YWP Digital Teachers Project

Thanks to all of you who participated in YWP presentations and workshops at November Learning BLC10 Conference in mid-July. Please get in touch with us (ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org or 802-324-9537) if you wish to talk about doing a pilot.

AND, we encourage you to use this site in the weeks and months ahead. We are rebuilding this and it will begin to have quite a collection of lesson plans and teacher blogs.

If you've forgotten your password, click the link for a new one, or give me a call.

Geoffrey Gevalt

Note: I was surprised -- and honored -- to learn that this has been posted on http://novemberlearning.com/blog/ .... This was written a few minutes after anthology professor and digital guru Michael Wesch presented at the BLC10 conference in Boston. I've included one of his videos at the bottom of this.

At various times in Michael Wesch's presentation on Thursday, I felt alternately inspired, wowed, encouraged, thrilled and out-of-date, inadequate, woefully behind and, frankly, not as smart as I thought I was. Way not smart. I found myself wanting to create a video that would go viral, to redoing all our software so it could be half as cool or to help students create a project that would change  the world.

Michael Wesch should never drink coffee and I wondered how in the world he survived his summers in New Guinea. Then I realized that is what ALL of us need -- a visit to New Guinea, a time when we can just stop and listen and learn; that we -- not just the girl in the Dove commercial -- are getting bombarded, much as the presentation did, with thousands of ideas, and images, and entreaties. Do this, use that, get your kids over here. And that is, in fact, what makes us feel hopelessly inadequate and behind and ignorant. In today's classrooms there is such pressure to improve test scores, meet mandates, teach to curriculum AND jump into technology. There is also an intense pressure to make a difference, and, on a global scale, to gain a following, to change things. And to do it, we must have 45,367,578 views on our YouTube video which we create with students in one of our classes with the help of several kids in Ghana, Australia and Beijing.

For a more detailed menu of help topics, click here. (Takes you to a different site, ywpschools.net)

This Digital Writing Classroom is set up for teachers to participate in workshops, like BLC10, or to take part in YWP's Digital Master's Practicum. To begin, create an account and log in.

Navigation.

Once you log in, you will see in the upper left hand column a series of navigational links. Here is what they do:

UPDATE: Please go to richmondms.ywpschools.net to see some of the kids' Photo Stories.

Some of you had asked me to post this where you could see it. Several teachers have already tried out this idea with great success. Suggestions on how to do this in the classroom are below the picture.

This is my uncle Frank, Frank Glazer. He is 95 years old. He still performs as a concert pianist. He still teaches at Bates College. This year's project was to perform each of Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas in the order they were composed. He started in September and finished April 9. In the background is Frank's 1968 recording of Erik Satie's work; the New York Times called it the Classical Album of the Year. Frank has played with symphony orchestras all over the world. He premiered two of Aaron Copland's pieces. He began his career at aged 13 in a vaudeville show. Music, Frank says, keeps him alive.

-- Geoffrey Gevalt, YWP Director