Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Thanks to everyone who attended this webinar, the last in the Writing Process Lens for this school year. In this session we talked about the last stage of the writing process, publishing. We discussed why we must give students a purpose for writing other than to complete an assignment and an audience for their writing other than the teacher. In our MLTI classrooms, with 1-to-1 computing, students have a vast array of choices of ways to display their work and share it with the public. I demonstrated some examples of ways students can use the software on their MLTI MacBooks for publishing and suggested some online opportunities as well. Click on the Webcasts – Archives tab at the top of this page to find the links for the recordings to review the discussion of Pages, Keynote, iPhoto, and ComicLife. Here are links to  web resources mentioned in the webinar:

Web Publishing

• KidPub
• MidLink Magazine
• Write Source
• WriteFix
• Teen Ink

Print Publications

• Stone Soup
• Cicada Magazine
• Creative Kids

Fan Fiction

• Top Ten Fan Fiction Web Sites
• Harry Potter Fan Fiction

Jim Moulton’s blog post on Publishing Student Writing

Some resources contributed by participants:

• Lulu for self-publishing
• The Best Book on Northern Brown Snakes – a Lulu example created by a 2nd grade class
• Star Wars – fan fiction site
• Invasion Comic – an example of a publication created in Comic Life by middle school students
• MagCloud – another site for self-publishing
• Vermont’s Young Writers Project

Thoughts about assessment:

• Establish criteria before starting the writing project
• Checklists and rubrics
  • PBL Checklist creator
  • Rubistar
• Writing portfolios – look for evidence of improvement and growth
• Self-assessments and peer assessments – to self-assess effectively students must care about their work

Thanks once again to all the participants in this series of webinars. I know I have learned a lot from the participants and I hope we will continue to learn from each other.