Category: English Education
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MakeBeliefsComix.com Online Educational Comics Launches WRITER PROMPTS to Help ESL, Literacy Students Write, Read and Tell Stories
A note from Bill Zimmerman at MakeBeliefsComix, a site I have written about before: MakeBeliefsComix.com has launched a new WRITER PROMPTS feature that regularly offers educators new ideas to spark students’ imaginations and encourage them to write more. The new writing tool is a direct result of the overwhelming positive user response to our free…
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Kevin Gets Comical
Congrats to my NWP colleague, Kevin Hodgson on the publication of his new comic, Boolean Squared! He uses Comic Life for the basic layout and then fills in the pictures himself. It will be interesting to see where he takes this, both in terms of using the technology to produce the comic as well as…
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Brief Review of Webb and Rozema’s “Literature and the Web”
Earlier this summer, Allen Webb and Robert Rozema published their text through Heinemann, Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies. I received a copy as a gift, and just got a chance to read it over Labor Day. Besides thanking the two of them for mentioning my blog in the book, I…
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Reflections on Project WRITE’s Summer Institute
Today marked the end of our Project WRITE summer institute, and there were both smiles and tears to be found amongst the many of us who shared our writing this morning and our professional learning this afternoon. My partner, project leader Liz Webb, structured an amazing week, given all that we had to do from…
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Preparing for Tech-Focused Professional Development
For the first time in four years, I will not be going to an NWP tech/writing style workshop, and I have to admit that I am a little bit bummed. Both Tech Matters and the Technology and Writing retreat have been good sources of inspiration and collegiality over the past few summers, and I hope…
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Notes from Steve Graham’s “Evidence-Based Practice in Writing”
Another great session this week, this time with one of the co-authors of the Writing Next report: Steve Graham. Here is an overview from the MSU LARC site: Steve Graham, Vanderbilt University Evidence-Based Practice in Writing – Drawing on Experimental, Qualitative, and Single Subject Design Research for Answers Wednesday, April 16, 2008 11:30am – 1:00pm…
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From Workshop to Classroom: The Problems of Enacting Professional Development
This past week, I was invited to present an introductory workshop on digital storytelling to a group of teachers in Alpena. Minus some minor glitches in figuring out file management with brand new jump drives, the session went well from both my perspective and that of the attendees. Exit comments were generally positive and, since…
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Literacy alive and well in computer age – Perspectives – Opinion – Technology
From the Google Reader…. It makes no sense complaining about the decline of the printed word. As it becomes just another medium, we are moving to a kind of multimedia literacy, where capability with print becomes no more important, or useful, than capability with image. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is no…
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An Update on Blogging, Podcasting, and Wikiing with Pre-Service Teachers
January has been a busy month for me as I have been coordinating field placements for my ENG 315 students and we have begun exploring the use of blogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS in our teaching lives. When we began this work a few short weeks ago, only a handful of these pre-service teachers had…