[cross-posted from K12 Open Ed]

I've been thinking about creating a high quality curriculum resource that is open and have focused in on writing as a subject matter. Why? First and foremost, I love writing and think it has the ability to transform lives. Beyond that, it transfers to all other subject areas and grade levels, and success in writing is correlated to success in many other endeavors. Writing is fun and rewarding. Technology can greatly enhance writing skills for many.

So here are some specifics. These are very preliminary. Please chime in with your thoughts by commenting or emailing me. (I hope to have a collaborative prototype up by early next year.)

The Open Writing Space

Project goals:
To inspire a love for writing and to help writers of all ages develop their craft

Target audience:
Writers of all ages, from elementary school through adult, both in formal and informal contexts
(I'm envisioning modules that could be used in elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms; sections that could act as online courses for adults; private areas for personal writing; springboards for personal writing; community space for writing and reading clubs; and more.)

Random ideas for modules:

Inspiration
  • Video vignettes from authors, casual writers, teachers, kids,and others talking about writing
  • Writing prompts
  • Reading to write (online book clubs, RSS feeds of relevant readings, etc.)
  • Real life writing tasks
  • Blogs
  • Writing portfolios
Craft
  • Writing process exercises
  • Developing a voice
  • Grammar/style handbooks
  • Traits of writing
  • Online writing assessment
  • Character development
  • Writing dialogue
  • Non-fiction writing


Licensing:
All content in the "community space" will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.
All content in people's "personal space" can be licensed however individuals choose. (This content won't be in public view unless users choose to publish it.)

Questions to think about:
  • What tools are best suited for this? (Elgg? Drupal? Moodle modules for online courses? What Open Source online writing tools are available?)
  • How do we deal with kids under 13?
  • Who would be useful partners in this project?
  • How do we make sure this is a useful and used resource (marketing)?
  • What parts should be built first?
Would you like to be a part of creating this, and/or is it is a resource you could use?

Views: 64

Tags: oer, writing

Comment by Deborah on December 18, 2008 at 8:32pm
I've downloaded Elgg and hope to play around with it soon. Robin Good lists some interesting collaborative writing tools at http://www.kolabora.com/news/2007/03/01/collaborative_writing_tools_and_technology.htm
I have used Socialtext (http://www.socialtext.com) before - the basic account is free. Writeboard sounds really interesting. You can export the files as text documents, plus you can compare different versions of a document, collaborate with others and subscribe to documents via RSS. (http://www.writeboard.com)

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