#393 – Tech in the Writing Process: Revision

#393 — Tech in the Writing Process: Pre-Writing, Revision

AVID Open Access
13 min

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today’s episode is tech in the writing process: revision. Many people use the words revising, editing, and polishing interchangeably when describing the writing process, but they’re distinctly different tasks for our purpose. We’ll think of revising as the process of changing and improving your content, organization, and coherence. When we examine polishing, we’ll address that in terms of editing mechanics, spelling, typos, and format.

It makes sense to revise before polishing. After all, the content and message are the most important parts of any writing project. During this step of revising, you’ll be moving ideas around, adding new information, deleting parts, and changing how you’ve worded different sections. Because of this focus, you won’t need a lot of different digital tools, but the ones that you do use will be invaluable. Let’s start with our main revision tools. So cut, copy, and paste would be right at the top of my list.

These tools are the mainstay of revision, and they offer one of the greatest benefits of using a digital tool to write. Removing, adding, or moving things around is nearly effortless with these functions. They allow you to quickly try out different phrasing options or a different sequence of ideas.

Keyboard shortcuts can make this process even quicker and easier than using the toolbar buttons. On a PC or Chromebook, you’ll use the Control key, while on the Mac, you’ll use the Command key. So for instance, Control or Command C is copy, Control or Command X, cut, Control or Command V to paste. Then, of course, you can highlight, click and hold, and then drag and drop something to move it as well.

Undo redo is another very common but powerful tool, and it’s probably one of the favorite tools for most writers. Hit that back undo arrow to reverse your latest keystrokes. If you decide that you liked your revision better, simply hit the forward Redo button.

Simple and powerful, version history is another tool you can take advantage of. Version History lets you review and recover ideas from previous drafts. If you’re collaborating with others, Version History often lets you see who made what edits. Google Docs lets you name each version, and you can find this feature under the File menu. Microsoft Word 365 has a revision history under the File and Info menu and allows you to open a previous version in another window—very handy.

And then there’s Track Changes. This feature is especially useful if you’re having someone else give you feedback. Any changes that they make are tracked so you can undo them if you don’t want to accept their suggestion. Microsoft Word offers this feature under the Review tab. In Google Docs, you’ll need to use either the Version History or share the document in Suggesting mode, and that leads us to Suggesting mode. In this mode, changes appear as suggestions in the margin.

This is another great feature for facilitating peer revision; the writer can choose to accept or decline these suggestions.

All right, we’ve already been hinting at this, but let’s look specifically at some peer and collaborative feedback tools. When revising your writing, it’s very beneficial to get insight from others. Oftentimes, as writers, we can get tunnel vision and not see beyond our initial ideas. We might miss our blind spots or simply lack the content knowledge needed to make necessary changes and improvements to our writing. There are several digital tools and settings that can make collaborative efforts much more efficient and effective. The first one is a very well-known feature, and that’s to share documents. Both Microsoft 365 and Google Docs allow you to share your document with others. You can choose to allow others to view or edit the document.

Google Docs also offers a suggesting mode where peer changes become suggestions that can be accepted or declined, as well as a comment mode where editors can highlight text and add comments in the margin. Even when a document is in full editing mode, editors can access shortcuts by hovering their cursor over the left edge of the digital page. That action will reveal a pop-up menu with three options: add comment, add emoji reaction, and suggest edits. These convenient shortcuts make the feedback process even more effortless.

The next option is a paid online tool called Peergrade that allows students to give and receive peer feedback on writing assignments. However, if you don’t want to pay for it, you can take advantage of their free 30-day trial. Students upload their work anonymously, critique another student’s work, and the teacher can review the analytics on the teacher dashboard.

The third option is PDF markup.

If you want to emulate traditional pen and paper markup, you can utilize several PDF annotation tools. Both Google Docs and Microsoft Word documents can be saved or downloaded as PDF files, which can be used with either Kami or DocHub. Both Kami and DocHub are freemium products that require a subscription for access to the premium features and document limits, but both also offer a robust free version.

Another alternative is to use Microsoft OneNote. If you have access to that tool, notebooks can be shared, and you can insert your writing into the notebook and mark it up there, either as a PDF or by copy and pasting your text into the notebook.

As most of us are aware, not everyone is equally skilled at providing positive, constructive feedback. It’s challenging, and it’s a skill that must be learned and practiced. Therefore, during peer feedback, it’s helpful to provide scaffolds and frameworks that help guide your students through this process.

Here are a few strategies you can use.

One is to provide a checklist or rubric. To provide quality feedback, students need to know what the criteria is upon which the writing will be evaluated. With a checklist or rubric, students can check for specific areas of writing and provide more targeted feedback. This is also a critical tool for targeted self-evaluation.

A second idea is to suggest an editing key. You might want to provide specific editing markups for students to use. For instance, you might suggest having a highlighter color-coding system:

• Yellow could be: “This part is confusing or unclear to me.”
• Green could be: “This is fantastic. Go.”
• Blue could be: “Should this be moved to another location?”
• Pink might be: “This idea needs to be supported with more detail.”
• And purple: “Should this part be omitted?”

A third scaffold or support is to encourage comments.

The comments feature allows you to give more specific feedback. Even if you use a color-coding system, comments can provide additional context and clarity to those markups. To facilitate this, you might choose to provide a digital document with a series of common questions, such as: “Does this fit better somewhere else?” or “Can you expand on this or add an example?” Students could then copy and paste from that reference document into the comments of their peer work. This would give them targeted revisions to look for and well-worded feedback phrases to use. As students get more comfortable leaving comments, the scaffold could be removed.

And fourth, you could have students provide video or audio feedback. Sometimes the subtleties of a message get lost when that message is only shared as text. To make feedback faster and to make that feedback more personal and understandable, consider having students share via video or audio recordings.

Screencasting programs such as Loom or Screencastify are simple to use and can be shared with a simple link. A big benefit of screencasting is that peer editors can show the paper while they are offering suggestions and feedback. This makes the feedback clearer and more meaningful.

Audio feedback is also powerful. Google Chrome extensions like Talk and Comment or Mote can help to streamline the audio sharing. Paste the link into the comment and the media player appears for quick and easy access to the audio note.

Another option to assist students in the revision process is to use generative AI. You’ll need to decide at what point in a student’s writing development…

…this makes sense, but it’s become a highly used tool and strategy with professional writers and will eventually be a skill our students will need to learn. For this strategy, students could either upload or copy-paste their writing into a generative AI chatbot and ask targeted questions about how the writing could be improved, like they would do with a peer editor.

Of course, the better that students understand exactly what constitutes quality writing, the better job they’ll do writing their prompts to the chatbot. Examples of questions that they might ask include: “What arguments am I overlooking?” or “What arguments need stronger support or better evidence?” You could even ask the chatbot itself for help. In fact, I did just that by asking ChatGPT what questions I should ask ChatGPT to provide effective and meaningful revision feedback to my writing.

Here are a few of ChatGPT’s responses, and they’re pretty good.

In the area of content and clarity: “Where does the writing feel confusing or unclear?” For organization: “Does the structure make sense, or are there any sections that feel out of place?” For style and tone: “Does the tone fit the audience and the purpose I’ve chosen?” For evidence and support, I might ask: “Are there any claims that need more support or explanation?” Or I could ask for specific feedback in other areas, such as: “Where can I cut down redundancy?”

When using a chatbot with any of these prompts, be sure to include the purpose of the piece of your writing and the audience that you’re directing it to. In fact, whenever asking generative AI for input, it can be helpful to begin the chatbot session by giving the AI a role, some of that important writing context, and a specific task, such as the questions I mentioned earlier. For instance, you might type something like this:

“You are an expert at providing writing feedback to high school students. You understand how to nudge students to improve their work without doing the revision for them. You point out areas that could be improved and offer probing questions for consideration. Do not rewrite the student’s work for them, but act as a peer editor providing expert feedback. This writing assignment is an argumentative essay with a strong focus on providing supporting evidence to back up the writer’s position. Provide feedback specifically about parts of the paper where support evidence could be strengthened. Here is the writing to review,” and then you’d paste in the document.

When students are just starting out using chatbots, you could actually provide them with a prompt like this to copy and paste into their own chatbot.

Or you could set up a custom chatbot using a tool like School AI. Custom chatbots are a great way to retain some control over the chatbot experience while still allowing students to benefit from the interaction itself.

Overall, the revision process is a challenging mental exercise. It’s tough. During this stage, we are literally revisioning our work. We’re attempting to look at it with fresh eyes in an objective way in order to rethink our line of reasoning, improve our organization, and strengthen our supporting information. A digital workspace with relevant revision tools should not do the work for us, but if used well, that workspace and those tools should make the work a lot easier and more efficient.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit AVID Open Access.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection, “Power Up and Enhance the Writing Process with Technology.”

And of course, be sure to join Rena Winston and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening, take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.