty good about where I am now with my questions about digital writing. I have talked to 3 teachers about topics such as digital writing in full, the concept of publishing, disconnect between in-service teachers and pre-service teachers, and about social media usage. I have found about 10 different articles that I have been reading and re-reading to get a better understanding of the studies that they describe. Now, I begin to work on forming some thoughts together and figuring out it all means for the bigger picture, how does digital writing help student’s overall writing. 

What surprised me was the abundance of articles and studies done that look at implementing digital writing, not only in high school classrooms, but in elementary classrooms. The thought had never occurred to me to start that young with having students use the technology that is widely available for them. Some of the studies that I looked at had elementary students posting to blogs and creative digital stories for projects. I want to mention in my paper somewhere about how teachers are starting with the younger students in having them use digital methods for writing purposes because I had never heard of it before.

I wouldn’t say that it frustrates me, but it worries me to have such a daunting task of writing an 8-10 page paper. I think I’m worried because usually I just have to start papers without having months of work and research to put into them. These worries will probably go away as soon as I put my memos together to find my common threads of information.

Some conclusions that I can draw with only one week left in my search is that I feel glad. I worked so hard with finding and completing interviews, researching, changing my focus, and researching again. It is like a sense of accomplishment where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but not fully reach it yet. There are still questions to be asked about digital writing and I know that my research probably won’t cover all of the questions that are out there. Plus, technology changes so fast that I personally can’t keep up. But I feel good about what I have found and where my thinking has led me. I just need to put it all down in words now!