Teaching Drafting Tools and Methods

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This morning my students and I were discussing strategies for drafting as they moved from the annotated bibliography to their research essay.  I demonstrated several ways of approaching drafting digitally, including web services and apps that could help them organize their information.

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One of the things I emphasize is that most people use multiple methods of drafting, both digital and text-based.  The strategies I discussed included mind-mapping, outlining, journals, task lists, and crowdsourcing.  I discussed the ways that drafting is often a multimedia enterprise, and to see their doodles not as distractions, but as their brain organizing information.

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I like to demonstrate a lot of different tools and give links to examples of ways I or others have used that tool so that students can make it applicable to their individual process.  I myself am a “task master” and like to complete projects in discrete increments, something I share with students.  However, I want them to make use of and remix lots of different types of tools–digital and print–that work for them in their writing process.

Then I take questions. 🙂

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Many thanks to Shawn Moore, who sat through my class, observed, and took the photographs.