On the last trip to The Boys and Girls Club, Sherzel and I were able to help our student get familiar with Creative Commoms, Audacity, and Photo Stage. Since Sherzel used these for her digital story, she was able to help the student a bit more than I could. I must admit that it was a learning experience for me as well. We also helped our student record herself saying something just so she could get use to hearing her own voice when she actually went ahead to record her script. I think our student felt a bit at ease about finding pictures for her story. After showing her how to find pictures, music, and using photo stage and audacity, we allowed our student to explore on her own, and when she had questions, Sherzel and I would help her with an answer.
I think that a lot of the techniques we used with our student, especially on this last visit, can help when consulting with writers on their text. It is a great idea to help writers realize how they can improve their writing by pointing out a few things to them, and then allowing them to use the guidance they received from consultants to pin point other aspects of their writing that they should or would like to improve on. This is especially important when it comes to grammatical errors, because the Writing Center is not a "grammar shop. It focuses more on making better writers.
That session was a good way for us to improvise (as we did not plan on her not bringing her script) and is an example of situations we may face as writing consultants (students who are unprepared). While I did enjoy helping her learn to use the software, I did not feel like it was very productive because we still have not seen her script and have no idea what she has written. We can only hope for the best for her.
ReplyDelete