I went back to Twitter and decided to look around a bit.  Someone had tweeted the fact that Billy Collins’ talk at the NWP annual meeting was recorded and posted on the NWP site.  You can find it here. It is truly hysterical!

So maybe this is part of how I start with Twitter — just reading and learning!

I am thinking about Twitter again, trying to think about how I can make it part of my life.  When I tried last, it was for a TESOL EVO session, and it was OK — but I never really got into it.  But I want to do a better job this time.  How should I start?  Where should I start?  I went in today and changed my picture, but that was all I did.  I know that doesn’t quite count as getting back on Twitter.

I have some ideas for using Twitter with my students in the spring, but I can’t do that unless I am really comfortable with it myself.  It has to be easy for me before I will try it with my students.  I don’t want to try to sell them on something I don’t completely believe in myself.  So please, give me some ideas.  Help me work my way into it.

I have been a fan of Mike Rose ever since I read Lives on the Boundary.  If you don’t know his work, you really should check out his blog.  His most recent post explains why he wrote the book Why School?.  The whole post is great, of course, but this part really struck me:

I wanted the reader to sit close by as other human beings struggle with a problem, get that flash of insight, and push toward articulation, alone or with others. I wanted to capture the experience of discovery, of learning to do something you couldn’t do before, and, for some, to begin to think of yourself in a new way.

Too many people — even some working in schools — seem to have lost sight of the human beings in education.  I want to read Rose’s book to remind myself — just in case I am one of those who has forgotten!

It is past time to do this, I know, but I am finally going to post a few thoughts about the National Writing Project’s annual meeting, which was held last month in Philadelphia.

A highlight for me was, as you might expect, to hear Billy Collins read some of his poetry. If I had ever heard poetry like his when I was a kid, I would have loved poetry instead of hating it! His poems are wonderful, of course, but his deadpan delivery was hysterical. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time.

Another highlight was seeing my writing project friends from Louisiana – Richard Louth and his wife, Doris, George Dorrill, and Tasha Whitton. I also got to see Pennsylvanian Heather Harlan, who did the Advanced Institute with us one year in Louisiana. ow, though, I also have other “old” writing project friends — people I met last year like, Charles Nelson. And then, there also the new friends I made this year — people I hope to see and catch up with again next year in Orlando.

I attended sessions on developing a web presence, on living and learning with new media, on teaching the new writing, and on language and dialect diversity in the writing classroom. All four were great. The one on teaching the new writing really made me think about how I am teaching writing — and reading and everything else. I have seen my students respond to posting on their blogs this semester. I want to do more of that next semester. But I want to move beyond that, too. After that session I went to the one on new media, where we looked at how young people use media and where learning takes place there. This got me thinking about providing my students with a way to really go deeply into a subject that they are interested in, to “geek out” as the paper we read talked about. I don’t think I can do it for spring, but I want to try to pull something together for summer. It could be very interesting.

After all the learning and thinking, Saturday morning was spent writing. Richard Louth got us off to a good start. Then I went with four women to walk around the city and write. It was great!

I really did come home refreshed and rejuvenated. And brimming with ideas for the work I do for the writing project here in New Mexico and the work I do in my classroom. I can’t wait till next year!

(Portions cross-posted on the HPWP blog.)

when you’re having fun. And, if the last week is any indication, even when you aren’t!

I have not had a chance to sit down and write about the NWP Conference. Or what’s going on at work, Moodle-wise. I am going to do both real soon here. I promise!

We were supposed to have a follow-up to the Moodle conference earlier in the month this coming week, but it has been canceled by the administration. It will go on anyway, online rather than face to face.

I somehow don’t think I will be teaching on Moodle next semester! I think they are going to find a way to shut the project down. You have to wonder why. What is so threatening about Moodle?

I am in Philadelphia at the National Writing Project’s Annual Meeting. It has been wonderful to see old friends and make new ones, to write and read and learn in the company of writers. This morning we had a writing marathon and my old friend Richard Louth from Louisiana was there to get us going. It was a great morning, and I did some OK writing.

I will try to past my thoughts on the sessions I attended over the next couple days.

This is basically the presentation I gave at the conference earlier this month.

For about a month now I have been using Moodle with my classes rather than Blackboard.  Last week I gave a talk at a small conference we had on campus to publicize the Moodle Pilot program.  You can find it here.  It was fun, and there was some interest on the part of other faculty members, so I am hopeful that we will be able to continue using it next semester and that, eventually, it may become an official university option.

I have used Moodle for a number of years now, and I am so happy to be back using it.  It has made my life so much simpler!

There are none, of course.  I am not even sure where I have been and what I have done that I haven;t posted here for 2 weeks! Let’s see if I can do better now!