Tech in the Writing Process: Pre-Writing, Organization

In today’s episode, we'll explore strategies and digital tools to help students organize their content so that they're ready to begin writing. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today's episode is tech in the writing process: pre-writing organization. In the past few episodes of Tech Talk for Teachers, we've been working our way through the writing process and looking at how we can leverage technology to make our students more efficient and effective writers. Today, we're on to the final stage of the pre-writing part of the process. So far, we've clarified our writing task, generated some preliminary ideas, and gathered the research and ideas we'd to include in our writing. This final step of pre-writing is to take all of that information and organize it.

As we take on this last task of organizing and planning out our writing, let's acknowledge a few things up front. First off, the task of organizing and planning almost never happens in isolation, and it probably won't be neatly packaged at the end of the pre-writing process either. Much the writing process in general, organizing your ideas is a messy process, and it will happen continually throughout the writing journey. Still, it's a step that needs to be largely completed before moving on to the drafting stage, since this will guide your writing and keep you focused.

Second, you may find that you've already begun organizing your ideas during the previous steps. That's great, and it means you've already started to see connections between ideas. If you've not yet connected ideas, that's fine too, because we'll shift to that focus during this stage of the pre-writing process. Third, when organizing your ideas, consider the most common organizational patterns. First, logical, chronological, spatial, cause, effect, and problem solution. These can help give your planning structure. While you don't need to restrict yourself to these, they're good starting points and can help guide the organizational process.

And fourth, there are many ways to document and organize your ideas. The most common method is to create an outline. If you're comfortable jumping right into outlining, go for it. However, you might also consider mind maps and other organizational templates. The key is to find something that works for you and helps you take a potentially chaotic collection of ideas and turn them into an organized, meaningful plan for writing.

All right, with that in mind, let's look at three options for organizing your writing: we'll explore mind maps, outlining, and additional formats. First, let's explore mind mapping as a way to make sense of the information you've collected. Mind mapping tools allow you to cluster similar ideas and draw connections between them. Mind mapping tools are ideal for moving ideas around, categorizing thoughts, and visualizing those connections. Mind maps typically look sort of a spider web. They usually will have the main topic in a circle in the middle, and then there are lines that extend from that center circle to other circles, each containing a related idea. This process of branching out from one idea to another continues until you've exhausted all of your ideas. This is sometimes called spider mapping, because the end result looks a little bit a spider web. It's also called concept mapping, since you're mapping out how various concepts connect and relate to each other. Whatever you call it, mind mapping can be a great way to visualize your content and understand how it all connects. Mind mapping tools are especially beneficial for visual learners. Visual learners tend to identify with the visual labels and connecting lines and arrows in these mind maps.

If you use mind mapping software, you'll find that it's often very flexible, allowing you to insert various types of multimedia if it helps you visualize and process your content. You can add in links, images, documents, and videos. They're also easily editable. If you change your mind, you can eliminate, add, or modify idea bubbles and their associated connecting lines. As you're developing your mind map, you may notice that you have gaps in your information, which can prompt you to go out and get more content. It's perfectly natural to modify and update ideas as your understanding of the topic grows and crystallizes. As I mentioned, this is not a linear process, and you may go back and forth between the various stages of pre-writing.

If you're looking for a digital option, you'll find that there are many free, digital mind mapping tools available online. Of course, you can also have students do this on paper. Because there are multiple options, each having their own strengths, it can be helpful to give your students a choice of two or three different mind mapping options to pick from. Remember, too many choices can be paralyzing, but some choice is empowering. Voice and choice will give your students the opportunity to find a tool and a method that best meets their personal organizational style.

Here are four popular digital mind mapping tools that you may want to explore: MindMup. With this collaborative mind mapping tool, students can add text, video, images, and more. They can start with a blank mind map or use one of the available templates. Students can create three mind maps with the free version. MindMeister. Again, students can begin with a blank map or choose from a template. There are even templates for additional tasks, such as developing smart goals or taking Cornell notes. That's a nice bonus. Students can again create three mind maps with the free version. This one also allows students to include icons, notes, links, and more.

A third option is Canva. Since Canva is designed for much more than mind mapping, you want to search the program to find mind maps and templates. Simply type "mind map" into the search box, and you'll be redirected to a collection of templates. When I tried it, I returned 359 different options. That's a lot to choose from. These templates tend to lean more heavily on graphic design and cosmetically nice-looking mind maps. If you want a simple one, this may not be your choice, but if you want something that's really dressed up, Canva is great.

Finally, Google Drawings is an option. Now this option doesn't include templates, but it does give you the tools to create your own mind map. Students would use shapes, lines, images, links, and text tools to create the map. The other tools, they can share the file to collaborate. So you can start with one of these options, or you could search the web to find more. Options are changing all the time, and there are many available.

Once you have your mind map completed, you might choose to write directly from the mind map, or you might choose it as a scaffold to get you to the next logical step, which is creating an outline. Let's look at outlines next. Outlines are the most common way to organize ideas before writing. Typically, you'll see outlines that include Roman numerals, capital and lowercase letters, and numbers to identify and break down cascading layers of ideas. While some of the details of how you annotate your outline may change, the overall looks pretty much the same, and they typically break down larger topics into meaningful subtopics and details.

What tools should you have your students use to build an outline? Well, students can always use paper and pencil to create them. That's an easy place to start, and it might be the best choice for younger learners. If you want to go digital, word processing programs offer convenient outlining tools within their menu options. We might take this simple solution for granted, but it's really effective, and it's probably the best place to go for an outlining solution. Because the ideas are entered digitally, ideas within a word-processed outline can easily be moved around and reformatted. This makes revision much easier and therefore more to happen. If an outline is handwritten, students might be less inclined to create another written draft in order to reorganize the ideas. It's too much work. If you want your students to use a formal outline structure, the bullet and outline formatting tools in the word processors can really help students snap their ideas into the prescribed formats. Of course, there might be times when you want to allow your students to quickly generate a less formal outline using spaces and simple bullet points. That's fine, too.

There's no one right approach. Consider your end product and decide what's the most appropriate solution for that goal. You can even involve your students in that discussion and give them some ownership in the decision-making process. What will work best for them? If your students find themselves stuck developing their outlines, you might consider allowing them to use generative AI to help. They can paste their notes into the AI chatbot so they're beginning with work that they have done. They can provide their thesis statement, and then they can prompt a chatbot for suggestions about how they might organize those ideas. They might even ask for three options. You'll need to decide if this is too much help or not, but professional writers are using these tools at an increasing rate, so it might be something you want to introduce to your students as well.

You don't need to limit yourself to mind maps and outlines, either. If you're writing to produce a message that will be communicated in a multimedia format, other organizational tools might be more helpful. For instance, if you're creating a video or a comic strip, you might want to use a tool storyboard that to create a storyboard that maps out each scene or frame. Canva and Adobe Express also have lots of storyboard templates that you can use for free. If you're creating a website, you might want to create a flowchart so you can map out all the interconnections of ideas and pages within the site. One of the mind mapping tools could work for that as well.

No matter what the format or tool you choose, the main objective here is to choose something that helps you organize your ideas in a way that sets you up for the writing stage. You want something that identifies an order to your ideas with enough detail that you can begin writing from it. In the messy business of writing, organization can be a life saver.

To learn more about today's topic and explore other free resources, visit AVID Open Access.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection, "Power Up and Enhance the Writing Process with Technology". And of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston, and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we're joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening, take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.