May 22, 2021
11:00 AM EST/10:00 AM CST/9:00 AM MST/8:00 PST
Embedded Files
Ahead of the Code
Inquiries into Teaching Writing with Writing Assistance Tools
Welcome to Ahead of the Code's day of online learning and sharing. We are so glad you came.
At this site, you will find everything you need to participate in our day of conversation and sharing. All our sessions will be on Zoom, either in the main room or in breakout rooms. On the day of the conference, we will use an all-conference Google Doc as a hub for getting around and finding links.
On this site, find an overview of the schedule with session descriptions as well as background about the presenters. On the day of the conference, you will be able to access the conference Zoom link, Google Doc, and Feedback/Reflection tool. The boxes below will take you where you need to go.
Keep reading for background about Ahead of the Code and how you can participate in the future.
About the conference day
This day of sharing and learning grew out of inquiries by teachers in the National Writing Project into the potential, if any, for writing assistance tools in the writing classroom. By writing assistance tools, or WATs, we mean all those programs powered by technologies like AI, natural language processing, or machine learning: Grammarly, Revision Assistant, editing tools built into Google Docs or Word, etc.
Despite the challenges and the atypical nature of teaching last year, we believe we learned a few things and generated some interesting questions about these tools. Today, we would like to share with you some of what we learned and invite you to talk with us about your own experiences. After an opening welcome, we have two rounds of breakout sessions with three choices each. Those will be followed by the Keynote and a round of discussion-oriented roundtables.
Thank you for joining us as we all try to stay Ahead of the Code.
Keynote speaker Dr. Maha Bali
Meet our Keynote Speaker: Dr. Maha Bali
Meet our Keynote Speaker: Dr. Maha Bali
Maha Bali is Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield, UK where she supports students and faculty in expanding learning for themselves and others.
She is co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org, a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences by engaging conference goers in sessions for colleagues unable to travel. She also works with Equity Unbound, and has networked with colleagues to put together a resource collection for building community in equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning. She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education, and blogs regularly at http://blog.mahabali.me and tweets @bali_maha .
Dr. Bali's keynote will be interactive—so come prepared to join in!
About Ahead of the Code
Writing assistance tools like Grammarly, Revision Assistant, Hemingway Editor, or editing functions in Google Docs or Word are ubiquitous! Surely they are having—or might have—an impact on teaching writing. But what impact? And what do we, as teachers, want from these tools?
Despite the wide availability of these tools, we found little public writing by teachers about these rapidly developing technologies. We also saw that developers were rarely in conversation with practicing teachers as part of their initial development work so that early development was rarely informed by teachers’ and students’ perspectives or grounded in real teaching situations. As NWP teachers, we wondered: How can the teaching of writing stay ahead of the code? Our goal was neither to promote these tools nor reject them out of hand; it was to better assess and understand.
With support from The Learning Agency, we formed a small network of teachers to explore these questions and think together about these new technologies. We posted our ongoing reflections and observations on a blog on Medium, also called Ahead of the Code, where you can see members' thinking as the year unfolded.
We would like to continue and hope to expand our network. We invite you to join our project and participate in next year's network activities. Below are some ways to get started.
Page updated
Report abuse