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From the website:
So how can we use technology to make writing more enjoyable? 1. Brainstorm using collaborative tools. Pair prewriting with online discussions. great modeling students learn from one another harder to procrastinate learn from other perspectives informal peer editing 2. Use online discussions to facilitate prewriting. 3. Formal peer editing using Google.docs 4. Publish & share online = increases pride in work 
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By Anita Swigart
I'm not suggesting that teachers yell at their students or make them do drills repeatedly. What I am suggesting is that teachers have to give feedback at every step of writing...and give it as soon as possible and as clearly. I know teachers in high school who don't put one mark on a composition except a grade. What does that tell a student? Unless the paper is perfect, it tells them nothing and gives them no opportunity to improve. That is not teaching. That is scoring. I know that we are all overworked: too many students, too little prep and grading time, etc. but if we fail to give our students feedback we are simply not doing our jobs and we have no reason to wonder why our students can't write. We are the reason they can't write.
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Feeling burned out? Need a break but you've got another deadline looming? Plan a writer's retreat!
I've just returned from my second writing retreat with Barbara Dunlop and CJ Carmichael and the four days together this March saved my skin-and my book. I didn't get three new chapters written like I did last year, but I realized why I was stuck, why I couldn't make myself write, and after going back to the prologue I slowly, painfully wrote myself out of the corner with my two great writing buddies close by for moral support.
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From The Teaching Channel
Madeline Noonan, a 5th grade teacher, meets with all of her students individually during writer's workshop. In each conference, she specifically identifies strengths and two goals. In this 5-minute video, observe her interacting with and giving feedback to one of her better writing students.
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Look up rhyming words as you write. Instead of leaving what you're writing to find rhymes in a rhyming dictionary, just alt-click (or option-click) on the word you need a rhyme for and select from a pop-up list of suggested rhymes. Via Steve dembo
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What is a stump speech, and what makes one effective? In this lesson, students analyze the stump speeches of presidential candidates, then write the stump speech they would use if they were running for president. From the New York Times Learning Network.
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Bernajean Porter was named ISTE's Consultant of the Year not long ago for her national leadership in promoting story making through the use of digital media. Her website, DigiTales.us, provides ideas, resources and inspiration for families, individuals, schools, organizations, corporations, churches and everyone else ready to discover the power and magic of merging the art of storytelling with the enchantment of using digital tools.
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Assignments that require research tempt students to copy entries from Wikipedia or other online sources. Designed to defeat that urge, these prompts depend on personal information or perspective. Some involve parodies, which promote awareness of language by demanding that the student bring one kind of language into a new and jarring context (like, say, writing about a rifle through language typically used to advertise a new baby stroller).
To combat charges of irrelevant subject matter, I geared many prompts to involve popular culture, technology, and current trends and debates, but most importantly they demand the student to write persuasively—that is, engage in argument in order to persuade a specific person of some specific thing. - David Barringer
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By Steven Sands
TUAW's Erica Sadun and I are ebook publishers. Late last year, we started up an ebook publishing company -- Sand Dune Books -- and were fortunate to hit a publishing home run right off the bat with our book "Talking to Siri." Since we're familiar with the tools used to create documents for publishing on both the Amazon Kindle bookstore and iBookstore, we were both curious to see what Apple was going to announce on Thursday. The free creation tool, iBooks Author, wasn't a surprise to us, and now that I've had an opportunity to work with the app I thought I'd pass along my thoughts on how it works and why it may not be the publishing tool for everyone.
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Writing Kit’s approach is to make an app that combines a disparate set of capabilities into a single product. There’s a built-in browser and scratch pad for research and notes. It uses Markdown (with custom toolbars and a previewer to help editing). It integrates with Dropbox and TextExpander (Quang Do calls these "the 'standard requirements’ of new writing apps") along with a who’s who of services beloved by a certain kind of writer (Delicious, Pinboard, OmniFocus, Instapaper, to name a few). "Writing Kit has all these tools, because I believe users already have their own workflow and wish to find an app that integrates their workflow into the writing task," Quang Do says. "It is so that you can 'unitask’: Focus on your writing, and nothing else." (((.w.))) iPad’s lack of multi-tasking, saying that it was a focus machine ... http://tomorrowmuseum.com/?p=1516 ** Enter Writing Kit by developer Anh Quang Do:
Via Heiko Idensen
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Fascinating, award-winning, and very practical blog for writers (especially fiction writers). The key feature is a collection of six thesauri, which contain scores of lengthy, thoughtful, and informative essays on topics of interest to authors. Thesuarus ollections: Emotions Character Traits Settings Weather and Earthly Phenomena Sybolism
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We are one of the premier arts in prison organisations in the UK working towards raising self esteem and discovering hidden talents amongst both offenders and staff. Established in 1992 we have delivered over 130 residencies in prisons.
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Like many other adults, adult learners are trying to figure out how to make good choices when buying a computer. A group of educators from Boston area decided to address this need by developing a web-based virtual visit to a computer store that can be used for self-study or as part of a class with adult learners. Their web site “How to buy a computer” is one of several web-based projects completed by adult educators who participated in professional development on using the Web to augment instruction and supporting learners who might benefit from self-study. Practitioners from Massachusetts and Rhode Island focused on developing and supporting online learning options while Connecticut and Vermont practitioners learned how to build Web sites with students as a project-based activity. Via Patty Ball
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Although many teachers are interested in and excited about technology integration, they are too busy to explore all the new technology tools available online. This blog post is dedicated to all of the overworked teachers who just don’t have the time to seek out this information. I have provided brief explanations, links to and pictures of the tools mentioned by Simple K12 (and a couple of my favorites). I hope this makes it more manageable for teachers to pick and choose which tools they want to use.
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The project at the end of this post is something my class is working on at the moment and I’d like to share it with you. The objective is to create a comprehensive guide for digital citizenship and understanding your digital identity and privacy. I designated project managers and provided objectives and outcomes for the class along with a five point structure of what should be covered.
I encourage you to steal the project below and make it better. In fact, remix and share it with others. I will share the final result once students complete this project. Don’t feel this type of learning is impossible in core subjects. This type of project has potential across all content areas and all the way up Bloom’s taxonomy. Also, this is not a technology driven lesson. Students could complete the same type of project without any technology in the classroom.
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By Allan Douglas
Creativity erupts from some people like magma from a volcano; it requires no encouragement and you couldn’t stop it if you tried. Loathsome aren’t they? For most of us creativity is more like a puppy. It will frolic and play around the room, it may chew up our favorite slippers if left unattended, or it may wander off, curl up in its bed and nap. We have little control over what our cute little Muse will choose to do, and it rarely chooses to help pull the dogsled we call a Work In Progress.
But, through the use of some training and encouragement Muse can grow into a useful and dependable companion.
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Fifty-nine interactive activities focused on English language literacy from grades K-12, most on writing.
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A growing collection of (currently) over 800 simple black-and-wide graphic icons designed to communicate as simply and effectively as possible. Each icon may be downloaded for free, although donations are encouraged. Site also has a very interesting blog. Useful for illustrations and prompts for writing and speaking in any language. -JL
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Students in Mrs. Murawski’s kindergarten class at Magruder Elementary School knew that their work mattered. One reason they fully committed themselves to carefully designing and constructing the gingerbread house was because they are donating the house to a local senior citizen’s home to bring joy during this holiday season.
At the start of the construction project, Mrs. Murawski convened her students for a design team meeting. Each student chose to serve on a committee which planned one aspect of the job. For example, the landscaping committee planned the layout and creation of the yard while the roof committee developed ideas for the top of the house.
These five year old children learned a lot about team work. Mrs. Murawski commented that one of the biggest challenge for students was "working with a committee of students, making decisions together and realizing that you have to compromise. As they came together with their research information and began to share the ideas with each other they realized that they may indeed like what they saw in their classmate's research booklet."
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Interesting piece published by Edutopia's Audrey Watters in December 2011, well before Apple's blockbuster announcement last week. -JL
Teachers can customize textbooks using available digital and open educational resources, writes journalist Audrey Watters. Having teachers help build digital textbooks allows them to deliver relevant instruction and align textbooks with lesson plans, Watters writes. She suggests resources to help teachers create their own texts.
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Day One isn't cheap—the desktop app for Mac will set you back $9.99, and the iOS app for iPhone and iPad will cost you $1.99. For that price however, you get a very robust writing tool that lets you jot down your ideas freehand in the app or through a menubar utility, quick search of all of your current and previous entries, a calendar view so you can easily see how well you've been keeping up with your writing, and even reminders to make your daily entries. The app even has command-line support, so if you spend your day in Terminal windows, you can still get a little writing done.
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“The written word is coming to life by being a key part of multimedia,” Boardman said. “When people can not only pick up something by the written word, but also listen to it, see it move across the screen or see someone’s interpretation of that word through moving images, then I think it becomes much more alive.” One of the Institute’s projects is CommentPress, an open-source plug-in for WordPress that aims to turn a document into a conversation (view examples here). Readers can comment on, say, an academic paper before it has gone to press and add insights and questions in the margins of the text. Via Heiko Idensen, Jim Lerman
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StoryBird is a web tool that allows students to use artists’ artwork to create a story book. I have used this tool in the classroom to help reluctant 4th and 5th grade writers find motivation for creative writing. There are many applications for use, for example: creative writing, using art with spelling words to create a story, illustrating content areas in creative ways… the possibilities are endless!
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Very thoughtful and practical. Good work on Tasks, Rubrics, and Portfolios. A little print-heavy, but very useful. -JL
By Jon Mueller From the website: The Authentic Assessment Toolbox, a how-to text on creating authentic tasks, rubrics, and standards for measuring and improving student learning.
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University Beyond Bars recognizes the efforts of other education programs in prisons across the U.S. UBB thinks of these programs as allies and we encourage you to look at their websites and their ongoing work in education and social justice.
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One of the many interesting tools Caitlin Tucker provides on this site is a preview of MyFakeBook (similar to Facebook). In the past, when I worked in a more traditional setting, my students have used this program to create biographies of important individuals from the Renaissance era and then proceeded to use the information in a social "meet and greet" inside the classroom. Although today I would not assign people or eras for the students to investigate at a given time, I would suggest students try something like this to supplement what they have learned about someone important to them. This would show that they can make connections between historical contexts and present day social interactions. The work would also show that they are able to diagnose changes in language, one of many ways they would critically and creatively apply their thinking.
Troy Hicks (2013) provides many resources and tools for digital writing that would supplement this list of web tools from caitlintucker.com. For narrative, informative, and argumentative works, there are blogs (Blogger, WordPress, Tumbler), wikis (Wikispaces, PBWorks), Websites (Google Sites, Weebly), and Social Networks (Twitter, Edmodo) (Hicks, 2013, p. 37). These can and should be utilized throughout the entire writing process, and essentially, they make learning more fun! Collaboration is made easier with online tools, so they align with CCSS as well.
References:
Hicks, T. (2013). Crafting digital writing: composing texts
across media and genres.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.