Over the next few weeks, I will be hosting a book club discussion on my book, The Digital Writing Workshop, on the English Companion Ning. As the discussion moves forward, I am imagining the ways in which we can employ other spaces and tools for discussion, as outlined in this post that I made to the EC Ning earlier today:
Welcome to our ECN Book Club discussion of “The Digital Writing Workshop.” I thank all of you for your initial pre-discussion questions and look forward to a month of great conversations. The timing for this discussion is perfect, as we are all thinking about how to establish the routines and expectations for our own writing workshop classrooms this fall, and I hope that we can use our collective knowledge about writing and technology to share examples, ask questions, and learn from each other.
I will start another thread with the actual first discussion topic later soon, but for the moment I have another question related to how we can imagine other spaces in which our discussion might take place. In talking with Jim about possibilities for what we might do in the coming weeks, I mentioned the idea that some of our discussion would, obviously, occur on the ECN discussion forum. Yet, I also want to imagine how we can use digital writing tools to move our discussions into new directions and spaces.
For instance, I am considering the following and would be curious to hear what other ideas you might have. Who would be interested in the following:
- Sometime in the next week, host a “kick off” Elluminate webinar session through LearnCentral. Would Tuesday, September 7th at 9:00 PM EST work for some of you?
- We are all familiar with the idea of using discussion forums, as evidenced by our participation in the ECN. What is we use some read/write web tools such as VoiceThread, Glogster, Prezi, or even something else to show how we are creating a digital writing workshop in our classrooms? Maybe we could even start a generic account with Screentoaster or Jing where we share “tours” of our digital writing projects/assignments?
- On September 25th, I will be delivering a keynote address at the Eastern Michigan Writing Project’s “Writing Beyond Expectations” conference at about 9:00 AM EST. How might we create a live broadcast and back channel conversation for that morning using tools like UStream, Google Docs, and Twitter?
- So, please help me think through this — what can we do to augment and extend the discussions that we are having on the ECN discussion forum with these digital writing tools?
No matter where we have them, I look forward to the many conversations that will come in the weeks ahead!
So, please do join the ECNing and let me know how the conversation in the coming weeks might unfold.
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