Feedback Loops: Assembling Student Editors, Stories, and Devices for Multimodal Peer Feedback

This article explores the transformational learning opportunities and challenges that arose when multimodal recording devices were introduced for providing peer feedback in a fifth-grade classroom's writers’ workshop. This study takes up the challenge of addressing ways in which using iPods and iPads might open new possibilities for writing and editing rather than just overlaying established practices with digital technology. Using a socio-material lens to examine multimodal literacy, the study examines the practices of 15 students as they interacted in peer-editing assemblages their teacher labeled “feedback loops.” Observations and interviews with two pairs of students are highlighted to explore how students used and adapted feedback loops to enhance their current and emergent literacy learning.