"Publishing" Our Writing

Audience is a powerful motivator in writing.  When you know a piece is going out into the world, you are much more careful with your words.  When you know a piece is going out in the world, you're willing to work hard on your message for your readers.  In my transition to using more digital tools in our classroom, I still find the time to write during Writer's Workshop to be essential.  There's something about capturing the stories of young writers in their words and pictures.

In our classroom, we've started "publishing" some of our favorite pieces digitally using Pixie.  Though there are many other ways you can accomplish this with other software, Pixie has worked for us as it is a software we have much experience using.  In Pixie, students take a picture of each page of their story, then record their voice on each page.  After taking pictures and recording I am able to turn these into a Podcast that can be shared via email with parents, on our blog, or on our news page.  There's nothing quite like seeing the pictures and hearing the voice of the author.  (Note:  You can also create a video which has sharper pictures, but takes more memory.  Podcasts are more easily shared though some quality is lost.)

Students manage this process on their own as I conference with writers.  Students take the pictures, record the voice, and get the story recorded to the best of their abilities.  The only thing I do is convert it to a Podcast which students could probably learn to do too.  

Here are a few examples of published pieces:  

Baseball

Chicago

I Love the Piano

The Forget Man