Skip the Essay: Have Students Make Prezicasts

摘要

Let's face it: Telling your eighth graders that they have an essay due next week provokes the same reaction as when my wife reminds me taxes are coming up. Sure, general schoolwork dread is part of it, but I think students feel that writing an essay is outmoded. Few jobs-except for a couple of positions at Harper's or The New Yorker-exist for essayists anymore, so students are not being entirely unreasonable when they ask why the standard five-paragraph essay is so important. I respond to such questions in a predictable way: The essay is a tool that allows writers to present their thoughts in a clear and structured way. Even if students are right-that the essay is not the exact product that they will be asked to create in the "real world"-writing one remains an invaluable process for organizing and communicating an argument. The essay is not the end of learning but the means.