Scriveners' Trappings

Margaret Bigger knows a tale when she hears one.

For 29 years, she has been recording either her own stories, her family’s or other people’s tales of war, prohibition, weddings, funerals and church-going, self-publishing and editing collections of stories, or writing books of her own.

A good listener and writer and a mentor-like editor, Bigger has written or edited 24 books in her 73 years.

But it is her book “Recalling Your Memories on Paper, Tape or Videotape,” published in 1996 and now in its second printing, that launched her career as a teacher about saving memories and creating memoirs.

Across a tray of hot tea, the Southern author recently talked from her Foxcroft East home about teaching others.

“Actually, I was teaching the class over and over again and thought it would be good to write a book and use some of my students’ experiences to make it much more interesting,” she said. “So I sort of backed into the book from teaching.”

Bigger has taught the memory-writing course since 1989 at Central Piedmont Community College, Queens University of Charlotte, the Shepherd’s Center in Charlotte, at retirement centers in three states and as an annual fundraiser for the Charlotte Writers’ Club.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/01/12/3777487/author-teaches-writing-down-memories.html#storylink=cpy

This collaboratively written article provides some great ideas for leveraging today's mobile technologies to help students enhance those vital writing

Popular social media websites can be used as legitimate research tools, complimenting the traditional methods, and they can help students prepare when writing their essays and assignments.

Here are some of the best social networks and ways they can help improve your writing and research

A List of The Best Free Digital Storytelling Tools for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning http://t.co/xrDuDaJm

“A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on a cold iron.” Horace Mann

"Recently I came across a beautifully written ode to creativity written by @RealDavidCameron – see here. Please read it in all of its resplendent glory. The article, appropriate for our austere times, and rather bankrupt political leadership, is not all sweetness and light. Birth weight and poverty are recognized as near intractable factors that inhibit learning, but the driving force of the article resides in the transformative power of education. This was connected to another article by an inspiring school leader, Tom Sherrington – the @headguruteacher – with this article on creativity here: Teaching for Creativity and Innovation. Now, let me admit, when I sometimes hear the term ‘creativity’ used regarding education I wince slightly. ‘Passion’ and ‘creativity’ have become easy labels used across public and private sectors, becoming appropriated by advertisers, regardless of whether those qualities are exhibited or not, like some empty corporate mantra. When people laud Sir Ken Robinson I cannot but agree with his inspired speeches, but without action those words ring hollow. What leaders like Tom Sherrington and people like David Cameron do is put meat onto the bones of the creativity mantra in a real and valuable. They shine a light on creativity in practice and thereby encourage us to bask in the glow and feed the flame,"

Tweet Student blogging is not a project, but a process. We are continuously striving to refine, improve and re-evaluate.  One of my favorite writes, Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, explores how to help kids write in digital spaces.  Features a checklist of factors that contribute to quality of writing.  

Design Drivers:  Learning

Not only do we need skills for expository, creative, persuasive and technical writing, but we often write about topics for which we know very little at first. Furthermore, our writing is expected to be motivating while clearly delivering concepts, procedures and facts.
Here you’ll find some brief guidelines that focus on each type of writing. Much of this writing is done in storyboards, so I didn’t include writing for storyboards as a separate type. What other types of writing for eLearning can you think of?

Is traditional reading and writing enough to be considered literate in the 21st century?

Check out this slideshow from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano which asks us to "rethink our notion of critical literacy." She also suggests that we "develop authentic learning and assessment opportunities {as we} upgrade and amplify our curriculum."

In 2008, Fran Simmons, an English teacher at NewDorpHigh School in New York—at that time one of the lowest-performing secondary institutions in the nation— devised a simple test for her students in an effort to keep district officials from pulling the plug. First, she asked her freshman class to read Of Mice and Men. Then, using information from the novel, she asked them to answer the following prompt in a single sentence:

“Although George …”

She was looking for a sentence like: Although George worked very hard, he could not attain the American Dream.

What Simmons received was alarming in the truest sense of the word. Some students wrote passable sentences, but many could not manage to finish the line. More than a few wrote the following:

“Although George and Lenny were friends.”