Lately I have been feeling quite down and defeated. I have emailed and called my legislators, signed petitions, to what feels like no avail. While I was at SXSW a few weeks ago, I had the chance to hear U.S. Sen. Al Franken speak on Net Neutrality. While this issue is not directly related to the NWP funding crisis, Sen. Franken did inspire me (and I believe many others in the crowd) that if we are passionate about an issue, we need to continue to speak up – it does make a difference. I can’t sit idly by – so I’m taking a few minutes to #blog4nwp during my lunch hour today.
Spend two minutes on the NWP website and you’ll immediately see how deep and wide the National Writing Project runs – http://www.nwp.org
The recently launched Digital Is site – http://digitalis.nwp.org is a groundbreaking repository for teaching. While it is “a collection of ideas, reflections, and stories about what it means to teach writing in our digital, interconnected world” the site goes well beyond the “traditional writing classroom” and serves as a cross curricular resource for any teacher – PK-12 and beyond.
My PLN (Personal Learning Network) on twitter is composed of several NWP alumni and champions (to name a few @yoopertechgeek@paulallison @poh @pkittle @MrChase @erinwilkey @budtheteacher @paulawhite @AWhite100 @kchichester @AprilJNiemela@CBethM @MsEstep @mrami2 @AndreaZellner @miztech @hickstro) While I may not interact with these individuals on a daily basis, their expertise and “lens” provided by their work with NWP enriches my own writing and scholarship.
Others interested in supporting the #blog4nwp initiative – please visit http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/the-blog4nwp-archive
Additional suggestions can be found at: http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/3-ways-to-help-blog4nwp/
Thank you for listening.