The Pitfalls of Teaching Digital Writing and Creating
Dalton’s article on digital literacy and multimodal writing was a helpful read, and I particularly benefited from the section on “pitfalls” to look out for while teaching multimodal design. Throughout this course, we have dedicated a significant amount of time to learning about and discussing multimodality in teaching ELA, but Dalton’s specific advice cover areas that I had not considered. Pitfall 1: “Avoid relying on Writing First, Multimedia Second.” Keeping in mind that a large part of my job as an ELA teacher will be to teach writing, it is a helpful reminder that writing traditionally first is not always the best way to approach an assignment. From my understanding, this does not necessarily mean that writing processes need to be ignored - there is still room for brainstorming, outlining, production, and reflection - but we must keep in mind that for many students, being expected to write out a complete product on paper prior to creating said product may hinder their creativ...
