XplanaZine

Well, it is Friday night, and over the weekend many of my students will be writing introductions to their website Storybook Projects. Some of them will be re-writing the introduction that they first wrote for the project eight weeks ago. Other students will be largely starting from scratch, since their projects have sometimes turned out very differently than expected. Let’s say that those students are writing their re-introductions this weekend. In any case, all of the students will be in the wonderful land of RE - revising, rewriting, reflecting. And for me: it’s so rewarding!
Writing for the web finally makes rewriting a natural and easy part of the writing process. The students themselves are very aware of this, too - here are some emailed comments that they sent in this week about what it feels like to be going back to what they wrote eight weeks ago and writing it again:

The revised intro for my Storybook is up. This has been such an interesting semester; I barely remember writing the original intro and in some ways it sounds like a different project to me now . . .
And that is exactly the idea! By publishing their writing on the web and re-examining it over the course of the semester, the students can see the path they have followed - where they began, and where they have ended up. This is especially valuable for students who struggle at first, given that there are so many majors where writing has not been an important part of their coursework. These students can take a few missteps as they get started, but given time, they find their way. This comment comes from a student who really struggled at first, and then hit his stride in the third week of the project:

I’m glad you liked the stories and you are SO right. Since I had the freedom to do and go where I wanted plus the weeks to move with it, the end result for me was much better. I guess its like when a parent makes a kid buy something of their own and put time into it, they take better care of it and treasure it more than if it was just given to them.
Since the web makes it so easy, many of the students spontaneously rewrite their stories, modifying and improving them just to get it right, not for the sake of their grade. Other students do some much more radical rewriting, like when they suddenly “see” how they can tie their writing together from week to week:

I borrowed an idea from X’s Storybook and made each story’s re-telling and commentary two different, linked pages. I think it has a nice visual effect for the reader - it’s not one long mass of text like my stories tend to be and the analysis is attached but distinct. My slightly bigger and more questionable change is the idea of a frame narrative. I have developed a short, somewhat odd frame narrative (complete with its own commentary/explanation/apology) in an attempt to tie all of the stories together in a strangely organic kind of way. Please take a look at this and see if you think it’ll work. I am completely open to the suggestion that I have cracked and must be stopped before I take everyone else down with me . . .
Now of course the student had not cracked! The frametale was a great addition to his project, although he did not discover this until he had been working on the project for several weeks. And as he explains here, seeing the other students’ work helped him to revise and expand his own writing repertoire.
By writing in this kind of environment, the students are free to experiment, to try different things, and to never get stuck in a writing rut. And, sad to say, students can get stuck in a writing rut that might last not just for a semester but for years. Right from the beginning of this semester, I found myself consistently impressed by the great writing that one student was doing, so I wrote to ask her if she wrote for pleasure outside of class, given her skill and versatility. And here is what she wrote back:

to tell you the truth for quite some time i’ve thought my writing is barely worth mentioning, especially my creative writing. in high school some of my teachers noticed my writing and praised me for it, but towards graduation time i wrote an essay about myself and it was really bad to say the least, and my latin teacher really criticized it. ever since that time i hold very little pride in what i write.
Staggering. Stuck in a rut about her writing for the four years since she finished high school! I am hoping very much that this semester has helped this student to get “unstuck” since she is a fine writer, and has made a big impression on other students in the class. For example, one of the other students spontaneously wrote to tell me how much she liked this particular student’s work:

I love X’s project the most! :o) Don’t worry I wasn’t judgmental on the discussion board though with the other students. But it is so neat! And her storytelling style is so fun!
Having an audience. Never getting stuck. Writing and rewriting. Everybody has an opportunity to be proud of their writing this way.
Meanwhile, I have also received many notes this week like the following:

laura…can i get an extension til tomorrow for my questions…i am in term paper hell!!
There are so many classes where the writing assignment is postponed until the end of the semester where there is of course no possibility for a rewrite. In fact, it is by far the most common model adopted by college teachers. It’s not that the teachers don’t understand how important re-writing is - but they have not had a practical and natural way to encourage student rewriting all semester long. When teaching in the traditional classroom, I struggled and struggled with this problem, never finding a good solution. But the web solved this problem for me; I cannot imagine how - or why - someone would try to teach writing without it.