Blog 2: Montage Project: Multimedia Design Spring 2012

My multimedia montage project will be designed to support work being done in our English department. Specifically, fusing Writer’s Workshop into our writing instruction and articulating novel instruction grades 6 through 8. As a result, the following three communities will be jointed:

http://community.thinkfinity.org/community/professionaldevelopment

This is a Thinkfinity group that focuses on professional development. The idea of my project will be to support English teachers in working collaboratively to articulate writing and reading instruction grades 6 through 8 as well as to gather resources that can be used to support these efforts. I think this community will connect me with other professionals who deliver professional development so I can better dialogue and reflect on how to best design a support tool (website) that will create better collaboration and sharing among the English teachers (about writing and novel instruction).

http://englishcompanion.ning.com/

This will be the next group utilized so that teachers can connect with other middle school teachers to discuss writing and reading instruction and accompanying articulation with colleagues across the state and country. We are new to using Writer’s Workshop and we will also examine the articulation of teaching writing by finding how schools have successfully transitioned into this model and dealt with concerns that elements of writing will be lost in a model that uses Writer’s Workshop only. This site will allow me to post feedback from my teachers and get feedback from other professionals around the state and country about a specific topic or approach to using various models for attacking various types of writing. It, in essence, will serve as a second sounding board for conversations that take place in department meetings (I lead English department meetings).

http://teachers.net/mentors/middle_school/

This last groups will be utilized to get a broader perspective on teaching middle school students. This site is unique to middle school teachers and allows for cross curricular perspectives on the work being done in the English department. This site may be used to get insight on Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), for example. As articulation of reading and writing instruction broadens, it is important to get input from other middle school teachers across all subject areas.