Chapter 4, supporting writing with Technology, is about how technological tools can be used to support both individual and collaborative writing. One of the tools discussed in the chapter was concept maps. Fortunately I have had an opportunity to work with digital concept maps this semester already. The program we used was called CMAP and was surprisingly easy to use to create a concept map with. I think I will definitely use this type of technology in my classroom to promote writing because concept maps can help students to organize their information both individually and collaboratively in an easy to see kind of way.
A topic I thought was interesting in the chapter was how technology can support creative writing. I have seen how the promise of publishing has helped to motivate students to write and I can only imagine how something such as a class website where everyone can be published would help in encouraging students to want to expand their creative writing minds. I love the idea of this and definitely plan on using it in my classroom for any subject that I end of teaching because students definitely deserve to feel that their work is more than just words on a page. I would of course have to take into account the type of student that would not want their work published and although I would try and persuade them to share their work with the world I certainly would not want to do something that they do not want me to do since it is their work after all. I think a way to overcome this type of resistance would be to begin the publishing by selecting a piece that was written by a student that does want to be published. Hopefully the excitement that this student brings to the idea of being published would help persuade others to want to be as well. Making publishing a reward for hard work could also be a way to help intrinsically motivate students as well.
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