For the past six weeks, I have stayed off this blog for two reasons.  First, I had to focus all my writing efforts on completion of my dissertation.  But second, I knew many of our teachers were sending kids to comment on a blog post and I didn't want to bury the posting...

As school is letting out, I will spend the next several weeks using this blog to reflect on what I've seen in the Inspired Writing classrooms.  This year, we implemented over 1,800 netbooks (or sub laptops) into our classrooms.  But our effort has been different from the usual 1:1 program in several respects. 

The first difference is the learning goal: writing.  Our district instructional leaders identified writing as the most important lever for our district to use to raise student achievement.  Every school in the district inserted writing goals into their school improvement plans and our district leadership initiated a project...