2011/12 YWP Master's Digital Writing Practicum Syllabus

 

Saint Michael’s College Graduate Education Syllabus

YWP Digital Writing Practicum 2011/12

Title: Digital Writing in the 21^st Century – A Practicum

Instructor’s Name: Geoffrey Gevalt, Director of Young Writers Project;

Assisting; Nick Brooks and Cindy Faughnan, veteran former teachers and digital classroom experts

Office Hours: By phone or email anytime

Phone and email: (802) 354-9537 or 482-5625, ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org

Mailing Address: Young Writers Project, 20 Winooski Falls Way, Suite #4, Winooski, VT 05404

Classroom Location: There will be at least two sections of this course, one in Northern Vermont to be held at Young Writers Project headquarters in Winooski and one in Central/Southern Vermont to be held in the central/southern area depending on the enrollment. Most work will be done online; teacher participants will be provided a working digital classroom that they will be expected to use with their students during the year as part of this course. They will do most of their planning, reflection and commenting on a site similar to the one they use in school. There will be five in-person sessions during the year and three required Web conferences during the year. Participants will receive monthly feedback on their work in their school classroom as well as timely comments on their posts on their course site. The instructor will visit each participant’s classroom once during the year.

 

Course Description and Rationale:

Teachers learn best from other teachers who have expertise in both subject matter and uses of technologies for learning. This collaborative practicum will provide participants with a dynamic hands-on learning experience, instruction on making best use of up-to-date technologies and strategies to improve the teaching of writing for students 4 – 12. As many teachers have said in prior years, this is a transformative experience. Participants will be provided digital classroom space on a shared website which they will use regularly during the year with their students as part of their course. The practicum will train teachers in the use of the digital classroom for writing across curricula based on learning theory and successful teaching practices. Participants can be from language arts, world languages, science, art, music, technology, math, social studies. Participants will learn by doing – they will engage their own students in digital writing exercises and accomplish their own work in a similar space with peers.

This course is a rigorous practicum that will quickly bring teacher participants into 21st Century Digital Teaching Practices by helping teachers use digital technology to help students improve their writing skills, build communities of writers, engage in civil discourse and peer-to-peer feedback, collaborate and use multimedia. Participants will learn in two ways – leading exercises for their students and participating as “students” on a similar site. Participants will receive peer-to-peer feedback as well as individualized feedback and mentoring during the year by one or more of the course instructors.

This three-credit Masters-level course (accredited through St. Michael’s College) begins (N: Winooski; S: White River Junction) Sept. 19(N), 20(S) and ends May 11. During the year, five progress trainings/discussions will begin in late afternoon; date depending on whether you are in the North or South section): September 19(N) or 20(S) (kickoff) 3 – 8 p.m. (food served); October 25(S) or 26(N), January 17(N) or 18(S), March 15(S) or 16(N) and April 30(N) or May 1(S) 4-8 p.m. (dates subject to change based on needs of group.) Web conferences will be required in November and February and a third anytime during the year. All gatherings will last 4 hours; plan accordingly. YWP will provide training and follow-up instruction at the second meeting to ensure that teacher participants have sufficient skills and confidence to adequately participate in the course. Total classtime: 20 hours.

Participants’ school classroom space or site (for more, go to ywpschools.net) will be where participants engage their own students in writing assignments as well as exercises designed to raise those students’ digital literacy skills including writing for a private online audience of their peers, incorporating digital images, audio and video into their writing projects; giving civil, constructive peer-to-peer feedback; using the Web for additional learning and connecting to other communities. 

Participants will be expected to read several books and leading-edge course materials and follow selected blogs and other writings of teachers from around the world who successfully incorporate digital technology in their classrooms in all curriculum areas. They will also engage in their own Web exploration for examples of how other schools around the world use digital technology to enhance student learning. Additionally students will be required to engage in at least three Web conferences with the YWP instructor for a total time of 1.5 hours

A separate website, digitalteachers.net, will serve as a space for participants to try out the tools and practices in their own learning process, reflect on their own experiences and the readings, and collaborate with other participants. It also will be the space where they can best connect with their instructor and seek assistance with upcoming projects.

Participants will write about and revise their online classroom exercises so they can be published and shared with other teachers. Their exercises will be focused on developing their skills, confidence and knowledge around at least seven digital literacies that will lead to at least one larger classroom project of their own design by the end of the year.

Participants will be required to write reflections on their work during the year and to contribute to the group by commenting on other participants’ work. They will also be asked to assess their students' progress in writing and commenting as part of their final reflection  of their year.

Participants will be expected to assign work that requires their students to use the site; participants will:

• develop and study best practice ideas to engage students online,
• assess the results of their digital exercises; and
• assess the quality of their students’ work and the  effectiveness of their students’ comments to each other.

Expected class time online: 16 hours.

Course Objectives:

The rationale behind this course is three-fold:

• Vermont and N.H. students are not proficient in writing;
• Educational leaders are pushing schools to raise students’ digital literacy in order to prepare them for the demands of twenty-first century citizenship; and
• Making the transition to the digital classroom can be daunting – this course is intended to help participants make a great leap in their teaching technique and effectiveness using digital technology.

Participants in this course will increase their knowledge and expertise in:

• Using a specially designed website as a digital classroom;
• Helping their classrooms become communities of writers;
• Changing their teaching methods to take advantage of the power of digital technology;
• Incorporating best-practice digital teaching and learning techniques;
• Using an online classroom to enhance their students' reading and writing skills;
• Enhancing their students’ writing and critical thinking skills;
• ncreasing their and their students’ digital literacy, particularly civility;
• Fostering a spirit of collaboration and enhancing a peer-to-peer learning environment;
• Assessing students’ progress and improvement in digital environment;
• Increasing their ability to express their own ideas and teaching techniques;
• Improving their ability to innovate and try new ideas;
• Understanding how digital technology can help them teach;
• Keeping on top of emerging literacies;
• Using a variety of exceptional Web-based applications and desktop applications to enhance their and their students’ work; and
• Gaining experience in how to work on a Web site and online learning community.

 

Expected Outcomes:

Participants will:

• Gain the knowledge and confidence to necessary to become leaders in integrating technology in the classroom;
• Increase the collaborative and peer-to-peer learning models in their classrooms;
• Learn the value of getting students to regularly write and comment on each other’s work;
• Learn the value of peer-to-peer feedback as a strategy to develop communities of writers;
• Learn the value of using multimedia, online spaces and Web applications to engage their students in deeper learning;
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross culturally;
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information;
• Create critique analyze and evaluate multimedia texts;
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments; and
• Develop as writers, committing to a writing practice- part of the non-negotiable foundation for the teaching of writing.

 

Course Policies/Expectations:

• Participants will be expected to attend all sessions in their entirety, observing beginning and ending session times.  Any unexcused absences will result in a loss of one letter grade per absence. 
• Participants will complete all readings and assignments observing deadlines and criteria as outlined in this syllabus.

 

Required Reading:

Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger,

Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky

E-Learning in the 21^st Century, D.R. Garrison and Terry Anderson

Digital writing workshop, Troy Hicks , Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH

Drive or A Whole New Mind  by Daniel Pink, Penguin Group: USA

Teaching the new writing: Technology, change and assessment in the 21^st century classroom, Anne Herrington, Kevin Hodgson, and Charles Moran, editors. (2009)  Teachers College Press: New York, NY and National Writing Project: Berkeley, CA (228 pp.)

Online:

Videos of Michael Wesch (http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch) and Karl Fisch (youngwritersproject.org/node/16321)

Henry Jenkins' White Paper for the MacArthur Foundation (digitallearning.macfound.org/)

Ewan McIntosch’s Edu-Blog (edu.blogs.com/)

Henry Jenkin’s blog (www.henryjenkins.org/)

Danah Boyd’s white papers (www.danah.org/)

Innovateonline (innovateonline.info)

Teachers teaching teachers (teachersteachingteachers.org)

Vicki Davis (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/)

Bud Hunt (budtheteacher.com/blog/)

Paul Allison (paulrallison.blogspot.com/)

And a variety of links located on this course’s Web site at http://digitalteachers.net

Participants’ links – As part of this course, participants will develop their own resource list of examples of how other schools are using digital technology in their classrooms.

Recommended Readings:

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson (newest edition)

Choice words: How our language affects children’s learning, Peter H. Johnston

David Warlick's  Redefining Literacy Encore

Pamela Takayoshi's  Teaching Writing with Computers

Jean Twenge’s Generation Me

Ken Robinson’s Out of our Minds

Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture

Pierre Levy’s Collective Intelligence

James Paul Gee’s Situated Language and Learning

William Kist’s New Literacies in Action

Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community

Bertram Bruce (editor) Literacy in the Information Age

Recommended Conferences:

Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference  December, New Hampshire  (http://www.nhcmtc.org/)

Vita-Learn’s Vermont Fest 2011 – November, Vermont

(http://vitalearn.org)

Course Schedule:

This course will allow participants to establish their own schedule for doing most of the exercises required for this course. For that reason, this course is open to participants regardless of computer/technology skills. However, those with limited experience should make arrangements with the instructor for some special mentoring during the early part of the year. All participants are expected to integrate their regular course work onto the Digital Writing Classroom site. This is, after all, a practicum.

All participants will be expected to research, create and assess exercises for a regular series of lesson plans on the Web for their students. (We suggest that they should do at least one assignment/lesson plan per month, but they are required only to write about five; Each write up should include: The Lesson Plan (the purpose, detailed assignment and expected outcomes; template provided); the reality (how it went and a reflection on what could have been done better, and what went well.) These writings are enhanced with examples and student comments. If participants post their plans well before they give the exercise in class, they can take advantage of feedback from colleagues.

Participants also will be expected to have their students write regularly and to use the site for non-assignment work – quick “free write” exercises, sharing of additional work, regular commenting.

 

Instructional sequence

Stages

The first part of the course will be spent getting used to the site and getting students to use it regularly – small, timed writing; regular commenting; some introductory assignments. The second part of the course will be to set up more in-depth assignments on the school sites. The final part of the course will be to incorporate digital media into the assignments and the students’ work: images, audio, slideshows, embedding of other Web work, resource lists, RSS feeds, etc.

Course participants will be expected to post their writing on the  Digital Practicum 11/12 space on http://digitalteachers.net. They are expected to read and comment on their colleagues’ work as well. The deadlines set up below are intended as guideposts but they should be seen as general deadlines; participants are free, however, to do projects sooner.

Stage One – Introduction, developing routines for regular writing and commenting, deepening commenting, creating communities of writers.

Blog Post 1: About me. Tag: Bio

Blog Post 2: Fear of Flying.  Tag: Digital fears

Deadline: Before Meeting 1

These are intended for you to get a crash course in learning by doing.

BIO: Go to digitalteachers.net (an account will be set up for you – username and password will be sent by email), click “create a blog entry” and write a story about yourself – pick a memorable or important moment that will tell us something about who you are. Include a photo. Choose the bio tag. Comment on two of your peers’ pieces.

FEAR: What are you most worried about this year with respect to using a digital classroom in your school? What are some potential solutions to your fear(s)? Be honest, open. This exercise is also designed to get you to understand that writing requires you to take a risk. Choose the digital fears tag. You also must comment on at least two other participants’ posts.

Meeting 1: Building a Community of Writers

Sept. 19 (N), 20 (S) at YWP (North) and Site to be determined (South)

This will be a four-hour session beginning at 4 p.m.. Participants are expected to familiarize themselves with their sites before this meeting (including Blog Posts 1 & 2). This gathering will provide you with an overview on digital writing and the Web, some logistics and specific training on use of the sites. Participants will be given some exercises to help them use the sites and begin building communities of writers. Come armed with questions. Food provided.

Readings: 

• “Imagining a Digital Writing Workshop”, and “Fostering Choice and Inquiry Through RSS, Social Bookmarking, and Blogging” pp. 1 – 34 in The Digital Writing Workshop, Troy Hicks
• "Weblogs: Pedagogy and Practice,"  pp. 17-42 in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson

Meeting #1 Schedule:

• 4 p.m. – 7 minute Quick Write and commenting
• 4:30 —Reading Discussion and overview, exemplars on use of digital classroom and building communities of writers within the classroom. Q&A.
• 5:45 – Break – sandwiches
• 6:15 – Practical training – Creating blogs & exercises, navigating the site, quick features run-down, Q&A.
• 7:30 – The first exercise. Quick write on brainstorming ideas for accomplishing during the year – what do you want to do? Tag: Plan.

 

Blog Post 3: The Roadmap for the year. Tag: Plan

Blog Post 4:  Designing your first exercise  Tag: First exercise

Deadline Sept. 26:

PLAN: So now what? Revise the planning brainstorm piece to provide yourselves with an outline for the year – what are your goals; what are your solutions to your fears or problems? What is your progression of work? This plan should include how you will be getting the kids to write, share and comment on the site AND in other spaces, i.e., writer’s notebooks, etc. It will also outline how you are going to cope with commenting – We advise not to set too stringent rules other than to suggest that kids comment on their observations while reading – one thing that engaged them, one thing they wondered about.

FIRST: It is important to get started right away. Don’t put it off. This blog should outline your first exercise, perhaps even a quick write using an image. Followed by commenting. It is important to include in this blog your goals and expectations for the exercise AND return to the blog once you’ve accomplished that first right to REFLECT on what actually happened.

Comment on at least two blog posts of your colleagues in the digitalteachers.net space.

 

Blog Post 5: Reflections on Commenting  Tag: Commenting & Strategies

Deadline Oct. 18: It’s all been a buzz – the new year, new students, new technology. This post is intended to have you focus on how your students are commenting. What do you notice about the students’ commenting? What would you like it to become? How do you think you can get them to focus more on commenting? What about your own commenting? How is it different than marking a paper? Tag: Commenting. Comment on three other colleagues’ posts.

 

Meeting 2: Focus on Commenting

October 25(S), 26(N): This session is intended to focus on making sure everyone knows how to use the site, on the importance of commenting and regular writing and sharing experiences.

Readings

• Article - One Approach to Guiding Peer Response by Kim Jaxon, pp.1-6
• http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/12420/Kim_Jaxon_One_Approach_to_Guiding_Peer_Response.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d
• Commenting, By Geoffrey Gevalt: http://digitalteachers.net/node/124

Meeting #2 Schedule

• 4 p.m. – 7 minute Quick Write and commenting
• 4:30 — Sharing groups. Break up in small groups to discuss reading and commenting experience.
•  5 Reporting out – some highlights of the smaller discussions: What was learned? Q&A. Exemplars from participants and colleagues.
• 5:45 – Break
• 6:00 – Practical training – Q&A on problems, confusions, issues with using the sites. PARTICIPANTS need to email the instructor ahead of time outlining some of the issues and needs. AND a refresher walk through on basic features including RSS feeds, uploading podcasts, incorporating images/galleries, gradebook, etc.
• 7:30 – Commenting. Quick write on ideas for working with commenting – What are your concerns about commenting? How can you see incorporating comments into your regular writing lessons? Why is it important? What are the obstacles? Participants will have time to write their reflections online. Tag: Plan.

Blog Post 6: Fostering good commenting  Tag: Commenting & Strategies

Deadline: Two days later

COMMENTING: Working with your brainstorm ideas, develop an exercise to focus your students’ commenting. Don’t go right to a “rubric” but try to develop a series of exercises, strategies and discussions with the kids to deepen their commenting. This is an extremely important part of a digital classroom: peer-to-peer commenting. How do you achieve more depth from your students?

Blog Post 7: Using images. Tag: Images

Deadline: Nov. 21.

IMAGES: Using images is a powerful way to foster quick, creative writing. This blog is intended to get you to think about the various ways you can use images in writing – from quick writes, to photo stories, to personal essays to collaborative projects. Design an exercise that involves an image. Set goals and expectations. Revise in two weeks with outcomes, examples and student comments to each other and, if possible, about the assignment. Tag: Images. Comment on three peers’ work.

WEB CONFERENCE #1

Set up a time with any of the instructors to talk about feedback you have received, successes and questions you might have. This is intended to make sure that you know how to use the sites well, that you know how to use the sites most effectively. These sessions are intended to be 30-minute focus sessions but they can be longer and we may piggy-back several participants with some of the same issues. In setting up the time for the Web conferences, (pre or post Thanksgiving) communicate with the instructor what areas you want help.

Stage Two: By now, participants’ students should be using their digital classroom regularly (at least once a week) for writing and commenting. They should be creating and revising on the site. The quality of commenting should be improving – more depth, more questions, more articulate observations. The class will now focus on more complex projects and introducing multimedia.

Meeting 3: Multimedia Intro & Collaboration.

Jan. 24(N), 25(S): Multimedia. This marks the second stage of the Practicum. Class also will discuss how to create a Photo Story.

Readings

• "Social Web and Learning Together", pp. 89-100 in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson
• “Creating Your Digital Writing Workshop”, and “Appendix 1” pp. 125 – 134 and 135 - 151 in The Digital Writing Workshop, Troy Hicks
•  "Poetry Fusion: Integrating Video, Verbal, and Audio Texts," pages 92-106 in Teaching the New Technology.  
•  "This I Believe" Student Curriculum, This I Believe, a public dialogue about belief, one essay at a time, http://thisibelieve.org.
• Campbell, Gardner.  "Something in the Air, Podcasting in Education." Educause November/December 2005.  http://www.cblt.soton.ac.uk/multimedia/PDFs08/Podcasting%20in%20education.pdf

Meeting #3 Schedule

• 4 p.m. – 7 minute Quick Write and commenting
• 4:30 — Reading discussion. Exemplars of ways teachers use Multimedia. Walk throughs on doing podcasting, images and photo stories.
• 5:45 – Break
• 6:00 – Practical training – Participants will create podcasts, incorporate images and incorporate music into the podcasts.
• 7:30 – Multimedia. Quick write on ideas for creating a multimedia exercise – What is practical? What don’t you know? Who are students can help? What is going to be the most engaging exercise? Tag: Multimedia1

Blog Post 8: Multimedia  Tag: Photo Story

One week later:  Revise what was started in class; develop a plan for a podcast/photo story with various stages – brainstorm, draft, commenting, revision, podcast, revision, photo integration, re-podcast. Incorporate this assignment into one of your required writing blocks or portfolio items – personal narrative, persuasive writing, reflection on an event or reading. Outline goals and objectives. Comment on three colleagues’ ideas. Revision should come after the exercise is accomplished: what was learned, what would you do differently. REWRITE the exercise for later use if necessary. Tag: Multimedia1

WEB CONFERENCE #2

Set up a time in mid/late February with any of the instructors to talk about feedback you have received and about your multimedia assignment. Questions, problems, worries. Communicate with the instructor what areas you want help.

Blog Post 10: Reflection - assessment

March 6: Write about your most recent assignment. Pay particular attention to how student commenting affected the process and impacted other students in their effort to accomplish the assignment. Provide examples. Also write about a problem you are having. Comment on three colleagues’ posts.

WEB CONFERENCE #3

The “third’ conference can be set up at any time but should focus on one of YWP’s regular topic conferences, particularly on using multimedia.

Meeting 4: Assessing and Multimedia #2

March 15(S), 16(N): Participants will be introduced to a variety of Web apps to use for multimedia projects. They also will be looking at how they are assessing student work – is it changing?

Readings

• "RSS: The New Killer Ap for Educators,” pp. 75 -87 in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson
• An Evolutionary, Democratic Learning Community" pp. 64 - 75 in Choice Words: How Our Language Effects Children's Learning, Peter H. Johnston
• “Technology, Changes, and Assessment: What We Have Learned” in Teaching the New Writing pp 198-208

Meeting #4 Schedule

• 4 p.m. – 7 minute Quick Write and commenting
• 4:30 — Reading discussion. Exemplars of ways teachers use Web apps. Walk-throughs on several key apps; embedding code. How do we assess this stuff? Exemplars of how teachers assess multimedia projects.
• 5:45 – Break
• 6:00 – Practical training – Participants will create a piece using one of the Web apps. A quick exercises designed to show the possibilities.
• 7:30 – Multimedia Exercise. Quick write on ideas for creating a more complex multimedia exercise using an external app or desktop software. What is practical? What don’t you know? Who are students can help? What is going to be the most engaging exercise? How can it connected to required study blocks? Tag: Multimedia1

Blog Post 11: Multimedia project 2 Tag: Multimedia2

Two days later:  Polish the second multimedia exercise. Establish goals, timetable, strategy and expectation. This assignment should have stages and progress to a finished project. How are they going to be published. Revise when exercises completed with how you’d do things differently, what happened. Provide links in the later reflection for your colleagues. Comment on three colleagues’ projects.

Stage Three: Participants are expected to be having their students write and comment regularly, have taught students to have facility with audio, images, slide shows and Web apps and have deepened their understanding to the point of seeing the potential of going much deeper in the coming year.

Meeting 5: Sharing and impact

• April 30(N), May 1(S):  You will be asked to share biggest success of the year and how you are assessing the work. How has that changed you or your kids?
• Readings: 
• Drive, Daniel Pink (2009) Penguin Group:USA (256 pp.)  (special focus on two sections for this session: 'Seven Reasons Why Carrots and Sticks Don't Work'; pp 34-58 and  'The Three Elements (to motivation)' pp 86-146)
• ejourney with technokids by Anne Mirtschin, an IT teacher in a rural public school in Victoria, Australia
• Ewan McIntoch's Edu-blog -- Ewan is one of Europe’s foremost experts in digital media for public services, particularly in education.

Meeting #5 Schedule

• 4 p.m. – 7 minute Quick Write and commenting
• 4:30 — Reading discussion. Exemplars – Participants show one quick example of the most surprising thing that happened during the year on their site.
• 5:45 – Break
• 6:00 – More sharing.
• 7:00 – Q&A on lingering technical issues.
• 7:30 – Final reflection. Quick write on impact of the year and course. How has it changed your teaching? How has it impacted your kids? Tag: Final Reflection

 

Blog Post 12 – Impact & Plans Tag: Impact & Future

Deadline: May 11: This is the most important thing you’ll write this year. Go back to your first post about your fears. Look over the work in your classroom. Look at your quick write. Reflect on how you’ve changed as a teacher? How has this affected your students? How will you do it better, more deeply in the coming year? This reflection will be your roadmap for the rest of the year. If you feel you didn’t use the site enough, or you didn’t get the students into enough of a regular writing routine, push to do that in the last month. Set the pattern. And how will you introduce it next year? What other things will you do? How will you do things differently? REQUIRED: Please provide links and examples. Read the reflections of your colleagues. All of them. Comment on three.

Assessment of participants:

Weight:

50% Work with students in your school digital classroom

35% Online course participation on digitalteachers.net

15% Meeting participation, Web conferences and attendance

To get an “A” on this course, participants are expected to 1) get their students to write and comment regularly on the Web site; 2) to actively integrate their regular class work onto the Web site and develop new methods for doing old curricula; 3) complete their writing assignments in a clear, concise and timely fashion and in a way that reflects learning from readings and Web research and that shows strong assessment of student results; 4) actively participate (comment) in the work of others posted on the practicum’s site, digitalteachers.net; 5) complete all required readings; and 6) innovate – devise new ideas to be tried out on the school online classroom and to be shared with other teachers. The assessment breakdown:

• In-classroom accomplishments – the degree to which writing and commenting becomes a regular part of the participant’s school online classroom activity and the degree to which the participant relies on students to help determine the online classroom learning process – represents 50 percent of the grade. This assessment is intertwined with the blog posts and reflects the effectiveness of the participant’s actual class work. Since participants will have different levels of understanding of technology, this assessment will be made on the basis of the participant’s progress not on a benchmark for all participants.
• Online course participation – blog posts and commenting on other participants’ posts – will represent 35 percent of the grade. The posts should be brief, clear and reflect the plan and the goals as well as outcome and reflections of each online project undertaken in the school classroom. The posts should also reflect understanding of course readings, materials and resources. The comments should reflect in-depth reflection of other participants’ work.
• Meeting participation – sharing of what participant’s accomplished in his/her classroom, questions for other participants, engagement in the in-class exercises – will represent 15 percent of the grade. In the event of meeting absences that have been cleared ahead of time by the instructor, a participant can offset by providing more commenting to other participant’s work.

During the course, the instructors will provide monthly assessments of work being done by participants on their school site; and regular and timely response to participants’ posts on digitalteachers.net. In some cases, participants will receive private messages, emails or phone calls about their work. Teachers are welcome to have the instructor visit their school and classroom during the year.

Additional resources:

YWP has considerable material on digital learning on its main Web site, youngwritersproject.org. Participants will be expected to set up RSS feeds of digital educators’ blogs and resources to learn how to remain a leading-edge digital teacher.

Attachment	Size
YWP-DWP-North.syllabus.11.12.pdf	240.89 KB
YWP.DW_.Practicum.Flyer_.11-12.pdf	229.45 KB
YWP-DWP-South-Syllabus.pdf	172.03 KB