Teaching the New Writing - Book

Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom

Tara Seale, a high school english teacher just southwest of Littlerock, Arkansas made her twitter learning network aware of this book this week. She has shaped one of her proposals for the upcoming school year on the research and examples from the book.

I'm always looking for writing resources and wanted to learn more about this book so after a little digging I was able to find the Teachers Teaching Teachers Blog on the EdTechTalk channel.

Talk about added value! The 3T folks have produced a three part podcast series about the book. It only took me listening to the first episode to convince me to buy the book. The book has a few editors [interviewed in episode 1] but basically the book is written by teachers all over America.

The writers are teachers who use technology in some interesting and clever ways to enhance writing in the classroom.

Episode 1 - The New Writing Listen | Download 42 minutes
Episode 2 - Collaboration Listen | Download 62 minutes
Episode 3 - Audience in Writing Listen | Download 56 minutes

For the Canadian readers of this post the book is available at Amazon.ca. Many of the teacher/writers have blogs and websites and are on Twitter.

Here are some links to a few of the editors and authors to save you having to look for them.

Episode 1

Anne Herrington - Editor
Kevin Hodgson - Editor
Charles Moran - Editor

Episode 2

Glen Bledsoe - Chapter writer
Jeff Schwartz - Chapter writer
Paul Allison - - Chapter writer

Episode 3

Dawn Reed - Chapter writer
Troy Hicks - Chapter writer
Bryan Crandall - Chapter writer

4 R's

I read Doug Peterson's blog post this morning and noticed that he "tagged" me and other Canadian bloggers with a task.

I guess this is the 21st century "chain letter". I've never been a follower of this type of thing but, I really respect and like what Doug writes and how he thinks, so I'm jumping into the fray.

Rant

I don't think I'm much of a ranter, with this blog anyway, but I guess I go on at length about Boys in our classrooms and their writing. So much so that I created an entirely new blog devoted to the conversation. So without singling out one particular post, I'll link to the blog in its entirety. Geesh, what a way to start.

Resources

This is an easy one. I like to share the many resources our teams of teachers create. Probably my favourite resource post this year was my last post. One about a Non-Fiction writing initiative we finished during the last week of June. Lots of goodies there if you are a junior division teacher.

Reflections

Another easy one. I crossed into new territory after the Expanding our Boundaries conference in Toronto during February of this past school year. This gathering of amazing educators was a personal favourite of mine and probably was the most amazing conference I've attended in years. Here are my thoughts and reflections. My PLN just grew.


Revelations

My "aha" moment came this past school year. I suddenly realized that most of the experts I had been reading and learning from have come to the conclusion that it is in the relationships we nurture in the classroom - - in this case boy learners - - [what else?] that produces the best results. So here's my revelation blog post: Building Relationships.

So there you have it! Thank you Mr. Peterson for including me in your list of educators. I think a mid-July reflection and post is just the ticket! I feel better already.

And now, back to summer...