Teachers+as+Writers

toc Writing groups have been such an important part of our experience in our summer institute, helping drive home the importance of our own writing lives as teachers. On this page, you can find some resources to support forming or continuing a writing group, even across distance, once the school year starts.

=Resources to support scheduling writing group meetings= [|whenisgood]is a great site to poll group members for a good meeting time. You select which days are possibilities, and group members just click on any times that are possible for them to attend. [|doodle]is another polling site for setting up meeting times. Here, you have to enter in specific time windows that are possible, and group members select which ones work.

=Resources to support talking about writing online= [|Skype]is a free, Internet-based phone program. You can create a conference call with all members of the group logged on together, so that you can talk in real-time about writing together.

When using Skype with more than two people, earbuds make a HUGE difference in call quality. [|Skullcandy] has great earbuds - very comfortable, relatively cheap, and small. Plus, if you have problems with them, they will replace them. The link here goes to their website, but they are available at lots of stores.

=Resources to support sharing writing online= While it certainly works to share writing via email, it is also handy to have a separate site dedicated to your writing group. Creating a wiki or a blog for your writing group allows group members to keep all writing in one place, and it also makes it easier to go back through past writing when you meet. Wikispacesis the site we used to make this wiki, and it is very user-friendly. You can also make your wiki private, password-protected, for an annual fee of about $50, which can help when sharing writing.

You can also use a blog to share writing. [|Wordpress]is an easy blog to use for this purpose.

=﻿Other materials on forming a writing group= This is a one-page handout from a presentation at the National Council of Teachers of English, focused on starting up an online teacher writing group.