Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-century Classroom

How has the teaching of writing changed in the 21st century? In this innovative guide, real teachers share their stories, successful practices, and vivid examples of their students’ creative and expository writing from online and multimedia projects, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, electronic poetry, and more. The book also addresses assessment: How can teachers navigate the reductive definitions of writing in current national and statewide testing? What are teachers’ goals for their students’ learning―and how have they changed in the past 20 years? What is “the new writing”? How do digital writers revise and publish? What are the implications for the future of writing instruction?

The contributing authors are teachers from public, independent, rural, urban, and suburban schools. Whether writing instructors embrace digital literacy now or see the inevitable future ahead, this groundbreaking book (appropriate for the elementary through college level) will both instruct and inspire.

Anne Herrington, Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Site Director, Western Massachusetts Writing Project,; Kevin Hodgson, Sixth Grade Teacher at the William Norris Elementary School, Southampton, MA, and Technology Liaison for Western Massachusetts Writing Project; and Charles Moran, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and former Site Director, Western Massachusetts Writing Project.