Final Blog

I've learned a lot about the teaching of writing this semester, and a lot just about how we learn. While I thought Gee's book kind of rambled on about the games he liked to play, he made a lot of interesting valid points. I never took the time to think about how video games helped kids learn, but it is apparent from Gee's writing that they really do. I think our goal as future or existing teachers should be to find a way to bring kids enthusiasm about video games into the classroom. We need to understand that it is not a challenge that kids are afraid of, and rebel against.
All the readings on the teaching of writing gave us a lot to think about when planning our own lessons, and taught us what elements are important in a good writing program. I think the key points that I will take with me into my own classroom are the ideas of giving a choice to students to allow them to make personal connections to their writing. And that writing should be a social activity, students will become better writers by being allowed to discuss their ideas, and from sharing thier writing with others. As teachers we also become better teachers of writing by being writers ourselves. It is important that we experiecne the obstacles and victories of writing with our students. Even as adults we could appreciate that fact that when we were asked to do something new (the digital document) our teacher was right there with us, experiencing a lot of the same challenges, which also made more sympathetic and better able to help and answer questions because he had suffered the same problems.
Harvey's book was also really helpful in seeing the different ways to think about writing. It does not always have to be just a research paper, or a fictional story. Using the book and what we learned from the readings helped make our writing assingnment sequence really good experience for the future.
Of course not all the readings were great, and i didn't necesarily agree with them all, but i did learn a lot about what to think about when teaching writing, and the ways we learn how to write.