Talking with Children’s Author Jefferson Knapp

Talking Ed. with Jefferson Knapp

Episode 006 (View entire series)

I recently had the opportunity to interview Jefferson Knapp during the AAIM Conference in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

“A few weird memories that stayed with me ever since I was a kid eventually found themselves shaping the story that became The Kingdom at the End of the Driveway series. The people, animals and locations are all very real to me and will no doubt be shocking to some who weren’t aware that they or their pet had a part to play in this story” (Source).

The following is the video from the interview. In it, Jefferson introduces us to his book series, shares the inspiration for his first book, shares insights into his writing process, and discusses ways that he would enjoy connecting with you and your students.

Further Investigation

Jefferson Knapp’s Official Website, FacebookTwitter, and Instagram

Author Pages at Amazon and GoodReads

Developing Young Authors with Storybird #aaim14

StorybirdI’m enjoying being in Ft. Smith, Arkansas for the 2014 Arkansas Association of Instructional Media Conference. Below are my slides from the workshop that I facilitated yesterday. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively. The slides also include a link to a special download containing information for using Storybird in preparation for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment.

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas and at all grade levels. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Developing Young Authors #MECA14

StorybirdStorybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas and at all grade levels. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Below are my slides from the workshop that I’ve taught a couple of times this week at the Mississippi Educational Communications Conference (MECA) in Jackson, MS. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

Resources from Storybird Hands-On Workshop at #MSMECA13

StorybirdStorybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas and at all grade levels. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Below are my slides from the workshop that I’ve taught a couple of times this week at the Mississippi Educational Communications Conference (MECA) in Jackson, MS. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

Call for Chapters: Digital Tools for Writing

Student Writing

Dr. Becky Anderson and I invite you to consider contributing your expertise by submitting a chapter in a soon-to-be-published edited book. Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings: Student Perception and Experience is timely because students are currently using technology to write both in and out of the classroom. In particular, students are writing outside of the classroom in ways that are not well documented or understood. Research is needed to report what students are doing both in and out of school and the implications this has on their learning. As a result, there exists a need for an edited collection of chapters in this area to 1) keep educators abreast of how to use the growing number of technology tools, 2) address the growing emphasis on writing instruction in both K-12 settings and in teacher education programs, 3) meet national standards and current initiatives that expect teachers to integrate writing across the curriculum, and 4) inform practice for the growing number of educators involved in K-12 online teaching and learning.

Working Title

Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings: Student Perception and Experience

Download Call as PDF

Publisher’s Announcement

Editors

Rebecca S. Anderson (The University of Memphis, USA)

Clif Mims (The University of Memphis, USA)

Call for Chapters

Proposal Submission Deadline: March 15, 2013

Full Chapters Due: July 20, 2013

Introduction

Currently, more emphasis is placed on writing instruction in K-12 schools than ever before. Unfortunately, however, students continue to perform poorly on national writing assessments. One possible solution to helping students become better writers is for K-12 teachers to use the growing number of digital tools to teach writing. Another possible solution is for content area teachers (i.e., math, science, social studies, and language arts) to integrate writing assignments into their curricula. Consistent with the present national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) initiative, which also embraces writing across the curriculum, students are no longer taught how to write just by the writing teacher. Instead, teachers at all levels, and in all content areas, are expected to use writing to help students both become better writers and to learn content knowledge. Therefore, it is important that K-12 teachers learn how to use new digital tools to effectively teach writing in the content areas. In particular, it is important to learn which technologies students are using, both inside and outside the classroom, and the implications this has for teaching and learning. As a result, there exists a need for an edited collection of articles in this area.

Objectives of the Book

  1. To provide research about using digital tools to support writing instruction with K-12 students.
  2. To disseminate information about how students use digital tools to write in school settings.
  3. To disseminate information about how students use digital tools to write outside of school settings.
  4. To disseminate information about students’ perspectives on using technology to write.
  5. To discuss issues and concerns related to students using digital tools for writing.
  6. To discuss the teaching and learning implications of K-12 students using digital tools for writing.

Target Audience

The target audience of this book is educators who are, or who work with, K-12 content area teachers. Thus, the primary audience will be professionals and researchers working in the field of K-12 education and teacher education. Additional audiences are higher education and adult education professionals who can adapt the practical and effective applications for using new technologies to teach writing in their respective content areas.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Hardware (e.g., iPads, Audiobooks, Smartboards, etc.) Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
  • Applications Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
  • Software Applications Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
  • Web-based/Online Tools for Use in the K-12 Writing Curriculum
  • In-School Writing Using Digital Tools
  • Students’ Out-of-School Writing Using Digital Tools
  • Action Research: K-12 Classroom Teachers Studying Students’ Digital Writing Tools
  • Training Teachers: Providing Professional Development for Digital Writing Tools
  • The Future Use of Digital Writing Tools

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 15, 2013, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by March 29, 2013, about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by July 30, 2013. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This book is anticipated to be released in 2014

Important Dates

Proposal Submission Deadline March 15, 2013
Notification of Acceptance March 29, 2013
Full Chapter Submission July 30, 2013
Review Results Returned September 30, 2013
Revised Chapter Submission October 30, 2013
Final Chapter Deadline December 15, 2013

Inquiries and Submissions

Submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document)

Rebecca S. Anderson, Ph.D.
Professor, Reading Education
The University of Memphis
406 Ball Hall
Memphis, TN 38152
USA
Website, Email, Phone: (901) 678-3977

Clif Mims, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Instructional Design and Technology
The University of Memphis
406 Ball Hall
Memphis, TN 38152
USA
Website, Email, Phone: (901) 678-5672

Storybird: Encourage Creativity, Promote Writing, & Add Excitement to Reports, Presentations, & Tutorials – for #isummitconf

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Below are my slides from this workshop that I’m sharing today at iSummit in Atlanta, GA. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

View more presentations from Clif Mims
Example Storybirds

Halloween Brothers on Storybird

 

You’re Mootiful on Storybird

 

Developing Young Authors with Storybird

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. It is a fun, collaborative, storytelling website that can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s writing development.

Below are my slides from this workshop. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

View more Presentations from Clif Mims
Example Storybirds

Halloween Brothers on Storybird

 

You’re Mootiful on Storybird

Children’s Book Author Encourages Our Youngest

As I mentioned last week our youngest and I had a great time reading The Pout-Pout Fish. It was an evening filled with lots of silliness and laughter. We had such a great time and I liked the book so much I wrote a blog post about our fun and included a few ideas regarding educational connections that could be made with the story, rhymes, etc. Less than 3 hours after my blog entry posted I received the following message on Twitter from the book’s author, Deborah Diesen.

It would be an understatement to say that our youngest was excited to have received a message from the book’s author. The reaction was so strong that I felt compelled to tweet the following reply to Deborah.

Needless to say, we since have read The Pout-Pout Fish many more times, we have enjoyed Pout-Pout Fish-inspired videos, a full-scale search is underway to get access to Deborah’s other children’s books, and our youngest has a renewed interest in reading and writing.

Many, many thanks, Deborah!

The Pout-Pout Fish

Our youngest and I had a lot of fun reading The Pout-Pout Fish this evening. It’s a fun tale about Mr. Fish who always has a pout on his face despite many efforts by his friends to cheer him up. The artwork and surprise ending made us laugh with enjoyment.

Educational Connections

  • Younger readers will enjoy and benefit from the repetition of verses.
  • The author incorporated some clever rhymes and introduces interesting vocabulary to youngsters.
  • Provides great opportunities to play with rhythm, alliteration, and dramatic reading.