For this week, I explored an online writing tool that I heard about through a different class. This website, called "novlet", can be found at http://www.novlet.com/.
The site is intended to allow people to build off of each other's stories, branching off at any point in the story that they would like to change. If you have ever played the game where one person begins a story then passes it along for another person to continue, it is very similar to that.
The good: This is a great way to foster motivation for writing! This is an entertaining way to change the course of stories and practice writing skills. It can also motivate students to read more than they usually might because they need to read the story and it's branches to figure out where they want to add their own pieces.
The bad: While this is a cool tool to use, it is not monitored. There are sections of the website that would not be appropriate for school aged students and there is no way, as far as I can tell, for teachers to censor the website. The tone of the website is also very relaxed, therefore the writing style that it elicits is also very relaxed, also with poor grammar and language usage.
The ugly: The website itself is also very difficult to navigate. Searching for the story that you are interested in becomes difficult and it is easily frustrating.
All in all, I would not use this tool in a classroom, especially with younger students. I may suggest it to older students who are interested in writing as an extracurricular activity.
You could always make certain requirements about grammar and the like. Another option is remind them that this would be the drafting stage of the writing process; the technical stuff doesn’t matter at this point but would and should be revisited later.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you emphasized younger students got me brainstorming on how you could use it for older students, say high schoolers. Creative writing should still be encouraged at all ages. Perhaps this activity seems silly after a certain age but I remember my teachers doing what they admitted were “childish” activities and we ended up loving them. For example, (unrelated to technology) my English teacher had us write an anonymous positive note to each of our classmates as a community encouragement type thing and we loved it! Granted, this kind of thing only happened once in a while and was carried out like a free day and treat.
Anyway, I was wondering about the possibility of using it as a way to show high schoolers the importance of writing argumentative essays with the points in a logical order and how to transition between them. When one writes for himself, he already knows what he is talking about, but perhaps students will see that it is easy to be confusing and lack direction when they have to add to an argumentative essay written by others. I’m not sure about the realistic application of this, but it’s just an idea.
(I like you’re categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly, haha)