Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Based on an image by Wrote, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

When you buy a new appliance or gadget, do you read the manual? When you are learning how to use new software, do you use the Help menu? If so, you have encountered technical writing, a genre that requires high levels of clarity and consistency as well as brevity. Good technical writing takes advantage of text features, diagrams, illustrations, photos, and color to describe a product or a process in a straightforward manner that the reader can quickly and easily understand.

Typically we teach students narrative writing, persuasive writing and writing in response to literature, but we often neglect to teach them technical writing, the kind of writing they need for math and science classes where they must write precise instructions, descriptions, and explanations. Giving students opportunities to engage in technical writing can help them gain skills and confidence that will carry over to all the other types of writing they must do.

In Thursday’s webinar, we will discuss how technical writing differs from other types of writing and how we can engage even our most reluctant writers in this kind of activity. We’ll share strategies and scaffolds for helping students write clear, concise directions, descriptions, and explanations using Pages and other applications on the MLTI MacBooks. We’ll also demonstrate how students can use applications like OmniGraffle and Comic Life to make diagrams and illustrations for their technical writing pieces.

Please join us on Thursday, February 10 at 3:15 or 7:15 PM to learn how you can help your students gain writing skills that will serve them well in higher education and in the workplace. To view our calendar and register for one of these sessions, click on the Webcasts tab at the top of this page.

Wide angle view or strong focus? Current or timeless? Authoritative or opinionated? Both? Neither? Students have it hard these days, navigating web resources to find the information that will attend to their questions. In this webinar, we’ll attempt to help our students out with a few pointers, rules of thumb and a dose of sound judgement when it comes to evaluating digital resources. We’ll also discuss the various avenues available to students for publishing their research findings, why this is a good idea and what to do with the feedback they receive.

This session will be delivered on Thursday, June 17, at 3:15 PM and again at 7:15 PM. For information and to register, please choose the WebCasts tab at the top of this page.

Image by Bill Sodemann on Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/8852942@N08/4175299981/

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.

Made on an iPad by Ann Marie Quirion Hutton

One of the most exciting changes brought about by the advent of technology in our classrooms is the abundance of tools for publishing student writing. As a veteran teacher, I remember the days (and it doesn’t seem so long ago) when I struggled to find ways students could share their writing with someone other than me. Publishing gives students a purpose and a real audience for their writing and when students write for a reason other than to get a grade, they write better.

This week’s webinar, Publishing and Assessing, will take a look through the writing process lens at how to help students finalize their work and share it. Our MLTI MacBooks have many applications that can help students illustrate and display their writing in professional-looking products that can be printed or shared digitally. We’ll begin by exploring the many templates available in Pages and then move on to look at other iWork and iLife applications students can use to turn their writing into multimedia products.

Of course, the internet offers many opportunities for student publishing and we’ll discuss how teachers can help students publish for a real-world audience using the many web tools that are available. We’ll also take a look at sites that accept student writing for publication.

We began a discussion a few months ago about how to assess student writing. We’ve talked about formative assessment and how feedback can help students with revision and we will expand that topic this week to include some assessments that look at a writing piece as a whole. As always, your ideas, experiences, and resources will be an important part of this webinar so please come prepared to share.

Please join us this Thursday at 3:15 or 7:15 pm. Click on the WebCasts tab at the top of this page for information about accessing this webinar and for a link to the registration page.