blog4nwp is all about writing..

We All Have a Part to Play and it includes finding a moment to use this hashtag #blog4nwp for the future of writing; in the US Budget.

How can we help Congress and the Department of Education come to understand what we will lose if they cut the National Writing Project? Can social media help?

Hat’s off to Chad Sansing who works on school development and teaches humanities at the Community Public Charter School in Charlottesville, VA, for the original idea of #blog4nwp. Chad, who blogs in many places, began collecting and posting blogs in support of the NWP at Cooperative Catalyst, a group blog dedicated to the improvement of education. Chad’s idea was a weekend of blogging, which turned into several weeks of blogging with associated tweets collected through the hashtag #blog4nwp. The blogs have been collected at the Cooperative Catalyst archive.

We invite you to join the effort by blogging and tweeting with an associated hashtag: #blog4nwp. But what if you haven’t started a blog yet? Well, you can still participate by posting to THIS blog.

Just craft a post using any e-mail program and then send it to “post@blog4nwp.posterous.com”. Your email will magically turn into a blog post. Whatever you put in the subject line will become the title of your post and the body of the e-mail will become the body of the post. Be sure to sign your name!

adventuresinlearning:

Date: April 4, 2011

Summary: Teachers across the nation are blogging to support NWP in a campaign called “Blog for NWP.” The goal is to reach 1,000 blog posts by April 8, 2011—and get NWP written into the federal budget as a result.

“Blog for NWP” spans the nation.
From Hawaii to Maine, fingers are banging away on keyboards as a grassroots blogging campaign to support NWP has gone viral.

The immediate goal: 1,000 blog posts by April 8, 2011.

The larger goal: to get NWP written into the federal budget so that it can continue its vital work.

In March President Barack Obama signed a bill eliminating direct federal funding for the National Writing Project, so NWP teachers are fighting to get its funding reinstated the best way they know how: with writing.

The campaign goes by the moniker “#blog4nwp” - the hashtag that allows relevant posts to be easily grouped on search results and Twitter.

Chad Sansing, a teacher-consultant with the Central Virginia Writing Project, started the effort. “The #blog4nwp effort is a testament to the lasting power of the NWP as professional development and as a professional community. We are all writers. Moreover, we are all leaders,” says Sansing. “Our #blog4nwp is proof positive that decentralized teacher leadership and expertise work to champion and, hopefully, preserve educational initiatives that foster authentic learning and real change in the lives of teachers and students alike.”

Because Sansing is archiving the posts, he wants people to email him or @ or DM him on Twitter if he misses any.

Spreading the Word to Influencers
Most important to Sansing, however, is that the posts are read by the people who have influence. To maximize your efforts, he recommends the following:

Share #blog4nwp posts with your local media and members of Congress.

Share on Twitter with @EdPressSec, @Ed_OutReach, @whitehouse, and @BarackObama.

Ask educational influencers on Twitter—such as @AndrewBeatty, @jcohenap, @MintzAP, @TB101163, @JWilliamsAP, @valeriestrauss, @dianeravitch, @educationweek, @ascd, and @aasahq—to cover #blog4nwp.