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"Start with simple assignments that are an easy transition from what you and your students are already familiar with. Try blogging, then build to more complex projects like podcasting or video storytelling. In addition to concentrating on the ideas and the writing itself, try to create situations where the students' writing takes advantage of the medium and the connectedness of the internet. Some criteria I use to develop assignments include: student agency engagement and passion audience impact beyond the classroom authoring skills and experiences needed for success outside of academia collaboration and connectivity with other authors and audience members experiences authoring in a variety of media other than text When we develop our writing assignments, we must ultimately come back to one main concern: purpose. Why are we giving specific types of writing assignments and how do they help our students convey their ideas in ways that resonate with their audience?"

"Students who write for their teacher write for a grade. Students who write for an audience write to connect, to argue, to entertain, to inform. And when they have other purposes for their writing other than a grade, they begin to care about the craft, choose carefully their words, shape thoughtfully their sentences. Isn't this the goal of writing standards? So the question is: Does your school provide or cheat your students out of an audience? Or, to cut to the chase: Does your school actively support a newspaper or broadcast program? If it doesn't, please stop going on about how you're meeting the Common Core standards. Because in spirit you're not."

Love these questions as writing prompts. And if you have your students respond to them on the NY Times Learning Blog, it also becomes a writing for a real audience.

" I'd been teaching writing all wrong! I'd dangled the carrots of prizes and threatened with the sticks of docked points for misplaced modifiers. But sometimes, I also got it right. Before, I'd let students choose prompts and readings as much as possible, providing autonomy. After reading Pink, I learned to unbend myself, make deadlines more flexible, and shape the writing process more to fit the student. Now, my students feel more control over their process. Before, I'd encouraged my students to write for real audiences as summative assessments. Now, I encourage students to write to real people for real purposes throughout the school year -- their own blogs, each other, me, their principal, their Congressional representatives, and the world. Before, I'd embedded grammar instruction in writing process and had students keep their work to casually notice their progress once a year. Now, I conference four times a year with students about portfolios of their work -- an ongoing conversation about writing goals of their choosing. I explicitly teach metacognition, or how to talk and write about their writing."

"Vonnegut spelled out the main argument of his thesis in a hilarious lecture, where he also graphed some of the more common story types. (Vonnegut was famously funny and irreverent, and you can hear the audience losing it throughout.) He published the transcript of this talk in his memoir, "A Man Without a Country," which includes his own drawings of the graphs."

"What is one thing you feel supremely qualified to teach other people? This should be in stated in only a few words. Critical thinking. How to communicate. The elegance of architecture. Living through music. How to read. You don't have to be an expert here, you just have to love it deeply. And answer honestly. Now, who should you do this kind of work for? Who needs to understand this, almost as a matter of life and death? Whose life won't be the same without it? Who do you feel most natural and engaged around? There's your audience. Next, what exactly do these people want or need? How will you need to "package" and deliver this gift you feel supremely qualified to teach? If you're qualified to "give" it, this part has to reflect that. How are they going to change as a result? Now, put it all together in one sentence. There's your purpose"

"Perez says when students are engaged, predicting answers, talking with one another and sharing with the class in ways that follow safe routines and practices, they not only achieve more but they also act out less. And everyone, including the teacher, has more fun. "If we don't have their attention, what's the point?" Perez asked an audience at a Learning and the Brain conference on mindsets. She's a big proponent of brain breaks and getting kids moving around frequently during the day. She reminded educators that most kids' attention spans are about as long in minutes as their age."

"Zoe Roben, an English teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in Manhattan and enthusiastic Moth listener, wanted students at her small public high school to have a more sophisticated understanding of how to tell personal stories. So in the fall, she invited Moth educators to Harvest Collegiate to carry out an afterschool workshop with nine kids, while she acted as the teacher liaison. For eight weeks, the students and adult supervisors brainstormed and practiced telling their stories, and at the end delivered their tales before the school and again at a Moth office, where they were recorded. The theme was courage. Students told stories about kitchen disasters, lost hamsters and minor acts of adolescent agitation, like chopping off hair. Anxious at first about their ability to perform, students came to embrace the experience, Roben said. "They were glowing at the end, with the feeling that they could get up in front of an audience and do something this big," she said. "It was knowing they had something to say, and experiencing their own voice as something valuable," she added."

"What Is Workplace Writing? Though employer surveys tend to be vague about the specific skills in "written communication," studies and interviews do show some consistent requests, including the ability to analyze and explain concepts and situations succinctly, engage in clear and courteous conversations, present evidence-backed arguments and requests, and switch tone and format to respond to different audiences."

"The writing curriculum detailed below is both a road map for teachers and an invitation to students. For teachers, we've pulled together the many writing-related features we already offer, added new ones, and organized them all into seven distinct units. Each focuses on a different genre of writing that you can find not just in The Times but also in all kinds of real-world sources both in print and online. But our main goal is to offer young people a global audience - to, in effect, invite them to add their voices to the larger conversation at The Times about issues facing our world today. Through the opportunities for publication woven throughout each unit, we hope to encourage students to go beyond simply being media consumers to become media creators themselves. "

"When students hear essay they think: Five paragraphs, written to impress teacher, mostly to show that the student has been paying attention in class and/or doing the reading. Make sure to cite sources because: plagiarism. Also, use block quotes because that looks good. Don't forget the conclusion that summarizes everything staring with, "In conclusion." Never use "I." Contractions…bad. This is why most essays are unpleasant for students to write, and boring for instructors to read. They are treated not as an occasion to discover something previously unknown - to the author above all - but a performance for an audience of one, the teacher. One hoop among many to be jumped through as part of the college grind. Because of the disconnect, instructors often have a different hoop in mind, and so when students jump through the hoop they know, but it's not the hoop the instructor was envisioning we get…a debate about whether or not we should even assign essays. Instead of assigning essays, in my course, I now feature "writing-related problems.""

"NPR is thrilled to announce its upcoming slate of podcasts. These six summer shows include a comedy, and for the first time, a children's show. "We are expanding the range of our programming by giving a platform to new voices, sharing a fun new side of favorite contributors, and doubling down on immersive stories and journalism," says Vice President for Programming and Audience Development Anya Grundmann."

"Forty-four years later, I wonder how he would have responded to my paper, and I am still singing the five-paragraph-theme blues, having fought the template's rigid lessons ever since.  I also know, from what scores of college students have reported to me (and from students Jennifer Gray interviewed), that it also gets in the way of other writers. Conversely, students tell me that what interests them in writing is teachers engaging them in real composing problems: Giving choice in topic; experimenting with different kinds of writing for a variety of audiences and purposes; and providing opportunities for thoughtful, in-process feedback from multiple sources-teachers, parents, peers, and others. (See post by  Ken Lindblom for more suggestions.) And the more students are interested in writing, the more motivated they are to improve, just as my neighbor who spends hours, weeks, and months on his skateboard wants to get better at his skateboarding skills-falling off, sometimes dramatically, but always getting back up and trying again.  He's interested in skateboarding, is willing to concentrate on that, and has gotten pretty good.  In the same way, if we get our students interested in their writing, they too will develop their writing skills.  From amazing teachers like Donald Graves and Donald Murray, Nancie Atwell, Kelly Gallagher, and Penny Kittle, we have a wealth of ideas about how schools can nurture joy and purpose in novice writers and how we can bring authentic writing experiences into our classrooms."

"Mortified shows, as they're called, feature adults reading aloud and on stage from their adolescent diaries. Readers typically share their most embarrassing and wrenching youthful stories on a variety of subjects: crushes, body image, self-esteem, divorce. Sharing these intensely private excerpts provokes laughter and connection between the audience and reader. The Mortified "movement" has grown to include podcasts, the film Mortified Nation, a couple of anthologies of stories and a Sundance TV series. Some Mortified fans, Gootee included, have found another medium for these deeply personal stories: the classroom."

"Are you ever SO excited to tell your friends a story that you kind of jumble the whole thing up? Like the substance is there, but if the delivery is off it just doesn't LAND as well. The same thing goes for podcasting. Even if we can hear in your voice that you're excited about something, if there's no structure or narrative to the piece it can be hard to hook an audience. This week on The Students' Podcast, we're revisiting an episode from last season where we talk to some of our high school finalists who managed to tell their story really well."