- The paper by discussing the changing process of education and how technology is being integrated into the curriculum. Your thesis states, "educators should be able to embrace their role in obtaining and displaying an ownership in the literacy of digital technology", I see that you are writing toward teachers of the k-12 education. By being able to relate your thesis to k-12 educators, you've established your argument while identifying the audience.
- Following the thesis, I noticed that you transition between your paragraphs neatly. For example, you end your 5th paragraph by saying, "Looking towards local schools in the Milwaukee area, there is an ability to see that schools have taken this community approach by implementing certain goals in an attempt to modernize their pedagogical structure",
- you then begin the following paragraph by saying, "West Milwaukee Middle School is a modern school that allows students to use cellphones, tablets, and laptops in class as long as they are used for academic purposes". You set your transition up nicely so your k-12 teaching audience can simply follow with relevant an local examples.
- I noticed that you give the majority of your paper as an onlooker on the usage of digital literacy for teachers. Not until the 7th paragraph do you draw on your own experiences with teaching. This device works well because during the first few pages of your paper, you give your audience factual evidence. Then after the facts are presented, you strengthen your argument through personal experience. Using this device allows you to establish trust with your reader, and if you gave personal experience earlier on in your paper, your audience may have not taken it seriously.
- You also use grammar and word choice that fits your audience. The people within with the education field will understand what Pedagogical Digital Literacy is, and what your paper may be about, before they even read the entire thing.
- You use your sources to your advantage, and own your argument. Your paper doesn't feel like a patch quilt of quotes. When a quote is used, you usually go into detail, or have a purpose for the source in order to help drive your argument. The set up for the quote, "...it is not only about what technology can do, but also, and perhaps more importantly, what technology can do for teachers"(Chen 473). This quote was nicely placed towards the end of your paper, and seems to sum up the argument that your are trying to make.
- You follow the quote by saying, "By having a coherent relationship with our digital surroundings, teachers will have the ability to speak the technological language that many of our students already know". This sentence dose a fine job of reminding the audience why they are reading the piece, and seeing that it's the last sentence before your conclusion, nicely wraps up the ideas for the body of your paper.
- They look super. Perfect MLA, if I do say so myself.
- You have three separate drafts that conscience decisions and revisions were made for your essay. Your first draft begins by saying, "Students, parents, an educators, we have come to a point where the classroom that once was, is no more". Clearly, in this early stage, you were still developing your audience, and was unsure who to direct your topic towards.
- On essay revision 2, you start to narrow down your audience by beginning with saying, "Educators, and those who plan on educating, we have come to a point where the classroom that once was, is no more". You are getting closer in defining your audience, but are still torn between two different classes of people in the education field.
- On essay revision 3, you being your essay by saying, "Adapting a functional classroom at the mercy of technological advance will most certainly be a topic of debate and controversy". This opener narrows down the topic of your paper, but feels flowery, needless to say, on your final draft, you condensed this sentence and cut out the fluff.
- On your final draft, your opening sentence is, "Adapting a functional use of digital technology within the modern classroom is a topic of debate and controversy". By starting your paper out like this, you set up your issue, and then lead into talking about your audience by saying, "a pedagogical shift is occurring within the k-12 classroom, and as educators, there should be an adaptive understanding of the evolving word that surrounds us". Within your first 2 sentence of your final draft, you have set up your issue, and established your audience.
- I like that your first draft wasn't that academic, then the second draft tried to be more academic. This then led to your third draft that contained flowery language, but through the peer review of your classmates, you cut it down for your final draft. All terminology and words are acceptable for the audience your are writing for.
The writer took risks in the writing. (If you want this to be part of your own personal rubric, let me know what risk you want to take in your writing—such as trying a new style—in order that we can help you with it.)
Extra credit criterion:
The writer uses "bubbler" appropriately in the paper.
- In paragraph 7, while talking about your teacher observation, you correctly used bubbler while talking about your teaching duties.
