Collection
Digital Writing and the Common Core
“Writing today,” say the authors of Because Digital Writing Matters, “is pervasively and generally digital; composed with digital tools; created out of word, image, sound, and motion; circulated in digital environments; and consumed across a wide range of digital platforms.” Many teachers are wondering, however, whether digital writing can align with the English Language Arts strand of the Common Core State Standards, now adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. Many Digital Is resources demonstrate that it can.
Shortly after the standards were released, Joe Wood, a teacher consultant at the Area 3 Writing Project, found himself in conversations with colleagues about digital literacies and whether they were necessary to achieve the Common Core. Although most of the standards can be achieved in digital environments, is digital writing and reading necessary. To answer that question, Joe gathered together aspects of the standards that related to digital text and writing. His document, Digital Text & the Common Core Standards, looks specifically at the ELA standards and where digital writing is mentioned or aligned.
This collection pulls together resources that have been published at Digital Is that highlight some of these domains within the Common Core’s ELA standards. There are many resources within this site that could have been included and there are more standards that could have been related to these projects too. These projects were chosen to show a range of grade levels, disciplines, and contexts of learning connected to the standards highlighted by Joe.
Educators across the country continue to engage with the Common Core in various ways too, including those participating in a Peer-to-Peer University Course called Writing and the Common Core: Deeper Learning for All. Facilitator Bud Hunt, of the Colorado State University Writing Project, has created an annotatable version of the Common Core to further support this conversation.
In an upcoming collection, resources emerging from this course and related converations among educators about the Common Core will be featured.
