Digital Is..."participatory"

Writing and publishing on the Internet can open up new avenues to engage with the world around us.  Our words and images can go farther, our audiences can be broader and more diverse, and we can join in collective efforts of surprising scale.  We have, in short, new ways to participate.  In the video above, for example, teachers and students in an elementary classroom in Philadelphia share their efforts to impact the quality of life and health in their neighborhood.  Online research, writing, and podcasting were central to their project and provided ways for students to reach well beyond the walls of the classroom.

Digital Is, a project of the National Writing Project, aims to publish the voices of educators and youth as they reflect on efforts to engage in real work and to embed their work with writing inside it.  We welcome contributions that document how educators and young people use and develop their skills in participatory projects. Join us we explore the teaching of writing in a world where, simply, digital is…