1. Gathering Voices Tracy Mendham’s Writing-to-Learn Online Assignment Calderwood Writing Initiative at Franklin Pierce August 16, 2007

2. Mission

3. Sometimes We’re Afraid to Write

4. But Everyone Wants to Be Heard

5. Technology Should be a Bridge…

6. …not a Locked Door

7. Context

8. College Writing I Keene GPS campus An unwired classroom No on-site tech support No money

9. I Need an Early Informal Assignment That Will: Break the ice Encourage pre-writing Generate topic ideas Build community Enhance student confidence

10. How to Do it?

11. “Technology” is Whatever Was Invented After You Were Born My GPS students may not have computers at home, or Internet access except on our commuter campus

12. How Can I Use High Tech? in the background facilitate and showcase student ideas

13. Everyone Has a Phone (almost)

14. Blogger Lets Me Build a Blog An extension of the classroom for students who want to wander there A place for me to store information A window out of the classroom to the world of information A window into the classroom for colleagues, future students, others

15. Students Can View Links and Announcements But no one is required to use it

16. I Set Up a Channel on Gabcast

17. It’s a Workspace for Me; No One Else Need Go There

18. I Give Students a Handout and Ask Them to Call In Their Messages

19. I Go to Gabcast/Manage Episodes

20. From Gabcast

21. I Post Episodes to Blogger (That Part Takes Too Long…)

22. Students Can Hear Each Other’s Voices by going to the blog on the weekend or waiting for class on Monday

23. I Listen to the Messages So I can comment on them in class

24. I Save the Episodes to a Folder on my Computer

25. I Burn Them on a CD (iTunes Makes It Easy) To play in class or loan to students who can’t listen online

26. Bonus Features

27. If I Have Time for a Big Project I Use Audacity to Paste Together the Episodes with Background Music

28. The Audacity Compilation Can Be Listened to As One Track In Future Classes Or used to share my work with colleagues

29. This Will Test the Tech Mid-semester and end-of-semester I can have students use voice messaging to complete journal assignments when I have their physical journals. This initial assignment will be a way to test the feasibility of the technology.

30. Stay Tuned I invite you to visit my work this semester at…

31. Bigger Classroom http://biggerclassroom.blogspot.com

32. Tracy’s Office http://itw101.blogspot.com

33. My Academic Website http://academics.keene.edu/tmendham/

34. End