Southern Maine Writing Project

digital portfolios could be used as a “parking lot”

The number-one technology request of today's students is to have email and instant messaging always available and part of school.

Many teachers, under pressure from all sides, are often so afraid to experiment and to trust their kids with technology that they demand extensive training before they will try anything new. All these factors impede even the many schools trying to change.

While kids may initially love technology-inspired lessons in schools simply because they are different from the paper-driven work that tends to define traditional classrooms, the novelty of new tools wears off a lot quicker than digital cheerleaders like to admit.

What students are really motivated by are opportunities to be social — to interact around challenging concepts in powerful conversations with their peers.

Technology’s role in today’s classroom, then, isn’t to motivate. It’s to give students opportunities to efficiently and effectively participate in motivating activities built around the individuals and ideas that matter to them.

“How could they get passed along and end up in high school without understanding how to use the word although?”

Literacy, which once consisted of the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently, and express complex thoughts about the written word, has become synonymous with reading. Formal writing instruction has become even more of an after­thought.

is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations

In each of these locations we install a [murmur] sign with a telephone number on it that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to that story while standing in that exact spot

The stories we record range from personal recollections to more "historic" stories, or sometimes both

For the first time, elementary-­school students—­who today mostly learn writing by constructing personal narratives, memoirs, and small works of fiction—will be required to write informative and persuasive essays. By high school, students will be expected to produce mature and thoughtful essays, not just in English class but in history and science classes as well.