Blog Post #3: Thoughts on Peer Editing

Some Thoughts on Peer Editing

       When you hear the words peer editing, what comes to mind? Do you cringe? Do you get nervous? Or like myself, afraid to correct someone else paper that's your age? Well, if so then we have a few things in common. For my 2nd post of EDM 310, Dr. Strange assigned groups. Within these groups we were to write our 2nd blog post "The 21st Century Student", and then upload and share our documents in Google Drive. Lucky for me, and unlike many groups in the class, I only have two other members in my group. After we uploaded each of our unique documents we were to read, review, state opinions, and correct our peer's posts. 

       If I were to be completely honest, I am still not over the whole "fear of correcting a peers paper"...and this is my fourth year in college! But what is it about peer editing that scares us so much? Is is the editing part? Because I'm pretty sure no adult would have any problem correcting a student or adolescent's paper. So lets try the only word left in the phrase - peer. I have heard peer throughout my lifetime. Since I was an early child and while attending elementary, middle, and high school assemblies about "Saying NO to Peer Pressure!" (Side Note: In my opinion, forming the diligence of saying no to your peers, has to be a type of maturation and a desired trait, it isn't something that can you can just be convinced of in a forty-five minute assembly). 

       Sometimes it doesn't matter what is said there's just something about our peers that gets us a little shaken up. Perhaps we could turn the dial and look from a different perspective. Our peers are also our colleagues, our best friends, our husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. Nearly everyday we encounter our peers, first in pre-school, all the way up to retiring. We date our peers, fight with our peers, grow with our peers. We have been around our peers our whole lives, constantly being compared against each other. Peers are also the connection to your social lives. Fourteen year-old's don't get a twitter to tweet at their grand parents all day! Social networks connect people to their peers, the group of people who's opinion is likely to matter most.

      So, with all this being said, lets move on to the assignments to this weeks blog. Dr. Strange gave us some videos, a slideshow, and a blog posts to watch, read, think and write about - all related to peer pressure. (a) Video - What is Peer Editing?, (b) Slideshow - Peer Edit with Perfection!, (c) Video - Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes.

       (a) The video was painless. It was a video that was only displayed black and white text with audio. In a nutshell it gave you three steps to peer editing. 1. Compliments, 2. Suggestions, 3. Corrections. The number one rule about comments, stay positive! Next was suggestions; giving the writer specific ideas about how to make their writing better. It told me to look for things like word choice, details, organization, sentences topic. Last is corrections; look for punctuation, grammar, sentences, and spelling. (b) The slide show was quick and simple, consisting of only fifteen slides. Again stating the three steps to peer editing but being more descriptive than the video and you were able to carefully read each slide.

       (c). The third was a humorous video, Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes, of 5th grade students acting out ten different types of peer editors. Using types of names like "Jean the Generalizer", "Picky Patty", "Social Sammy", "Speedy Sandy" and "Loud Larry"; this video gave you a feel of what it is actually be assessed by a student who is making one of those top ten mistakes. 

       I wouldn't say I had a huge learning experience with this section, but it served more as a reminder. A reminder that by helping my peers through peer editing, I am also helping myself. Often we are afraid to assess our peers because they are the same age as us and of course we want to be liked. As far as commenting goes, I think is one of the best steps to editing, I think comments are not as assertive and students can easily share their opinions. It is also important to guide our students on how to write a helpful comment, as opposed to a hurtful comment. Suggestions, in a loose term, means hinting at the student, so when giving suggestions you want your fellow peer to not feel pressured, like the videos and slideshow said...stay positive!! Dealing with corrections, you must make sure your corrections are in fact...correct. It is someone else's and we would hate for them to feel like they have made a mistake. 

      Peer editing, just like a game of scrimmage with your team, you learn, grow, and excel with and from each other. You are on the same team, but how are you going to get experience in playing a game if you do not practice. We as students, and I am mainly talking to myself here, do not realize how much of an impact peer editing can have on our future teaching careers. Helping someone else edit and revise their paper that is our age quite difficult, especially when you want that person to admire you. Think of peer editing like doing reps with a twenty-five pound weight, the next time you pick up a ten pound weight, it won't be so heavy. Peer editing gives you proper training on how to edit your paper, and also your future student's papers.