Inspired Writing

Last month I wrote a post about my district’s Powered Up Writing project. Dan Maas, my district’s CIO, has now followed up his previous post with a description of Inspired Writing, a new project that we've proposed as part of our Educational Technology and Information Literacy Plan that’s required by our state department of education:

Using the vehicle of the Educational Technology and Information Literacy plan, we proposed to place netbook computers in every 5th grade, every 6th and 9th grade Language Arts classroom in the district. Building on the successful support of the Learning Services' Universal Literacy Framework in five 5th grade classrooms at East, Field, Moody, Whitman and Hopkins Elementary schools, we proposed a project we call Inspired Writing.

The ET-IL Plan (still in draft form) is a highly structured document to meet the requirements of the Colorado Department of Education. Our attempt to write a document that both meets the requirements but also communicates our vision is presented here.

I’m sure Dan would love to hear some feedback, so head on over to his blog and leave a comment. Please keep in mind that this proposal is limited to current, already allocated technology dollars (just re-purposing them), as we – like many districts – are in the midst of some huge budget issues. But this is also laying the groundwork – the pitfalls to avoid, the best practices for instruction, the hoped-for increase in student achievement – for a grade 5 though 12 implementation for our district. If this first step is as successful as we think it will be, then hopefully we’ll find a way to expand it to 5-12 in the near future.