Thank you PowerSchool Learning for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about how I use PowerSchool Learning in my blended learning classroom, see my blog post on 5 Effective Blended Learning Strategies. In today’s episode, Jennifer and I discuss:
The importance of focusing on one goal when teaching writing Pitfalls of a lack of focus when teaching writing The most common mistake teachers make when using writing partners Tips on why you should wait to correct grammar and punctuation A super idea for sticky note outlining that works for fiction and nonfiction writing A common mistake that causes students to not want to write A secret for motivating writers I hope you enjoy this episode with Jennifer Serravallo! Thanks, Jennifer, for giving away your new book, The Writing Strategies Book, for one lucky iTunes reviewer.
When I was 21, I wanted to be a writer. But I only wanted to be a certain type of writer–like a journalist. I wanted to write a book one day, but not then. I remember reading Less Than Zero for a…
"WriteWell for Google Docs is a Google Docs Add-on that includes a series of templates for elementary school, middle school, and high school classrooms. These templates can be incorporated into a wide range of student writing activities and are well suited to Common Core writing tasks."
Charlotte Cullen: "How will viewers follow a story if they are able to look wherever they want? How will a director make scene cuts without making the user sick?"
First of all, lets imagine that in the classroom the students will be able to handle this resource in order to increase their speaking and reading skills in one tool. I know that this is something utopian in our context not only because of the price of the product and the scarce technological resources that some schools face. However, this does not imply that the product can not be used.
Maybe, one day this kind of resources will be implemented here in Colombia.
There are 5 words that weaken your writing. Whack them when you see them and increase the power of your prose. In random order… Very and really are often used for emphasis. Funny thing is, they’re so…
As the most common jobs shift in nature from the performance of repetitive tasks to the fulfillment of more discrete, unique projects (the project-based, gig economy), employees everywhere will be responsible for developing projects that deliver results. To do this, they will need to be able to communicate recommendations that tie a set of actions to specific business goals in a clear, convincing manner. This does not come naturally to most, but it is a skill that will become more and more crucial.
Additionally, many employers need great scientific or social media writers, but these writers also need to be able to layout the plan and goals that they will follow in a business or communication plan. Project reports, or any form of document that summarizes work, also are a key part of many employees’ jobs.
Next time you read a blog or a tweet, consider how you could incorporate that style of writing into your instructional day as a writing project for your students. Also explore LDC.org, which has professional development for teachers on how to facilitate writing across the curriculum, a band of quality writing prompts and a collaborative lesson authoring environment.
Events have taken such a dark turn in the United States with the election of Trump that many have felt the need to go back to the dystopian classics to get their bearings. These were novels written in the first half of the prior century when totalitarianism wasn’t just something relegated to gray photos in our history books while we lived our days in the bright neo-liberal sunlight of the post- Cold War era, but actually roamed alive and deadly in the real world.
Among the most well know of these novels, along with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is, of course, George Orwell’s 1984. Many of us had thought the bleak dystopia Orwell depicted had, by the early 21st century, been relegated to isolated hermit kingdoms such as North Korea. Huxley, we all knew, with his mind altering drugs, free love, and mind-numbing consumerism had been more prescient regarding how authoritarian power would operate- strangling our freedom not with an iron but with a velvet glove. Yet Trump seems to be proving the majority of us eggheads wrong. As Adam Gopnik so bluntly puts it in reference to what we’ve see of the Trump presidency so far:
Because the single most striking thing about his matchlessly strange first week is how primitive, atavistic, and uncomplicatedly brutal Trump’s brand of authoritarianism is turning out to be. We have to go back to “1984” because, in effect, we have to go back to 1948 to get the flavor.
Of course, Gopnik isn’t alone in suggesting 1984 has something especially important to tell regarding 2017. Since Trump’s election sales of the novel have soared by 9,500 percent. And still, trying to use 1984 as a map through the Trump presidency might pose just as many distortions as insights, and not just because other dystopian novels might offer better depictions of the actual type of dystopia we are in danger of falling into, but because our efforts and attention might be drawn into an ineffectual resistance against an enemy unlikely to arrive, while the real villain slips in unnoticed in his place. What’s required, then, is a close reading of 1984 to see where it fits and diverges from what’s happened so far, so here it goes:
The strategic approach National Geographic Travel takes to storytelling and how that positively impacts the amazing results that they see on social media.
"Hosted by novelist Brad Listi, Otherppl is a podcast featuring lengthy interviews with creative writers of all stripes, including novelists, poets, and screenwriters. Listi's podcast employs a distinct, informal style throughout his interviews, which each last over an hour. Listi's guests include well-established writers in addition to emerging writers and authors. Recent episodes feature interviews with essayist and short story writer Roxane Gay, novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen (author of The Sympathizer and, most recently, The Refugees), and Hanya Yanagihara (author of A Little Life). On this website, visitors can listen to the most recent 50 episodes free of charge. Listeners can also download a free application to listen to episodes on their iOS or Android devices. Those interested in exploring the complete archive of Otherppl - featuring over 450 episodes as of this writing - can do so by purchasing a premium subscription."
Fiction is a general term used to describe an imaginative work of prose, either a novel, short story, or novella. Recently, this definition has been modified to include both nonfiction works that contain imaginative elements, like Midnight in the Garden Of Good and Evil by John Berendt (Random House, 1994) and Dutch by Edmund Morris (Random House, 1999), and novels consisting largely of factual reporting with a patina of fictionalization, such as Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (Knopf, 1997). However, in the truest sense, a work of fiction is a creation of the writer’s imagination. The two main types of fiction are literary and commercial.
Did you know that a website you probably use every single day could be the key overcoming your writer’s block and unleashing an endless supply of juicy story ideas? Well, you probably had an inkling I’d say something like that based on the title of this post, but it’s true: Wikipedia is a powerhouse of writing inspiration … if you use it the right way. One of the benefits of working in IT is that I spend all day poking around the deep dark recesses of various technologies, including common websites. This may sound boring or even scary to non-techies, but it has a huge carryover to other parts of life. In the case of Wikipedia, that means taking full advantage of the supersite’s features to rouse your creativity.
We pair 10 photos from The Times that we’ve used in our weekly “What’s Going On in This Picture?” with ideas from students and teachers for how you can use them, or images like them, to teach close reading and visual thinking skills.
This is an excellent website that can be used as a resource for enhancing visual literacy, close reading and visual thinking skills, which are fundamental within the Arts. In the Arts, specifically Visual Arts and Media Arts, it is crucial to be able to read an image, and these photographs and resources within the link can be easily modified to create some simple exercises in reading the artworks.
I like this article since it presents some interesting pictures to teach English. We can use it for making a great conversation (practicing speaking skills) about important social concerns.
This post could as easily be titled, The Best Tool on Your Mac.
There is so much about Keynote that can be used in innovative ways for not only communicating but introducing virtually ALL of the fundamentals of computing to younger students it needs to re-imagined. More on that here but…
In terms of digital story telling, I have created a page to house all of the videos I recently created as a YouTube playlist and as the basis for an online course. The videos introduce vector graphic creation, digital story telling, the tools necessary to take it deeper, animations and the use of multiple slides to take the process further than Apple ever intended!
It also contains a classroom resource and a link to a workshop session on the same subject along with more session pages (many still under construction) covering an entire conference with Mac/iOS, Google for Edu, Coding and MakerSpace/Design Thinking strands.
For storytellers, digital is the biggest candy shop ever created. It enables stories to be told in fantastic new ways that combine a variety of media including written word, images, video, and even games…all at the same time. Of course, it took a while for the technology to get to a point where that was(...)
Though impressive, the first Virtual Reality offerings in education primarily consisted of pre-created experiences where students could explore famous landmarks, geographic regions and unique locations. For instance, thoughtfully developed tools such as Google Expeditions and Nearpod VR allow teachers to guide their students through … Read more
"Since the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has shot up the bestseller charts. The book’s chilling account of a couple’s struggle against a dystopian society has many elements that will strike a contemporary reader as disturbingly prescient. Orwell’s description of “doublespeak” – the ability, and requirement, to utterly believe two contradictory thoughts at the same time – feels tailor-made for a president who simultaneously believes that three to five million “illegals” voted in the election, and that his victory in that election was completely fair and valid.
"But Nineteen Eighty-Four is also a book about a particular kind of dystopian state: an authoritarian Stalinist future-Britain, based on the fears Orwell felt most pressing in 1948. Maybe it’s time to find better dystopias?"
"As VR storytellers, we are charged with molding experience itself into story, and none of our storytelling tools have prepared us fully for that. As we stumble our way into this new, mysterious medium, we ask ourselves, “How do we tell a story for the audience when the audience is present within it?”
"Being bodily present in the story seeds the need to be active, to “do.” But how does the audience know what to do? And how do we take their needs and perspective into consideration? To even scratch the surface of these questions, we need to better understand the audience’s experience in VR — not just their experience of the technology, but the way that they understand story and their role within it."
We capture special moments in our lives everyday. But often, these memories get lost deep within chat conversations or the camera roll of our smartphones. With Storyline, you can collaboratively create and share memories together with ease.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
