This morning, I am pleased to be a part of Littleton Public Schools’ Adolescent Literacy Institute, and I am able to participate in Harvey “Smokey” Daniels’ keynote, “Best Practice Across the Curriculum.” Here are some notes from his session: Goals for today Define “Best Practice” Consider the missing link: student collaboration Watch video of kids [...]

Another semester has zoomed past and, before these thoughts escape me, and I begin a series of summer workshops and our CRWP summer institute, I am going to try to capture a few of the lessons learned in relation to digital writing and digital teaching. Good lessons seem to come in threes, so here goes: [...]

This morning, I was fortunate enough to be invited “home” to present my session, “Creating Your Digital Writing Workshop” at Red Cedar Writing Project‘s WIDE PATHS II. Beyond the wonderful feeling of being “home” with about 30 colleagues from RCWP and sharing my book with them, I continue to be inspired by the amazing work [...]

Tomorrow, I will be presenting two sessions at the Sessions at Wisconsin State Reading Association Conference. Here are descriptions of the sessions and the related presentations: From School to Screen: Why Digital Writing Matters (9:30 – 10:45) Without question, writing continues to change in the twenty-first century. Teachers, administrators, parents, and other stakeholders value the [...]

As the holidays begin, another conference season comes to a close. For the past week, Sara and I have been in Philadelphia at the National Writing Project‘s “Digital Is…” pre-conference, the NWP Annual Meeting, and the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention. As it is each year, we enjoy spending time with colleagues [...]

Notes from “Erasing Copyright Confusion” at NCTE 2009 Joyce Valenza, Renee Hobbs, Kristin Hokanson, and Michael RobbGrieco Center for Social Media Renee Hobbs, Temple — What is the purpose of copyright? Protect intellectual property Ownership, profit Authors’ right In fact, the purpose of copyright is to promote creativity, innovation, and the spread of knowledge Owners [...]

The Social Media Portfolio: Using Technology to Promote Meta-cognitive Skill Development At NWP’s Digital Is Rafi Santo, Amana Kaskazi, and Shonell Richmond Global Kids 20 Years in existence and focusing on significant global issues Issues: Local to global and global to local understanding Leadership: Skills necessary to affect change Technology: How does new media contribute [...]

Danielle Nicole DeVoss asks us to think about what digital was then and is now… Digital is… Networked — we compose in networked spaces Collaborative — people are able to connect and create through these networks (LolCats) Multimodal — typography, kinetic type, digital stories Re-Mediated — taking a media object and recreating it so it [...]

As we prepare to head to the NWP Annual Meeting and NCTE Convention in just about a week, I am also plugging away at our Chippewa River Writing Project Continued Funding Application. I have come to one of the most compelling parts of the report, at least for me… the point where we reflect on [...]

Dan Priest is a pre-service teacher from Western Michigan University and presented “Rethinking Technology in the Multimodal Classroom” at MCTE‘s fall conference. He suggested that his explorations of the internet and some of the tools available continue to inspire the ways in which he teaches with technology. Using his Wii remote/homemade Smartboard, he argues that [...]