Community Clips for Written Feedback

Do you ever have students ask questions, questions, questions, when they receive a writing back?  I've always found that giving constructive feedback for my students has been a balancing act: Try to give them as much information as I can about the writing and yet not spend half an hour a paper.

Solution? Record yourself looking at a student's paper.

So in conjunction with the macros I have set up on my Word (go here if you would like to do it for yourself), I decided to try using a screen-cast, something that records my computer screen and voice, as I look over a paper.

The Idea

While you are giving feedback, however you give feedback, record the paper and your voice.  This way you can show they what is wrong and how to fix it while you are doing it.  You then make the video available to the students.  They can go over and fix their mistakes at their own speed.

This can not only save you class time by not having to spend as much time assisting individual students, but also the students can watch the video as much as they need to make the corrections.

You can do this in conjunction with how you already give feedback.

How to

Set Up

Set up a way for students to send you their written work.  You can use something as easy as email for this.  This is a perfect time to use Edmodo however.  It is a great tool and really easy to use.  You also don't have to worry about organizing things, searching through your email, or even giving away anything personal.

Get a Program

Download something to do a screen-cast.  I like CommunityClips.  It is easy, it does everything I want, and it does it for free.  There are others though, such as ScreenCast-o-Matic, though it leaves a watermark.

Record

While you look at the writing from the student, record yourself speaking the comments and how to fix it (or whatever you like to do).  Try to to have too much dead sound while you are doing it.  I try to read the paper out loud to them if I found myself silent for a time.  Community Clips (and I assume others) has a pause button, so you can take breaks or give yourself time to think.

Send back

Email or upload back to the students.  With Edmodo, this is super slick.  You can create an assignment and send it back to them really easily.  Other options would be to put on Youtube or some other share site.  The disadvantage here is that anyone can see it.

If you can think of any other good vessels of delivery, please write a comment!

Example

If you would like to set up the buttons (macros which make the grammar comments without me having to type it in), read this older post.

What would you do?

What do you think? Are you scared about the amount of work it would take? What kind of variations would you make?  Make a comment!

Pod Cast

Following the trend of the last few posts about flipping the classroom, here is a Pod Cast type recording of a lecture on process writing.

The Idea

Have students listen about the steps in writing an essay.  Have them make a study guide after to aid them in the process.  The idea is to have students teach themselves on the subject, you checking up on them to make sure they follow through.

How

Record yourself speaking on any device.  Upload to podbean.com.  Share with your students.  Come up with a way to check comprehension.

Example

Here is a website I made that would allow students to walk through the whole process online.

Here is the actual podcast.

What About You?

Have you ever thought about making a podcast?  What kind of things do you think would be useful for ESL students to listen to?

Class Blog

The Idea

Do you wish your students would write more? What about think more consciously about what they say? What about building a community of writers out of your class?  Try a classroom blog.

What to do

Make a new blog for your students to follow. Students are getting more and more techno savvy and you'd be surprised at how easy it is for them to sign up on their own. After you give them a day or two to catch up, you can pick up the stragglers.

Example

Here is an example for a reading and writing class. I try to make sure they are not only writing regularly but also making comments on what other students are say. The assignments ask them to reflect their writing and what the class is reading.

This could be a really easy thing to do after you get it set up. Once you have the prompts, they are there forever.

Other Uses

What are some other ways you think you could use a blog? Write a comment.

Writing Macros to Aid Written Feedback

The Problem

I was running into problems with printers and students. For some reason, students keep thinking that it was okay to not turn in their work on time giving the excuse that they don't have a printer, or the school printer was down. This would lead to getting the writing emailed to me. It was then on me to print out the essay. I got a little upset about it.

This lead to using a site like Edmodo so collect student essays. They send it to you this way and you don't have to get your personal email involved.  Plus, it is just really nice to have it all organized for you. This worked well but I kept running into the time issue: too much feedback. I was writing endless comments and a lot of them ended up being similar, or the same idea.

So I started making comment macros for Microsoft word. 

The Idea

So the idea is a make a comment that you use often, highlight the problem, and click a button; BAM! There is your comment already written out. 

Comments vary from "Can you think of another example?" to "Make sure the subject agrees with the verb. Example:They is...->They are...". Students are questioned about there work, mistakes pointed out, and good work is praised. This saves time as well as makes your comments consistent. Students can become more aware of the types of mistakes they make and how to fix it.

It is a little work to set up, but here is how. This set up is for Microsoft 2007 or later, though it may be easier with earlier versions.

Cheat!

If you want to download my macro script with what I already set up, here it is. Though you need to troubleshoot it and set it up. Ignore this if you don't know what I'm talking about.

What to do

1. Write your comments

It works best to get all your comments written out first so that you can just work on making the macro later. I have my comments go into two groups, content and grammar.  I also tend to have the students write two drafts of essays. I give the content feedback first and after they correct it, I give grammar feedback. I find it works well.

Here is a list of my comments (The grammar ones are mine, the content ones are borrowed/adapted from this excellent article on feedback). It may be easier to do this with this information directly in a word document.

2. Make a Macro

First, you need to "Record" a macro. What this does is save all the subsequent things you do (clicking, typing, backspaces, forward spaces, everything) until you hit the stop recording button. So first, highlight something (it can be anything, but for me, it will be the comment I want to make).

Next, you need to name your macro. Use something you will remember, otherwise you won't know what it does until you click it. Click okay.

Now you click "New Comment" and type, don't copy and paste, your comment.

When finished, go back and stop recording your macro.
Now go through and do this for each comment.

*Complicated Time Saver

If you don't want to retype each comment, you can go through and edit each comment after words. Just Name all your macros without highlighting anything. When you finished just naming macros, click "View Macros" and then Click "Edit". You then have the macro editor. Under the title of your macro copy this script:


Selection.Comments.Add Range:=Selection.Range
    Selection.TypeText Text:="The comment you wish to make."

In the macro editor then, you can actually go through and copy and paste what you want to say.

3. Create Buttons

Now right click anywhere on the top part of Word, the thing called the "ribbon". Click "Customize the Ribbon" (Or go to File, Options, Customize Ribbon).

It brings you to this window where you can then make a new "Ribbon". Call it whatever you want, but this is where you customize how you want it to work.

Create a "New Tab" by clicking on the bottom. This will be your work space for making comments.

Right Click to edit the name of the tab. I like "Proof Reading. Edit the group for the type of comments you want, e.g. "Comments", "Content Comments" and "Grammar Comments". Add new group under your tab to get these groups. This starts to get messy, you may want a separate tab for different types of comments.

Start to add your macros by:

1. Select "Macros" from the "Choose commands from"
2. Select the macro you want to add
3. Select the group you want it in
4. Click Add

I now looks a little messy and hard to pick the one you want. At this point you can rename the macro from something like "Normal.NewMacros.clear_thesis" to "Clear Thesis". When you rename something, you also can change the icon the macro is associated with. This makes it easier to use later on.

You may also like to have a command to just make a regular comment on this tab, so go back to "Choose Commands from" and click "popular" then find the comment button.

Now you have a customized tab that looks something like this:

4. Profit!

If you did all this work, all you have to do now is highlight the student work, click the button, there is your comment. Happy grading!

Improvements

What would be great would be websites with grammar lessons and exercises that students could follow up with either linked into the comments, or as a comment sheet added to it. Same thing with the content. A real example to go along with it would be great. Any thoughts? I'd love to hear.

Wiki Writing

Why Wiki?

I've found it difficult to have students work on their writing with technology because it:

A: Needs feedback

B: Is kind of lame

In class last week, we talked about collaboration tools and one of them was making a wiki. This lead to some research. The article I read focused on writing a wiki as a class. The assignment was to keep a wiki over the course of the semester and post 47 things. The study found that students who kept up with the wiki and made more edits did better on the final exam. The argument was that the students had more interest in writing and therefore were more engaged in learning about it. It was found that students were interested in what other students wrote and wrote better for their own assignments. There isn't a link between wikis and better writing, but it shows a link between interest and being a better writer.

Nakamaru, S. (2012). Investment and Return: Wiki Engagement in a "Remedial" ESL Writing Course. Journal Of Research On Technology In Education, 44(4), 273-291.

The general idea is this: Have students create an article, read and comment on other articles, revise, teacher comments, final draft.

Sites

I found Wikispaces good because it has no adds and has a bulk user creator. It also has a really good system for making comments. You can also change the permissions on the page as well. The draw backs are is that it looks kind of bland and there are no ways to change that unless you pay. It is also a little bit of work to set up users (but this gives you a good deal of control, including setting passwords.).

The other site is I tried was Wikia. The benefits are that the design has more customization and anyone who knows it exists can then contribute to the article (it sends an email when someone does.) The disadvantages are that there are lots of advertisements and no system for making comments outside of altering the actual text. Security is also an issue because anyone can write on it (makes it easy to set up though). Navigation is strange and hard to find things you wrote.

The Assignment

Create a narrative essay. The story is a personal or made up story.  Collect your stories by your country of origin. Write the essay on a wiki page, comment on other student articles, and revise work.

The wikispace page.

The wikia page. Feel free to contribute to this! Add your country by adding a page and write your narrative.

Reflection and Potential Uses

What is great about this is you can have the whole set of directions available. It is also nice because you can model what you want done in class (for instance, we commented on an essay by an old student) and have them explore on their own.

It is also really neat to see the articles and comments pop up. You'd be surprised what your students can create in a short time.

What is also neat is that students can have this for ever.

Finally, this could be an interesting way to not only do narratives, but many different types of essays, summaries, news reporting, classroom study guides, really anything. The idea is they work together to collect the parts of the whole and comment on each other's work.

Revealing Attitudes

Revealing Attitudes about Writing

Introduction

This is a little exercise that I have done on a first day of a writing class to spark conversation and get students to really let you know how they feel about writing. I got this idea after reading an old, but good, article about writing.

Goals

• Reveal student attitudes to writing
• Icebreaker
• Preview
• Journal
• Motivate

Preparation

First make a Poll Everywhere account. Make a new poll with the question "How do you feel about writing?"

You can keep it open ended or have multiple choice answers such as:

• I'd rather do something less painful like jump off a bridge.
• I'll do it, but complain bitterly because I'm bored.
• I like it okay if the topic is good.
• Why aren't we writing right now? My pen aches!

Or even hate, dislike, like, love could be answers.

A journal entry work sheet

In Class

1. Have students take the survey and see each others results. (If you don't have a computer screen/ projector, write out or hand out the instructions. You can then see the results on your phone or laptop or whatever and read them to the class)
2. Discuss answers after reading the results and find out what students like and don't like about writing.
3. Follow up with the journal entry work sheet where you discuss the following quote and then write.

"A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket." -Charles Peguy