National Writing Project

I deeply value the professional development opportunities I have gained by becoming a member of the National Writing Project. The previous post, A Day in a Sentence, is a collaborative writing activity conceived by my colleague and fellow NWP technology liaison, Kevin Hodgson. I was honored with the privilege to host A Day in a Sentence this past week. As I reflect on this experience, I am reminded of opportunities provided to me as a member of a much larger community, the National Writing Project. This government supported organization thrives on the revelation that teachers who teach other teachers will effectively develop writing instruction in our schools by becoming better writers. By immersing oneself in the practices needed to be effective mentors, teachers write volumes for varied audiences and purposes from self and/or the person sitting next to them in the summer institute to posting on the World Wide Web. Our moto this summer was "trust the process." Like art, writing can get messy and jumbled at times. After refining technique and shoring up the rough edges, one can effectively express one's perspective in general or specific terms to create a clear image for a desired audience. It is a great feeling to be so empowered!

Day in a Sentence (or two)

I am very pleased and privileged to be a member of a group of “digital explorers” formed by electronic leader and National Writing Project colleague Kevin Hodgson, technology liaison for the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. I am honored to be the guest host for this week’s collaborative writing activity, Day in a sentence.

As I was preparing to post this call for writing, I jumped over to Kevin’s Meandering Mind to find a very interesting new tool. I thought it would be great if you would consider adding a photo or snapshot to reinforce your sentence. If you do not have a photo, it is still perfectly fine to post your written sentence the words alone. Since I am a visual arts teacher, I love to see visual representations whenever possible. Check out Kevin’s posting for TagGalaxy as well. It is an amazing visual display.
The Technology Focus Group Blog was initiated to document evidence of professional development. Our writing inquiry was based on the use of online resources and digital media to research exciting, innovative writing practices that we could use in the classroom.
I hope you will join us this week by sharing your “week in a sentence” or your “day in a sentence.” Post your “day or week in a sentence (or two)” by leaving a comment under this post. I will gather then throughout the week and release them to the world on Sunday.

As a sidebar, if you have an image to share, you may have to send it to me separately from the post. I am not sure if you can post an image on the comment section here. Just e-mail the image to barbkuntz at comcast. net. Please remind me of your name and post.
I will happily display the image with the post.
Thanks so much for sharing your inspiration with us!

Amazing Photo Tools

I just spent the better part of today playing with a new website called TagGalaxy. It is a wonderful display of photos tagged on Flickr. I realized that I could create a unique tag for my own photos and see a interesting display with this tool. If you type in Indianabloom in the tag name you can see the images I have taken over the past two years. I can see plenty of applications in an art room. I can't wait to share this with my students in the fall. A great application of this web tool would be to allow your students to select a specific photo and tell a story about it. I plan to post artwork on Flickr to display for the school this year. TagGalaxy is a great application to display artwork publicly.

Vocabulary Images

One of my friends pointed me to another new web site that is incredible if you love words and images. http://wordle.net/gallery?username=artsmartie525 I hope you will check out this site for creating simple images of vital vocabulary. I know my students will see this site quite often in the coming months. What a great way to share new vocabulary in an interesting and visual approach. The tool menu is quite easy to use and you could print out the image if you need to place it in the hands of your students. I love this Web 2.0 tool.
Check out the other image I created with our 3, 2, 1 exercise from the summer institute. I asked the participants to jot down 3 emotions felt when hearing the word "technology", 2 utilities that they wanted to learn, and 1 application that they felt comfortable teaching their students. This is the list of our community spirit about technology. http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/33364/AWP_E-motions

In the Beginning

I am happy to say that we have spent the last five months asking technology questions that apply to our collective classrooms in regards to teaching writing to students. You have to learn the "how to"s before you can teach them to someone else. This has given us a chance to develop some technology tools that are being used during the summer institute for the Appleseed Writing Project in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I am certain that I have learned a great deal by being the leader of the first Technology Focus Group. I get very excited when I have an opportunity to learn new technology skills. I held my first two video conferences this year. I provided technical support for two of my colleagues who held video conferences with teachers from Texas in March of this year. Through the process of meeting with our technology focus group, we collectively created a Google document. While we realized that it was a fantastic tool, we found it was not the right tool for blogging for the summer institute. In February, I set up my first private blog that is being used for the summer institute. This is our public blog for teachers who are interested in discussing technology. I am certain that there will be others who would like to pose technology questions that are nagging at them as educators. I look forward to those future adventures where we will have a chance to discuss more technology questions at the heart of teaching students.