After reading this week’s articles, I found myself to be  relieved and self-assured.  All the hours spent hunched over my computer, fingers twisted, eyes shot, in the dark of my room, transcribing the “web of meaning” in my head onto the page has not all been in vain.  I have been participating in a “unique mode of learning”!   In Janet Emig’s Writing as  a Mode of Learning, the author demonstrates “how writing corresponds to certain powerful learning strategies”, involving both left and right brain hemispheres, incorporating both emotion and logic.  Writing is a “self- rhythmed” process in which learning occurs at “one’s own pace”.  To be honest, writing has never been easy for me.  I am rarely hit with overwhelming inspiration that flows from my brain to my fingers to the page.  If writing is “self-rythmed”, the music moving me is not a well-orchestrated symphony but a slow-moving, chaotic jazz full of improvisation.  The writing style I endure is similar to the process described in “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.”  I constantly revise as I write and eventually land upon the target of my aim.  If I misspell a word while writing, the little squiggly red line underlining my mistake has to be changed before I move on.  Does anyone else feel the same?

In To Code or Not to Code, I appreciate Selber’s assertion that teachers need “to become real co-learners” in the digital age.  Rather than claim mastery of the digital classroom, teachers need to incorporate new technology into the classroom in an appropriate way in which teachers can learn from the digital skills of their students as well as teach the students themselves.