Teachers: Technology Encourages Student Creativity, Makes Teaching Writing Easier

• By David Nagel
• 07/16/13

Are digital tools like cell phones and social networking sites undermining students' writing skills or helping to improve them?

A new survey of teachers from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that most teachers involved in the survey consider technology beneficial to writing in several ways, including creativity and personal expression (78 percent), collaboration (79 percent), and the ability to share their work with a wider audience (96 percent).

However, the news wasn't all positive. Among those surveyed, 68 percent said technology makes make students more likely "to take shortcuts and not put effort into their writing."

"These results challenge in many ways the notion that students' writing skills are being undermined by their increasing engagement with digital tools and platforms," notes Kristen Purcell, associate director for research at Pew Internet, in a statement released to coincide with the report. "Teachers do have concerns that digital tools are blurring the lines between formal and informal writing and see writing skills that need improvement, but they also see the benefit of students having more people respond to their writing and the increased opportunities for expression these digital tools offer."

The report, "The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing is Taught in Schools," was not a representative sample of teachers in general in the United States. Instead it focused on two teacher groups: those who teach Advanced Placement courses and those who have participated in the National Writing Project's Summer Institute. The survey involved 2,462 AP and NWP teachers in high school and middle school. Language arts teachers made up 36 percent of the sample, the rest math, history, science, foreign language, art, and music teachers.

Interestingly, half of all teachers surveyed indicated that technology helps make writing easier for the teacher. But among those who specifically teach English and language arts, that figure jumped to 68 percent.

"Teachers, writing teachers especially, do not view good writing and the use of digital tools as being at war with each other," said Judy Buchanan, deputy director of the National Writing Project and a co-author of the report. "When educators have opportunities to integrate new technologies into teaching and learning, they are the most optimistic about the impact of digital tools on student writing and their value in teaching the art of writing. They gave countless examples of the creative ways they use emerging digital tools to impart writing skills to today's students."

Other findings from the report included:

• A sizable minority (46 percent) said digital tools increase the likelihood of students writing too quickly and carelessly;
• 38 percent of teachers said digital tools make students less likely to use poor spelling and grammar, while 40 percent said just the opposite;
• 88 percent of teachers discuss proper citation and plagiarism with their students, and 75 percent discuss fair use and copyright with their students;
• A majority (52 percent) of AP and NWP teachers who participated in the survey said interactive whiteboards are used in their classes;
• 40 percent said their students share their work on blogs, wikis, or other types of sites;
• 36 percent said their students edit their own work using online collaboration tools (like Google Docs);
• 29 percent said their students edit each other's work using online collaboration tools;
• 78 percent indicated they have had their students create multimedia assignments in the previous academic year.

A full 94 percent of teachers surveyed continue to require some writing assignments to be completed by hand.

According to the report: "Their reasons are varied, but many teachers noted that because students are required to write by hand on standardized tests, it is a critical skill for them to have. This is particularly true for AP teachers, who must prepare students to take AP exams with pencil and paper. Other teachers say they feel students do more active thinking, synthesizing, and editing when writing by hand, and writing by hand discourages any temptation to copy and paste others' work."

Additional details, including a copy of the complete report, methodology, and focus group results, are available on the Pew Internet & American Life Project's site.

About the Author

David Nagel is the executive producer for 1105 Media's online K-12 and higher education publications and electronic newsletters. He can be reached at [email protected]. He can now be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/THEJournalDave (K-12) or http://twitter.com/CampusTechDave (higher education). You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=10390192.



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A polygon can be defined (as illustrated above) as a geometric object "consisting of a number of points (called vertices) and an equal number of line segments (called sides), namely a cyclically ordered set of points in a plane, with no three successive points collinear, together with the line segments joining consecutive pairs of the points. In other words, a polygon is closed broken line lying in a plane" (Coxeter and Greitzer 1967, p. 51).

For this weekly I Was trying to find the most complicated polygons out there.  This picture demonstrates quite a few.  The polygons in this picture don't even look they would be a polygon but research shows they are.  when it comes to numbers of sides, and measures of angles.

There is unfortunately substantial disagreement over the definition of a polygon. Other sources commonly define a polygon (in the sense illustrated above) as a "closed plane figure with straight edges" (Gellert et al. 1989, p. 162), "a closed plane figure bounded by straight line segments as its sides" (Bronshtein et al. 2003, p. 137), or "a closed plane figure bounded by three or more line segments that terminate in pairs at the same number of vertices, and do not intersect other than at their vertices" (Borowski and Borwein 2005, p. 573). These definitions all imply that a polygon is a set of line segments plus the region they enclose, though they never define precisely what is meant by "closed plane figure" and universally depict polygons as a closed broken black lines with no shading of the interiors.

so what would u call these ?

Polygons are confusing because of their definitions but also because of their many possibilities.  I kind of feel like some definitions of polygons should be changed or altered to make things more clear. 

For my weekly I had me friend Parker also make a glyph.  I helped him make it, and it actually turns out we have a few similar interests :)

When i took a look at the rectangle art we did in class a little while ago, I decided to go and take a look at some Triangle art online and found it really amazing to see that just like with rectangles and squares, you can use just simple triangles to make amazing art as well.  Here are some pieces of triangle art i found that caught my eye.

I really liked this one because i loved to see how there was a mix of sizes and different shades, and then how it fades into darkness as you move right.

This one i really liked too because i loved how it uses all different triangles to make a star.  Even though some parts don't look like triangles, you have to take a step back and look out farther and then you can see the triangle.

When it comes to triangle art, you can make some of the craziest pieces of work just by using triangles.  But i also like the way math can be tied into it.  One, you using triangles to make more profound shapes, so your using some geometry. Two the way you place triangles in your art usually tends to be in a patterned set up, once again using patterns which is math.  Its actually really cool. And I love to think about it and how that works!  


My reading plan for my book is to read a chapter each day of class and that should have me finished with the book by the Friday before thanksgiving. 

Mindset is a simple idea discovered by psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success, a simple idea that makes all the difference.  


In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.          cite:  http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/ 

In this picture I like what it illustrating with a growth mindset.  With a fixed mindset, you are focused on what u can do now, and that is where your mind stays thinking it impossible and that you are unable to get better than what you already are at something.  But with a growth Mindset you can make the the impossible possible, and the unable able.  You have a want to improve what you can already do.  And with this mindset, you can do just that.  When you have the desire to learn and get better, you will.   If you think you can't get better than you wont.  

I love thinking about that last sentence because it is so true.  Usually the people who have had great success have had a growth mindset because they desired to learn more and to improve.

The growth mindset, in my opinion should be demonstrated in the classroom at early ages, giving the students the opportunity to be creative with their minds and strive to learn more.  The growth mindset is what needs to be encouraged, not halted and cut off, which is exactly what some schools and teachers do, some even without knowing what they are doing.  They cut off the head of learning and kids, as they get older know what they were taught and believe that is all they need to know.  They lose the desire to go out and try to learn more and to improve themselves.  Growth mindset should be the only mindset.

problem solving - the area of cognitive psychology that studies the processes involved in solving problems


  For my second weekly blog, I went with Problem solving and what is, and what it is to everybody.  Problem solving is a really handy skill to have and there are many reasons of why it is useful.  There are more than one ways to problem solve and many handy tricks you can use.  Problem solving no matter how you look at it is problem solving, as long as you can solve the problem.  

This picture (diagram), is a good demonstration of a typical, but also great way of problem solving.  You first understand the problem and know what your dealing with, for example the surrounding details of the problem or "the bugs".  Then you make a plan, whether you write it down, think about it hard, or brainstorm the plan, you make a plan around your problem and then you execute your plan.  Your first plan may even solve the problem.  That is why you check your solution after you through your plan and if its not right you go back to your plan and either tweak it a little or go all the way back to understanding the problem.  That way you can can try to work out another plan. 

Problem solving can be used to help with a lot of different things including working through issues, overcoming challenges, maintaining challenges, gaining control, or even when your feeling down or frustrated about issues.

Lets face it, problems are a pain in the rear, when things are going wrong, it can really make you feel down, depressed, and like your never going to be able to work things out.  But problem solving helps to fight that.  That's because when you are willing and able to solve a problem, you look at the problems in a whole other way.  You are now focusing on what you can do, instead of the things that are out of your control.   Not every problem is completely solvable though. There are a lot where there is very little you can do.  Even with harder problems, you should still make an effort and take a shot at them, that way at the very least you can feel satisfied that you have done what you can.  

Problem solving is key to any problem in your life, whether its school related, work related, self related, etc.  The big key to problem solving though is to focus on solutions to the problem and not the problem itself.  If you do that you have a better attitude about the problem and you have a better happier feeling for yourself! 

For my first Blog of weekly work i decided to use pictures i took where i noticed patterns in everyday things.  It was actually really cool to see how almost everything around us has specific patterns.  Take 1967 chevy Impala for example the patterns are everywhere on it, in the grill, the rims in where the bolts are placed so perfectly in order and perfectly spaced.  Its truly a piece of art. 

This picture is my brother and me at cedar point a few years ago.  Both of our shirts u can clearly see patterns, mine being checkered and plaid, while my brothers being simply a stripe or two.  Also in the scenery around us, just the ride you can see in front of us is built from patterns, having all the parts all being placed and built in a pattern like rhythm. 

This is my family at our farm this past year just hanging out being funny.  But each and every piece of all our clothing contains patterns of different colors, design, and texture.  In this picture i noticed the barn behind us has a pattern in just the way the wood is placed.  As you can see it makes a striped background for the picture basically.

This is the DEVOS place dowtown Grand Rapids.  Even in the struct of buildings we can see that in how they are put together, we find many different patterns throughout the entire building!!

As you can see, we can find patterns everywhere we go, and everywhere in the world around us.  Patterns essential in almost everything we know and see.  Its not something one would normally think about, but if you just take the time to look, you can see Our world is basically of patterns and all of them can be looked mathematically in how they are made, using formulas to find the next pieces of set patterns, etc!!!  Its crazy!