NWP is attempting to have 1000 blog posts in support of the Writing Project posted by April 8th. I have written my post, and I wonder if someone else wouldn’t like to offer a few words here about what the Writing Project means to you. If you write the post, I will come back in and tag it so it will count as part of the 1000.
We only have a few days left. Won’t you help us?
HPWP and the National Writing Project need your help. Funding for NWP, and by extension for HPWP, is up for consideration in Congress, and we need to make sure our senators and representatives know how important NWP is to both teachers and to children.
NWP is asking each Writing Project site to send at least 25 letters (via fax or email) to each of your representatives and senators within the next week. In these letters, we would like you to explain to them why NWP and HPWP are important.
Also, we need the help of others, so please ask friends and family to contact these people, too. Letters to come from principals, parents, community members, university administrators, and others would be especially appreciated.
Sample letter templates areavailable here. Feel free to use them but please be sure to add your own experience and thoughts, as the templates suggest.
Our goal is for all letters to be sent by February 9.
Contact Information for your Congressional delegation:
U.S. House
| Representative by district | Phone | Ed Aide | Aide Email | |
| Heinrich, Martin T. | 1 | 202-225-6316 | Elizabeth Hill | elizabeth.hill@mail.house.gov |
| Pearce, Steve | 2 | 202-225-2365 | ||
| Lujan, Ben Ray | 3 | 202-225-6190 | Terri Nikole Baca | terrinikole.baca@mail.house.gov |
U.S. Senate
| Senator | Phone | Ed Aide | Aide Email |
| Bingaman, Jeff | 202-224-5521 | Peter Zamora | peter_zamora@bingaman.senate.gov |
| Udall, Tom | 202-224-6621 | Fern Goodhart | fern_goodhart@tomudall.senate.gov |
I have been making some little adjustments to the blog this morning, and I have some questions.
The first one is regarding the funwrite ideas page. We set it up, and I suggested that people either edit the page or add them as comments. There were three comments on one day, and then nothing. Do we want to create this resource or should I delete the page? If we want to develop it, we can follow the original idea of posting the ideas as comments or by editing the page. A third alternative would be for you to send me the ideas and I will add them to the page. Ultimately I think we want to have all the ideas show up on the page not as comments but as parts of the page, and I am willing to facilitate that if there is interest. If not, I will delete the page.
Secondly, we have a calendar of events – a Google calendar that I add information to. It doesn’t seem to me it is useful unless it contains information. And it can’t contain information unless you send it tome. As this calendar is attached to my gmail account, it isn’t possible for you to add items directly to the calendar, but if you will send them to me, I will add them to the calendar. If I don’t hear from anyone,I will assume that we don’t need the calendar, and I will remove it from the blog.
I look forward to your responses posted here as a comment. I probably won’t get around to making more changes before Thanksgiving, but please make your opinion known before then.
I would just like to clarify what I think is a misunderstanding about this blog. If you are an HPWP TC,you are welcome to set up a wordpress account, send me your information, and get asses as an author or contributor to the blog. That means you can make posts about any teaching/writing/HPWP-related topic you choose. We would love to have more involvement and discussion here, so please consider doing that.
If, however, you just want to be able to read the blog and post comments on posts made by others, you can do that WITHOUT setting up a wordpress account. All you have to do is read the post and hit “Leave a Comment” and then type whatever it is you want to say.
Please leave a comment here if you have questions or send me an email at namckeand.hpwp [at] gmail.com.
I have posted a tutorial that covers how to post to this blog and how to be added as a contributor, if you are an HPWP teacher-consultant and haven’t done that yet. It can be found under “Documents of Interest” in the right sidebar. Please let me know if you have any questions.
No, don’t worry – it isn’t THAT kind of test. I want to demonstrate how to post using “Quick Press”, and this is the best way I know of to do that!
It is that time of year again… No, not the holidays! It is time to start thinking about the Summer Institute. (Well, truth be told, I think Gretchen thinks about it all year long! But the rest of us probably don’t!) Here is the brochure for the 2010 Summer Institute with the application form. Be sure to let good candidates for it know they can find it here!
We have gotten the HPWP pages up and running on the ENMU website. It is a work in progress, so please bear with us. This move from the old website at geocities was made necessary by the fact that geocities is supposed to shut down this fall. Now that the basic information has been moved the the new website, we can concentrate on filling in the gaps and making it look prettier! Stop by and check it out!
Leslie asked if it is possible to get email notification when there are new posts to this blog and to the ezine. I didn’t think it was possible, but I decided to look a little harder and deeper and see if I couldn’t find a way to do it. And, of course, there is a way. Now, if you look in the sidebar, you will see a link that says “Subscribe to High Plains Writing Project by Email”. Click on the link. It will ask you for an email address. You will get an activation email. Once you activate your subscription, you will get an email every time there is a post.
The process for the ezine, of course, is the same. However, I will announce a new issue here whenever there is one, so if you don’t want to, you could skip that subscription.
I hope this makes it easier for everyone to keep track of new posts to the blog and new issues of the ezine. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
I have added a link to a calendar of events. This calendar is currently set up in connection with one of my email accounts. I think that means only I can post events. But I may be able to add permissions for others — if you tell me who would like to do it.
We have a few options, as I see it.
1. We can use this calendar.
2. We can set up a Google calendar that “belongs” to HPWP rather than to me. This wouldnt be hard. It would just require setting up a Google account for HPWP.
3. We can use another calendar — maybe.
4. We can use lists of activities instead of a calendar.
Please let me know what you think of what we have here now. And if you have suggestions regarding our options, let’s talk about them here.
Also, I wasn’t taking good notes today at the meeting about all the Roswell activities, so I probably have mistakes in the calendar. Please let me know about them ASAP. One thing that I know isn’t right — or think isn’t right — is the name of your book group. But there may be more substantive errors, too.
