Authoring With Video by Barbara K. Strassman, Trisha O'Connell

The article "Authoring With Video" (AVW) provides teachers with an interactive glimpse of how to add the use of video to spark motivation. The key points that were mentioned within the article are motivation,technology, writers workshop, ideas, and video clips.

Furthermore, in motivating students in this day in age, teachers need to embrace technology within the classroom. Students use technology daily with the use of their wireless hand held devices, laptops, televisions, and ipods. It is often hard to motivate students into writing when their are so many other forms of communications. To get students motivated in writing teachers can use AVW. For example, a teacher could use the example of a narrative baseball game. They can watch a clip of the game without narration and then one with narration to see how narration provides an integral part to the whole experience.

The use of AVW technology is created through a image program called MAGpie. The program was developed by the WGGBH National Center for Accessible Media. This program enables students and educators to put together caption videos, and provides spaces for narrative  lines. They always say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and providing imagery you can harness students writing by the use of them. To help scaffold for writers workshop the program can be used to portray other students work as well. The teachers can go to www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/orleans to show the impact of narration with the tragic drownign of the city of New Orleans.

Furthermore, the use of video clips and narration is a new area to be explored that is extremely motivational and hands and is a new step to help enhance student writing and overall literacy.

Children's books and technology in the classroom: A dynamic combo for supporting the writing workshop By Julia Kara-Soteriou, Lisa Zawinski & Laurie H

The article that is listed above is one in which bring writers workshop into the limelight by integrating the use of technology. Writers workshop typically is a form of instruction where teachers being an explicitly taught lesson that is then followed by a writing activity to support the lesson. This is then followed by a sharing time in which students get to discuss and collaborate their newly formed pieces of writing. 

Furthermore, the article  begins with an introductory in which describes that teachers can save much time and effort for many different aspects of writing workshop. For instance, a teacher might use a word processing system in order to help save time in an editing lesson. Another way that the students can use technology is by the use of a shared book review database. This database can serve as a scaffold for students in regards to creating their own book reviews when needed.

The article then describes different websites for the majority of the article itself. Some of the morning interesting sites that were listed that I felt were definitely worth time and consideration were www.rhymer.com. This website offers students that are studying the form of rhyme poetry with every word imaginable that would aid in the creating of their poetry. This would also help aid in expanding student vocabulary. Another website that was mentioned in the article is the website www.inspiration.com. Within this website there are plenty of multimedia additions for students to use. For instance, the site provides both animations, and sounds to help aid in students storytelling. When the students is finished they will be able to share their published electronic copies for all to hear.

Through this article it gives us a glimpse of how to fully integrate technology and writing. The use of technology is both a motivator for students, and teachers. It is imperative that we learn new teaching strategies to aid in the future of our students and to add to our teacher disposition.