Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media and Genres

I highly believe that digital literacy is an extremely important skill for all students to possess. The ability to navigate search engines, a general understanding of what is available digitally, and being able to craft quality digital writing are all necessary skills for students. Out of the many resources out there Troy Hick’s, Crafting Digital Writing, stands out. Most importantly, Troy Hicks has experience teaching, so he presents digital writing in an understandable way; it is accessible by teachers and also individuals without a background in education.Troy Hicks also puts the emphasis not only on learning how to be digitally savvy, but on how to teach our students using digital media. Many students have surpassed their teachers in their ability to use and understand technology and that leaves conventional teaching methods boring and outdated. By using multi-modal technologies teachers can draw their students in and present to them a topic they may not be interested in (ie. Writing) in a form that they are familiar with, therefore making the topic more engaging. Students engage in the digital world all day long, and it is important for teachers to help students use these tools in ways that will further their education.Troy Hicks explains how digital writing differs from traditional writing and offers a plethora of examples throughout his book. In the introductory section of the book Hicks provides two helpful tables. The first table is on page 17 and lists the “elements of Author’s craft” when it comes to different genres including narrative texts, informative texts, and argumentative texts. On page 22, Troy Hicks includes the second table that lists “additional elements of Author’s craft in digital writing.” This second table is a great visual for teachers and students to reference when thinking about additional skills needed when crafting digital writing. The QR codes make supplemental online materials extremely accessible to anyone flipping through the pages. He explains how to incorporate digital text, websites, blogs, video and audio into your classroom. He also explains wikispaces, a less understood digital arena, and how to use them and incorporate them into your classroom. Wikispaces can be created as a type of online classroom. Teachers can add text, video, audio, and a variety of hyperlinks that connect to outside websites, or other pages within the wikispace. The hyperlinks allow students to click through a “choose your own adventure” style of learning.Troy Hicks, with experience as a teacher, also makes connections between using digital literacy to the Common Core Standards. These connections are helpful to new teachers as they build their curriculum and work on including 21st century skills in their classrooms. The wide variety of digital technology explored in Hick’s book is understandable, and easy to navigate by following the step by step explanations. The many examples that Hicks offers provide opportunities for teachers to emulate exactly what is shown in the book and then adjust as they become more comfortable with multi-modal technology themselves.I would highly recommend this book to any educators looking to improve their digital literacy. By utilizing the tools explained and modeled in Hick’s book we will be better preparing our students to navigate the everyday world in front of them. I would also recommend this book to any individuals outside of the world of education who are interested in learning how to better their own digital writing.

Hey there,I'm an English Ed. student getting ready to enter my year of student teaching, so this is by no means the opinion of a seasoned vet. That said, of the three digital writing texts we examined in my Teaching Writing course, I thought Crafting Digital Writing the best.I like the methodical way Hicks organized this book. Each of the chapters for the five major digital writing content areas--web texts, presentations, audio, video, and social media--mirrors the others in structure so that it's easy to look up the information you need. I also like that he starts each section with a professional mentor text, giving teachers a good idea of what each chapter is about from the outset and also high standard to compare their students work to.There is one aspect of the book's organization that does not make sense to me. The FAQs (Frequently Argued Questions) section of the book is brilliant. In it, Hicks tackles many questions that digital literacy doubters may have, and presents convincing arguments that might get them to buy into his methodology. You'd think that he would lead off with these arguments. Instead he buries them in chapter eight. Someone who needed to be convinced of the value of digital texts probably isn't going to make it through to the last chapter. It's a minor quibble, but I thought I'd bring it up in case anyone sitting on the fence wants to give Crafting Digital Writing a shot. If you're not sure how much you want to get into the whole digital writing thing, do yourself a favor and flip straight to the FAQs.Also of note, if you have your smart phone or tablet handy while you read, you can scan the QR codes that show up every few pages to get direct links to additional information and supplemental research data. It might seem like a gimmick, but in practice it really does add a lot to the text.To sum up: Crafting Digital Writing is an extremely useful guide to literacy for those just starting out. It's also fairly up-to-date, given that it was published in 2013.That's all for now. I'll update this review later if I think of anything else.