"Teaching students to craft digital arguments is more than a life skill for college or career. It is a skill for LIFE."
-Kristen Hawley Turner and Troy Hicks
In this increasingly technology-driven world, we as a people are continuously constructing and being bombarded by digital arguments daily. According to Hicks and Turner (2017), digital arguments are arguments that express a person's point of view on a subject that can be visual, written, spoken, or aural (p.6). In order to properly stake a claim or make a rebuttal within a digital argument, it is imperative to have proper evidence to support one's argument. Although it is common to see digital arguments each and everyday, one cannot assume that students already know the reasoning behind why digital arguments are of importance or how to properly represent oneself online when being expressive about a topic.
With me being a 5th grade ELA teacher, I am constantly teaching, reminding, and nagging my students to always support their answer with text evidence or to make sure that you can back up your claim with good information if you want to prove a point. Once I started reading a few chapters in Hicks and Turner's Argument in the Real World, I truly began to see the sense of urgency of us, as educators, in teaching our students how to create their own digital arguments as it will help them be critical thinkers and better writers.
Digital Arguments are of Great Importance because...
1.) Teaching digital arguments to our students is important because it grants them the opportunity to be critical thinkers. Due to our world quickly becoming so technology savvy, it is of equal importance for students to be fluent in both print and digital writing. According to Teaching Argument in the Digital World, "crafting digital arguments requires that writers understand and are able to use various forms of media to create arguments in a range of subgenres, or modes, of the argumentative form," which simply means that writers are having to think more critically of how they can back up their arguments with using the plethora of resources that they have. (Audet, 2016). With students utilizing their knowledge of their resources in their digital arguments, it will allow for their arguments to be more effective due to the amount of good support provided for the argument as well as stronger because of the structure of the information given. Although students learning how to construct their own digital arguments may be considered challenging at times, it is indeed necessary for the growth of our students' critical thinking skills.
https://blog.heinemann.com/teaching-argument-digitalworld
2.) Students being educated on the craft of digital arguments is also beneficial because it allows for them the chance to become stronger writers. In my own fifth grade class, I constantly make comments such as, "Be sure to answer the question that you are being asked" and "Double-check your work to make sure that you are actually answering the question that is being asked of you and not providing any incorrect information just because it can be viewed in the text." I say these phrases to my students all the time simply because we have a hard time with properly providing textual evidence to support our arguments that is actually relative to our writing. According to Hicks and Turner (2017), "Digital writing requires us to make intentional choices about what we want to say, as well as how we choose the media in which we say it" (p.1). I find this fact very enlightening because it simply confirms the comparison between writing an essay and digital writing in that digital writing is more complex and requires a student to be more intentional with their writing in proving their argument. In the article, "What Makes A Digital Argument Effective," the topic of the importance of declarative and procedural writing is greatly discussed as it relates to digital writing because each form of writing plays a purposeful role in a student's journey of being a good writer. Declarative and procedural writing both cause for students to be specific, informative, and effective in proving their arguments with evidence in digital arguments, which can only increase the writing ability of our students in a positive manner.
Digital arguments and literacy are imperative to the success of our students in this increasingly modernized world in which we live because these skills not only prepare them for their next grade level, potential careers, or college.....but, there are also life skills that our students can benefit from greatly.
References
Turner, K., & Hicks, T. (2017) Argument in the real world: Teaching adolescents to read and write digital texts Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Audet, L. (n.d.). Teaching Argument in the Digital World. Retrieved from https://blog.heinemann.com/teaching-argument-digitalworld
Ardovino, E. (2018, September 20). Effective Digital Arguments. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@eardovin/effective-digital-arguments-f75a0a10d081
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