Networks: The "Mentor Text of the Year" Network
We're very excited to be announcing our MTotY theme and mentor text titles for the upcoming school year. In September of 2011, we'll be launching our "Year of Idea Development & Voice Skills," and our two chosen texts very much focus on this theme. When idea development skills and voice skills come together, students learn to show their writing. This next year, we want all students to learn better showing skills--for narrative writing, for expository writing, for persuasive writing. We'll be hosting local workshops for Nevada teachers, and we want teachers outside of Nevada to participate with us! If you would like to work on these ideas too, please know that we're going to be publishing ideas all year long at WritingFix, and if you send us inspirations based on our theme of the year, you might earn a copy of the NNWP's newest print guide: The "Show Me Your Story" Guide.
The top 100 songs ever recorded -ITHP.org
Every year some corporate, musical crackpot devises a list filled with meaningless jargon only a washed up Oxford Humanities professor could interpret. Just because you smoked LSD and memorized the Webster’s dictionary in college while your peers were experiencing life doesn’t give you the right to fill our heads with unintelligible metaphors that sound like they originated in the laboratory of Hitler’s propaganda czar. Stop tricking us into accepting your musical opinions with that superior intellect and schizophrenic writing style. Finally after years of fuming at the Musical Media Complex (MMC) we’ve decided to release our very own list into cyberspace. Below you won’t find all the verboseness that’s usually wrapped into the standard Rolling Stone expose.
Pacman google (eng)
When I was growing up, my dad had the best job I could possibly imagine: he was an arcade game and pinball technician. For me, that meant summer trips through Poland’s coastal cities with their seasonal arcade parlors; peeking inside cabinets to learn programming and engineering secrets; and—of course—free games! One of my favorites was PAC-MAN, whose popularity transcended the geopolitical barriers of that time. During the heyday of space shooters, Tōru Iwatani’s creation stood out as one of the first video games aimed at a broader audience, with a cute story of pizza-shaped character gobbling dots in a maze, colorful (literally!) characters, friendly design, very little violence and everlasting fun. Today, on PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, you can rediscover some of your 8-bit memories—or meet PAC-MAN for the first time—through our first-ever playable Google doodle.
Collaborative Fiction: Writing and Gaming Online
by Ali Hale I’ve been thinking recently about the ways in which writing and gaming are mingled online, after a Daily Writing Tips reader wrote in to introduce us to a site which he and his brother have recently launched, called “Vote Pages”. This site aims to make the writing process both collaborative and game-like: A votepage is a piece of creative writing like a screenplay, novel, poem, etc. where one person starts writing and then lets other writers enter submissions to continue the piece. In order to make it interesting and fun, the submissions to continue the Votepage are voted on by other writers.
Online Drum loop Machine
Drumbot is the next best thing to a real drummer. Full song loops and tons of grooves. Designed specifically for non-drummers for use as backing tracks during song composition. We've partnered with real drummers, (can you think of a better beat maker?)
Creative Writing Games - Writing Your Way Out of Writer's Block
It's funny how there are so many games out there to be found, but when you're in that writer's block mode, you just can't seem to find or think of any of them. Writing games are fun and easy. They immerse you fingers first into writing or typing your ideas away.
5 Great Ways to Find Music That Suits Your Mood
Jessica Miller has written for Jewcy.com, The Jew and the Carrot, and is an avid digital music explorer. She holds a B.A. in religion from Barnard College, and blogs regularly on her own site, The Boomerang Blog. You don’t have to be Oliver Sacks to know that music can have a profound effect on the human psyche. Music is undeniably important in shaping moods, and, likewise, certain frames of mind require certain kinds of songs.
Season of Inspiration [9-week online writing course]
Invalid quantity. Please enter a quantity of 1 or more. The quantity you chose exceeds the quantity available. Please enter your name. Please enter an email address.
