Maine Learning Technology Initiative » prewriting

Oct. 8 Webinar Notes

Barbara Greenstone — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:28:44 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended our first webinar yesterday. I had a great time talking to Jill about prewriting activities and the participants added some great ideas and resources. As promised, here are the links from my slides and a collection that was harvested from the backchannel chat in both sessions.

Writing Prompts

Image Collections for Prompts or Visual Synectics

Digital Timer (for Quick Write)

Chimoo Timer

Resources and Ideas from Participants

Book: Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones
The Big Picture
saving interesting titles from newspapers (ones that don’t give away the article) and the kids love creating the news stories from the title.
buy art books on sale and use photos of painting, sculptures, etc. as writing prompts
Morgue File
Geography Photo of the Day
Smithsonian Images
Use photo layers in GoogleEarth
Research on effects of laptops on writing
Bean – free word processing program
add an index section in NoteShare notebook to look at words
Wordle
ABC Brainstorming for Math
Weaving a story from beginning to end using iPhoto images as a guide
Providing opening sentence
What happens next? Showing a short video clip, getting kids to carry on the story
Students in ECS create a Discovery Portfolio all about them with music added
PB Wiki where students respond to a reading
American Memory collection at Library of Congress
Image Detective
Pics4Learning (Kids can submit their photos)
Glogster
Kids build blogs in ePals
Blogspot and Photo Bucket
Quick Writes successful with LD middle school kids
Modeling with projector
Highlighting best ideas, sentences or phrases in a Quick Write
Free Rice (vocabulary)
Word Banks as eBulletin in Studywiz
Writing Prompts for Math

Webinar – Special Guest

Barbara Greenstone — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:21:31 +0000

The date for our first webinar is fast approaching and I’m pleased to announce that my co-facilitator for both sessions will be Jill Spencer. Jill is an educational consultant and author of Everyone’s Invited! Interactive Strategies That Engage Young Adolescents.

Jill Spencer

Jill and I taught together at Mt. Ararat Middle School several years ago and have worked together on many projects since. She has extensive experience as a professional development provider and coach and has been a presenter at several state, regional and national conferences. Visit her wiki to learn more about her work.

Jill and I will be sharing our thoughts and ideas about the prewriting stage of the writing process and we hope you’ll join us and share yours. You can find a link for registration on the Webcasts page of this blog

First Webinar – October 8

Barbara Greenstone — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:46:33 +0000

Mark your calendars! Our first Maine121 webinar, Beginning the Process with Prewriting Activities, will be Thursday, October 8th at 3:15 and again at 7:15.

In this session we’ll explore ways to get students started in the writing process. Much of the work of writing happens before the first draft and we’ll look at ways to help students with this important step. We’ll discuss ways to use some of the software titles on the MLTI MacBooks for brainstorming and gathering ideas and look at some web tools also. We’ll share some resources for writing prompts (including images as prompts) and try out a strategy for helping students build digital word banks.

Of course, we know that many of you have ideas and strategies that have worked for you and we hope you’ll take this opportunity to share them. Please join us on October 8, either after school at 3:15 or later in the evening from the comfort of your home at 7:15.

Getting ready to write – Illustration by Ann Marie Quirion Hutton

Joining a webinar

Make sure to choose the correct time for the webinar you want to attend and click on the link provided.

Thursday, October 8 – 3:15pm Webinar: http://stateofmaine.na4.acrobat.com/mlti100809a/

Thursday, October 8 - 7:15pm Webinar: http://stateofmaine.na4.acrobat.com/mlti100809e/

Please follow these steps to connect to the meeting:

Click on the link for the webinar you want to attend.
Enter your name in the box when prompted.
In order to listen and speak during the meeting, you will need to be connected by telephone as well as the Internet. To help you connect by phone, a box will appear asking for your phone number so the Connect conference room can call you back. If you have a telephone with a direct-dial phone number, please accept this option, enter your phone number, and we will call you right back.
If you have a telephone with no direct-line phone number (if your phone is only reached by a switchboard), please click on CANCEL when the call-back box appears, then dial-in to the meeting using this access combination:
Dial-In: 1-800-201-2375
Pass-Code: 714892
To participate in the web conference, you will need: a computer with a broadband connection to the internet (Cable, DSL, or WiFi); Dial-Up will not work! Adobe Flash Player (Flash 7 or later) installed on your computer; most computers already have the Flash Player installed – however, if yours does not, or if your Flash Player is in need of updating (version 6 or older), you can download the player for free from Adobe by clicking on this link: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?promoid=BUIGP; this is a safe and quick download. An open phone line; we recommend using a hands-free headset or speakerphone.