Category Archives: nwp

The NWP(eeee) Dance Party(eeee) Theme Song

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This morning, as I was planning out my NWP Makes! Session a bit more for next Saturday at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting, it dawned on me that a dance party stopmotion movie is what my group should create during our hour long working time (and then, they will document what we have done with technical writing). They’ll be using clay and wikistix to create little people.

And, so, I thought: I need to write a song for the video. A song about an NWP Dance Party. So, I composed it (using some music software) and wrote it and recorded it this morning, and have it now all set to go for the session.

Wanna hear it?

NWP Dance Party Theme Song

And here are the lyrics:

Put down your pens
Put down your papers
Put down your laptop
‘Cause you’ll get to it later

You’ve got to move-move
You’ve got to shake it – shake it
You’ve got to bend it back
An don’t even try to fake it

NWP Dance Party!

Ten thousand words
Can say the same thing
But this is like a language
that can make your heart sing

Come on the dance floor
And give it a little shake
Who knows where it’ll go
or what you can make

NWP Dance Party!

Peace (in the boogie),
Kevin

What Steve Says … it’s a cinch!

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I am following the lead of my fellow NWP friend, Steve Moore, who writes that using the site Cinch for podcasting from mobile device is one way to go, and I wanted to find something easy to use for the upcoming National Writing Project Annual Meeting.

And, well, Steve was right: Cinch is a cinch to use. I don’t have a phone with apps, but I just registered my phone number and called the Cinch Line and a minute later, what I said was on the site as a podcast.

And I can embed it:

Nice!

Peace (in the voice),
Kevin

NWP Annual Meeting: Even if you’re not there, you can be there

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nwpam2010Yesterday, I wrote a bit about what I will be doing when I head down to the National Writing Project’s Annual Meeting in two weeks. But I know that not everyone can attend, whether you are with the NWP or not. Luckily, in the last few years, the NWP folks have been branching out ways to stay connected to the Annual Meeting work, even if you are not there.

First of all, NWP encourages all bloggers and writers who are going to post any work to use the nwpam10 tag (such as I am doing here with this post). The tagging architecture of the Web allows people to search for all work that shares a similar tag. So, using the Google Blog Search Engine, if you were to search for the tag of nwpam10, you should theoretically get access to those various posts.

Second, if you are on Twitter, then NWP urges the use of the hashtag #nwpam10, which will collect all tweets about the Annual Meeting together. I use a platform called Tweetdeck, which conveniently puts all of my hashtags into columns, so I can easily view all of the #nwpam10 tweets in one place. See what I mean: head to #nwpam2010 tweets so far.

Third, if folks are using Flickr, then there is a space there, too, for photos. Again, this happens because folks are encouraged to use the nwpam10 tag on their photos. The photos should end up here in this nwpam10 Flickr space. (Tagging is such an interesting structural device, isn’t it?).

Fourth, there is a similar tagging infastructure at YouTube, so if people tag their videos with nwpam10, then they should end up in this search query for nwpam10 at the video hosting site.

Fifth, there is another tagging space at Slideshare for folks to share their presentations from the various workshops. Again, the same tag is being used, and the search at Slideshare is for nwpam10.

Finally, NWP has been using a Posterous blogging site to make it as easy as possible for folks to report from various workshops, conferences and meetings. You can follow that work at the NWP Walkabout blog.

All of this information, and more,  is available at the NWP website, by the way. And thanks to Andrea for reminding me of it all.

Peace (in the tag to remember: nwpam10),
Kevin

The 2010 National Writing Project Annual Meeting

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nwpam2010It’s that time of year again — the time when I leave my classroom for a few days to join all of my wonderful National Writing Project colleagues for our Annual Meeting. In about 10 days, we head to Orlando, Florida (same place as NCTE) and convene together to learn, discuss and debate the many intersections of writing, technology and learning. (And I am doubly lucky because my wife is joining me again this year. She is part of a NWP venture to develop curriculum for the writing-centered Common Core Standards that is being funded by the  Gates Foundation).

I am presenting with two NWP sessions in Orlando.

The first session is about how technology can help some of our rural NWP sites connect with their teachers when geographic barriers exist, and also how those teachers and their students can connect with others in the world through technology. I’ll be talking about some of the various projects, such as Voices on the Gulf, Longfellow 10, the iAnthology, and more. Although access to computers will probably be an issue for many rural teachers, there are plenty of ways that classrooms and teachers can open up the learning experience to the world.

Here’s the blurb for Providing Writing Project Access Across Geographic Boundaries:

Participants will examine solutions that provide Writing Project access and programs to rural teachers when participation is hampered by geographic barriers. Participants will analyze current practices of outreach to rural teachers, explore promising site practices and technological tools for providing access, and create a plan for making their sites more accessible to rural teachers.

I am also a presenter at the NWP Makes! session that teams up the writing project with Make Magazine for a fun, interactive session around technical writing. I’ll be walking my group through a stopmotion animation project, and then they’ll be documenting what we did. (see my sample) I think the artifacts from this session will eventually be part of a collection at the new NWP Digital Is site.

Here’s the blurb:

A special Saturday event hosted by the NWP Digital Is project’s partnership with Make magazine. Participants will be invited to explore the connections between making and technical writing through hands-on projects and shared reflection. Come to learn about the making/crafting/tinkering/DIY movement and explore connections to your own practice.

I am also attending a handful of interesting sessions as a participant.

I am going to be part of a Digital Literacies Roundtable.

In this roundtable session, multiple presenters will share a range of innovative digital practices—from multimodal composing in the classroom, to working with families to explore the digital literacy practices of youth, to being a writer and learner in virtual worlds and communities. Together, presenters and participants will use these examples to think and talk about the role of digital literacies in our lives and the lives of our students. We will participate in a shared inquiry about what digital literacies afford in terms of identity, participation, and community, and explore what it means to be digitally literate citizens today.

And I am going to be in a two sessions around gaming in the classroom.

The first session: Games for Education and Social Impact

Alan Gershenfeld is founder and president of E-Line Media, which has helped build some of the world’s leading game and digital comic franchises and which supports social entrepreneurs committed to harnessing popular media for impact. In this session Gershenfeld will demonstrate video games that can be used to tap into kids’ natural passion for play while harnessing that passion toward games that have positive social impact.

The second session: Building Video Games for and in the Classroom

This session, which builds on the lunchtime presentation “Games for Education and Social Impact,” will introduce specific platforms that help students and teachers alike make games to support learning in the classroom. In particular, Alan Gershenfeld from E-Line Media will introduce Gamestar Mechanic, a browser-based game specifically built on leading pedagogical research in the areas of systems thinking, 21st century digital literacy skills, and STEM learning.

And, I am going to be learning more about the upcoming NWP Social Networking Project called Going On, which is in a beta stage right now. The idea is to create a sharing space for NWP teachers.

The blurb:

NWP has developed a new social networking and social media space, GoingOn, connected to our NWP.org website. Find out how your local Writing Project site can develop its community within this space, which features blogs, wikis, and the ability to share images, audio, and video.

Plus, the keynote speaker is Donalyn Miller. I attended a workshop of hers last year as she talked about her idea around reading and literacy (she is the Book Whisperer, and author of the book with that title), and we connect on Twitter now and then. She will no doubt be fantastic, and inspirational as hundreds of NWP teachers come together for the General Session.

And I am hoping to reconnect with some NWP Twitter friends in a tweet-up that my friend Paul Oh is organizing for Friday night. So, plenty to keep me involved and engaged, and then also, of course, I’m carving out time to be with my wife. (We’re staying an extra day!)

Phew. That’s a lot going on in just a few days. I’ll be blogging about my days here, of course, and also, when I have access, putting stuff up on my twitter account (we’re going to be using the #nwpam10 hashtag for those who want to follow along).

Peace (in the magic kingdom of writing),
Kevin

Presenting: The Resources of NWP’s Digital Is

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nwp digitalis
About a year and a half ago, I went out to California for a meeting about a National Writing Project venture that was be entitled Digital Is. Supported in part by the MacArthur Foundation, the Digital Is concept involved a web portal to explorations of technology, writing and learning in ways that would go beyond the “how to do it” of typical websites.

Yesterday, the NPW Digital Is site launched to the public, and it is a wonderfully rich potpourri of teacher reflections on the “why” of technology as much as the “what we did” of technology. There are plenty of examples of student work, too, and discussions will hopefully revolve around our changing ideas of what writing means when it comes to multimodal composition and the classroom.

Elyse Eidman-Aadahl,who directs the national programs and site development for NWP and whose insights into technology and learning are worth their weight in gold, explains in her blog post on the site about the launching of Digital Is:

…  there’s no mistaking the impact of both the development of new digital tools for composing and of the internet as a global communications and collaboration space. What it means to write, to research, to publish, and to work together has changed dramatically in the last few decades.  As educators, we know our teaching must change too.

As a start, I want to point to a few “collections,” which are curated resources that are constructed around themes. This idea of collections is a great idea, as it pulls together projects and frames them in an importance concept or question by the curator.

So, check these curated collections out as a starting point:

The site is designed to keep growing and you don’t need to be part of the National Writing Project, either. I encourage you to take a tour of Digital Is, become a member and join the conversations around what writing and composition looks like in this midst of technological change, and where our teaching might be going in the years ahead.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

A Look at the Hudson Valley Writing Project

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HVWP at 10 from Bonnie Kaplan on Vimeo.

Bonnie, my longtime friend and collaborator at the Hudson Valley Writing Project, has put together a fascinating look at her writing project’s history and where it is now, and where it is heading. It’s worth sharing because it tells the story of an organization of teachers using inquiry to make change in practice and in the classroom all under our NWP banner of “Teachers Teaching Teachers.”

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

A Stopmotion Workshop Teaser/Prototype

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I’ve been invited to be a presenter at what could be a very interesting session at the National Writing Project‘s Annual Meeting in November down in Orlando. NWP is teaming up with MAKE Magazine to offer a session on technical writing and Do-It-Yourself exploration.

Here’s the blurb from the three-hour working session called NWP Makes! Making and Technical Writing (which I see is now completely full):

A special Saturday event hosted by the NWP Digital Is project’s partnership with Make magazine. Participants will be invited to explore the connections between making and technical writing through hands-on projects and shared reflection. Come to learn about the making/crafting/tinkering/DIY movement and explore connections to your own practice.

I’ve been asked to do a one-hour session on stopmotion moviemaking. After my small group makes their movie, their task is going to be to document what we did in technical, expository writing. So, they experience it and then explain it for others.

Yesterday, I used some wiki stix (actually, they were knock-off stix and were a pain to use — note to self for workshop: get the real ones) and made a prototype movie that also became a teaser of sorts for the NWP Makes! session. I was trying to make the dude talk (I used Audacity to change my voice) and that is hard to do, I found out!

Right now, I am trying to come with “story” scenarios for 10 people to make a movie around in an hour. An hour is not long when you are shooting frame by frame. I have some ideas, though.

Peace (on the make),
Kevin

PS — If you are interested in stopmotion animation, I created a website with hints for teachers and students. Go to Making Stopmotion Movies.

US Senate Resolution: National Day on Writing

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The second annual National Day on Writing is coming up on October 20th. It’s an event sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to celebrate and make visible the importance of writing in our lives. There are events and celebrations that take place across the country, and there is an online gallery for submitting writing into an archive.It’s a great way to write, get published and join the festivities around writing.

The United States Senate got into the act and recently passed a Resolution, supporting the National Day on Writing.

RESOLUTION

Expressing support for the designation of October 20, 2010, as the `National Day on Writing’.

Whereas people in the 21 st century are writing more than ever before for personal, professional, and civic purposes;

Whereas the social nature of writing invites people of every age, profession, and walk of life to create meaning through composing;

Whereas more and more people in every occupation deem writing as essential and influential in their work;

Whereas writers continue to learn how to write for different purposes, audiences, and occasions throughout their lifetimes;

Whereas developing digital technologies expand the possibilities for composing in multiple media at a faster pace than ever before;

Whereas young people are leading the way in developing new forms of composing by using different forms of digital media;

Whereas effective communication contributes to building a global economy and a global community;

Whereas the National Council of Teachers of English, in conjunction with its many national and local partners, honors and celebrates the importance of writing through the National Day on Writing;

Whereas the National Day on Writing celebrates the foundational place of writing in the personal, professional, and civic lives of the people of the United States;

Whereas the National Day on Writing provides an opportunity for individuals across the United States to share and exhibit their written works through the National Gallery of Writing;

Whereas the National Day on Writing highlights the importance of writing instruction and practice at every educational level and in every subject area;

Whereas the National Day on Writing emphasizes the lifelong process of learning to write and compose for different audiences, purposes, and occasions;

Whereas the National Day on Writing honors the use of the full range of media for composing, from traditional tools like print, audio, and video, to Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, and podcasts; and

Whereas the National Day on Writing encourages all people of the United States to write, as well as to enjoy and learn from the writing of others: Now, therefore, be it

    Resolved, That the Senate–
    • (1) supports the designation of October 20, 2010, as the `National Day on Writing’;
    • (2) strongly affirms the purposes of the National Day on Writing;
    • (3) encourages participation in the National Galley of Writing, which serves as an exemplary living archive of the centrality of writing in the lives of the people of the United States; and
    • (4) encourages educational institutions, businesses, community and civic associations, and other organizations to promote awareness of the National Day on Writing and celebrate the writing of the members those organizations through individual submissions to the National Gallery of Writing.

It’s nice to see references to the influence of digital media in our lives in the resolution.

I am working with my friend, Bonnie, to gather up writing from National Writing Project teachers at our iAnthology site around “writing that we don’t often think about” — the various ways we use writing through the day.

But I am still mulling over if I can do something at my school, too. Last year, we did a HUGE comic strip that students from all over the school wrote on, answering the question: what do you like to write?

What will you do?

Peace (in the writing),
Kevin