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"There have been complaints leveraged against out of the box robots like Dash and Dot, Ozobot, Hummingbird, Sphero. The complaints usually revolve around the canned and prescriptive nature of their uses and programs, that they lack creative engagement by the younger users. I personally love the excitement my learners have using these robots. As with all tools and technologies and with creative framing, though, they can be used in creative and imaginative ways. Mention robots to many English teachers and they'll immediately point down the hall to the science classroom or to the makerspace, if they have one. At many schools, if there's a robot at all, it's located in a science or math classroom or is being built by an after-school robotics club. It's not usually a fixture in English classrooms. But as teachers continue to work at finding new entry points to old material for their students, robots are proving to be a great interdisciplinary tool that builds collaboration and literacy skills. (How Robots in English Class Can Spark Empathy and Improve Writing) This past term, I had my 2nd through 4th grade students work on their robot-enhanced creative Writing and stories. In small groups, students were asked to create a fictional storyline and use StoryboardThat.com to create both the physical scenes and the accompanying narrative. As part of their directions, they were told that they were going to create a 3D setting out of cardboard boxes, foam board, LED lights, and other craft materials; and that they would use Wonder's Dot with the Blocky App and Ozobot as the characters in their stories. Preparation time was divided between storyboarding, creating the scene, and learning how to use/code the robots. Because of all of the preparation and practice, the recording actually went quite quick and smoothly. Here is a break down of the learning events that learners were asked to complete:"

"Write About This is a visual writing prompt & creation platform perfect for classrooms and families! With endless ways to respond and the ability to craft custom photo prompts, it will kick-start any writing activity. 125 categorized images & 375 text+voice prompts included!"

"Teachers are focusing on writing instruction like never before. More and more, they're asking students to write about what they read, helping them think through and craft their work, and using such exercises as tools not only to build better writers, but to help students understand what they're studying."

"Is traditional reading and writing enough to be considered literate in the 21st century?I have put together my thoughts via a slide deck. Please note, that I am not advocating throwing out traditional reading and writing, but pushing the awareness that it simply might not be enough to prepare our students. We need to rethink our notion of critical literacy, develop authentic learning and assessment opportunities, upgrade and amplify our curriculum."

"WriteReader is a neat multimedia writing platform for elementary school teachers and students. The appeal of WriteReader is found in the collaboration between students and teachers. Students can create multimedia books that teachers log into to correct. As is seen the video below, each page of a book has a space for students to write in and a space for teachers to write in. Teachers use the space on the page to correct spelling errors and or make editing suggestions."

"Filmmaking is increasingly being used in the classroom by teachers who understand the wants, hopes and aspirations of their pupils. Recent BBC documentary The Rise of the Superstar Vloggers was an extremely interesting insight into what many people wrongly perceive to be a frivolous activity and an easy route to fame and fortune. Contrary to popular belief, becoming a superstar vlogger involves hours and hours of researching and writing content. When we consider how popular video is with children, it becomes clear that filmmaking is the secret weapon for accelerating progress in schools. By using filmmaking as an incentive to write, pupils are working to produce the kind of media that they love, while the teacher is easily able to coerce them to improve their writing and reading using video as a constant hook. One such school who took the plunge into filmmaking is Northway Primary School in Liverpool, nominated for the Educate Awards Innovative & Creative Literacy Award. Over the course of 11 weeks, the pupils planned, drafted, edited, performed and filmed their very own adventure film based on El Dorado, the search for the lost city of gold in Colombia made famous by Christopher Columbus himself."

"Mention robots to many English teachers and they'll immediately point down the hall to the science classroom or to the makerspace, if they have one. At many schools, if there's a robot at all, it's located in a science or math classroom or is being built by an after-school robotics club. It's not usually a fixture in English classrooms. But as teachers continue to work at finding new entry points to old material for their students, robots are proving to be a great interdisciplinary tool that builds collaboration and literacy skills. "For someone like me who teaches literature by lots of dead white guys, teaching programming adds relevance to my class," said Jessica Herring, a high school English teacher at Benton High School in Arkansas. Herring first experimented using Sphero, essentially a programmable ball, when her American literature class was studying the writing of early settlers. Herring pushed the desks back and drew a maze on the floor with tape representing the journey from Europe to the New World. Her students used class iPads and an introductory manually guided app to steer their Spheros through the maze. Herring, like many English teachers, was skeptical about how the Sphero robot could be a useful teaching tool in her classroom. She thought that type of technology would distract students from the core skills of reading, writing and analyzing literature. But she decided to try it after hearing about the success of another English teacher across the country."

Reimagining School Writing https://t.co/WFRTkvOKD8 #elt #edtech #esl #ell #ela #k12 #Writing #edreform https://t.co/xl29a0YavU

"A group of children took part in a series of literacy lessons centred around the popular game Bike Baron by Qwibooand Mountain Sheep as outlined in detail athttp://mrandrewsonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/part-1-raising-standards-in-boys.html. The aim was to raise standards in writing. The work is based on the success of the Controllable Vehicle project which demonstrated that the iPad can significantly enhance pupil understanding and interest in a topic leading to accelerated progress in speaking, listening and writing."

"Write to Read ($6.99 for iPad, iTunes link) is a new iPad app which teaches children to use their imagination and create unique and personal books. In the process of writing, they will increase their reading skills as well."

"Below is a short collection of some interesting iPad apps students can use to help them with their writing and more specifically, outlining, drafting and writing stories. Some of these apps are featured here for the first time but for more options on digital storytelling apps check out this page."

"This week's Ted Ed list of talks we curated for you revolves around the theme: writer's workshop. This is basically a playlist prepared by Ted Ed Channel on YouTube featuring 16 Ted Ed video lessons from which we selected the ones below. The talks are particularly ideal for classroom inclusion. You can use them with your students to teach them about some of the mechanics of writing and raise their consciousness to the important elements that make a good piece of writing."

Just to review, the idea behind the Twitter Writing Contest was simple… compose a story in exactly 140 characters and post it on Twitter. I want to thank everyone who participated, because there are a ton of talented writers out there (even at 140 characters)!

So the question is, how do you ensure that students are truly taking their writing to a new level? How do you make sure that instead of just participating in low-level recall, students are moving on to the higher levels of analysis and reasoning that we want them to reach? One way is to rethink how you pose your writing topics. Here are some ideas and examples:

"The most important thing you do when blogging is write posts. For an iPad to be a suitable replacement for student laptops and netbooks writing posts needs to be as easy or similar to using a computer."

"As students work to master the complex reading and writing standards demanded by the Common Core, Mrs. Montecuollo and Mrs. Westbrook collaborated to create writing scaffolds that address the diverse academic needs of their 9th grade students. These teachers believe that differentiation is about access points. Therefore, they used four support activities (scaffolds) to address different areas of difficulty they see their students face."

"Here are thirty free writing ideas that connect to the holidays or to winter. I want to mention ahead of time that teachers need to be careful with the Establishment Clause. Some of these mention specific holidays and I think it's critical that teachers respect the diversity of beliefs found among students. They are meant to be ideas and not prompts; meaning they are optional visual writing ideas that kids can choose if they want to use them. "

"5 Steps to Writing A Poem is a visual created by  Cambridge University and outlines the 5 major stages to composing a poem. In fact, the steps mentioned here are generic and can be used for Writing any other genre, of course with a bit of tweaking. As a teacher you might want to share this work with your students and guide them through the different stages they need to follow to produce a good piece of prose or poetry."

"Over the years, I have witnessed the power of social media and the draw of compelling images in the classroom. My students love connecting with others globally, and they are inspired by interesting photographs. Having a broader audience and a topic to write about is oftentimes all I need to turn student writers into published authors. With Write About,I have found a free tool that puts the power of both social media and images into the hands of my students."

"Composing a story from scratch comes naturally to some people. For the rest of us creating a story from scratch can be a struggle. Over the years I've found that using pictures helps a lot of students get started on crafting stories. In some cases I've had students create collages to represent elements of a story. In other cases I've had them choose five pictures and write two hundred words about each. Being asked to write two hundred words about five pictures feels a lot less daunting than being asked to write one thousand words in one shot. The PDF embedded below (click here if you can't see the embedded document) outlines how to use ten of my favorite free tools to create image-based stories. "