The purpose of this study was to assess the experiences of 1st-year college composition writing students in a synchronous online remote learning environment. The researcher, through this qualitative study, used a case study design to examine the quality of the learning experiences of the participants. A total of 14 participants in a teacher…

In order to understand the culture of the physical, virtual, and blended spheres that adolescents inhabit, we build on Gee's concept of affinity spaces. Drawing on our ethnographic research of adolescent literacies related to The Hunger Games novels, the Neopets online game, and The Sims videogames, this article explores the nature of…

A middle school language arts teacher reflects on his experience in utilizing a school-housed online social network to create avenues for authentic audience, purpose, and response to student writing. With many technology proponents advocating a 21st century education, the fact that interacting with the Web 2.0 environment is essentially a reading…

This study investigated English-language writing instruction in Jordan at three levels, namely primary and secondary state schools, a private school, and a state university. To address this issue, the researchers used tape-recorded interviews and class observations as primary tools of collecting data for the study. It turned out that a host of…

Improving university students' writing skills is always a challenge. In a third-year French composition course, the researchers introduced the use of public Internet discussion forums to see if that would help achieve the argumentative writing skills goals that were set for this study. The results show that participation in the forums had a…

This installation is a personal and cathartic engagement with my initial inability to cope with my daughter's cancer. It details events that began in August of 2008 and concluded, in a sense, in February of 2009. I offer it with hopes of helping digitally-oriented rhetoric and composition scholars "determin[e] a should for a we" (Patricia Sullivan…

As the culmination of a two-year long Internet ethnographic study of three separate sites, I use examples of women and minorities fighting against discrimination online to explore the power structures inherent to networks and how these might affect classroom practice. I will show how our ordinary assumptions in rhetoric and composition as well as…

This mixed-methods study looks at patterns of emoticon usage in adult, ESL student writing. Data are drawn from 13 students and their participation in online discussion forums designed to supplement a traditional ESL writing course. The study conceptualizes computer mediated communication as a hybridized and emergent form which utilizes features…

Writing, for adolescents who live in an age of digital communication, has taken on new importance and plays a prominent role in the way they socialize, share information, and structure communication. New literacies expand the literacy realm by considering the skills needed to function using media other than the printed page. Internet resources can…

This paper draws upon data from a research project, undertaken in 2 Year 6 classrooms during the 2006 World Cup, to analyse how children used complex sentence structures in their writing on a football web-log. We explore how the confluence of a temporary, popular, global event and an online forum for communication created a moment of linguistic…

Because digital language represents such a large part of the primary discourse of today's adolescents, it is not surprising that the style of electronic communication is "seeping into their schoolwork." According to a recent study published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in partnership with the College Board's National Commission…

It's been almost 40 years since the teaching of writing in schools had its last major shift, a move to an emphasis on the "writing process," which still holds sway in most classrooms today. But with the advent of Web-based social networking tools like blogs and wikis, YouTube and Facebook, it may be that the next revision of writing pedagogy is…

An innovative, practical guide for middle and high school teachers, this book is packed with specific ways that technology can help serve the goals of effective writing instruction. It provides ready-to-implement strategies for teaching students to compose and edit written work electronically; conduct Internet inquiry; create blogs, websites, and…

As proposed by social constructive theorists, meaningful learning and individual development were achieved through social interaction. To foster social interaction among students, this study formed an online learning community in which they played multiple roles as writers, editors and commentators. In playing different roles, they read peers'…

Weblogs--personal online, web-based publications--have exploded on the internet scene in recent years. They are among the technologies indicating changes in the way information is created, managed, and exchanged. This study examined the use of a blog in an intermediate level Spanish class and its effect upon students. Could blogging provide an…