Inanimate Alice goes up on The Space, the BBC/ACE showcase

14 September 2012

‘Inanimate Alice’ has gone up on The Space, the BBC/ Arts Council England showcase of the arts in digital form.  It’s on the homepage of The Space for the time being, and will reside in the Literature and Spoken Word section of the site. 

Inanimate Alice named as Best Website for Teaching and Learning

25 June 2012

Inanimate Alice has been named as one of the American Association of School Librarians 25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning.  Here’s the press announcment: 

CHICAGO — At the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2012 Annual Conference in Anaheim, Calif., the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced the 2012 Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning. In its fourth year, the list of websites honors the top 25 Internet sites for enhancing learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their teacher collaborators. The list is considered the “best of the best” by AASL.

The Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning were named so because they foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration. The websites honored include:
Projeqt, Gamestar Mechanic, Vialogues, Popplet, Jux, Comic Master, My Storymaker, Inanimate Alice, Quicklyst, Spidercribe, Stixy, Remember the Milk, Celly, Wiggio, Collaborize Classroom, Study Ladder, History Pin, Learn it in 5, ARKive, DocsTeach, iWitness, How to Smile, Study Blue, NASA Kids Club and Springnote.

“The AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning Committee have reviewed over 100 sites this year to offer our current list that can be used to enhance student learning as well as librarian and peer educator development,” explained Heather Moorefield-Lang, committee chair. “These are strong sites, and the committee hopes users find them useful for library, classroom and personal use. This year, the committee will be recognizing the 100th site. This is quite a milestone!”

The Top 25 are free, Web-based sites that are user-friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. They also provide a foundation to support AASL’s Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. The sites offer tools and resources in media sharing, digital storytelling, managing and organizing, social networking and communication, curriculum collaboration, content resources with lesson plans and more. Each website is linked to one or more of the four strands of the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner – skills, dispositions in action, responsibilities and self-assessment strategies.

Updated annually, the Top 25 Websites list is based on feedback and nominations from AASL members. School librarians can nominate their most used websites at www.ala.org/aasl/bestlist.

The American Association of School Librarians, www.aasl.org, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), promotes the improvement and extension of library services in elementary and secondary schools as a means of strengthening the total education program. Its mission is to advocate excellence, facilitate change and develop leaders in the school library field.

Flight Paths: A Networked Novel: NEW EPISODE! June 2012

8 June 2012

Flight Paths: A Networked Novel, my on-going project with Chris Joseph, has a brand-new, sixth, episode!  Hooray!  This episode, as brief as the others, takes up the story of Yacub, who has landed on Harriet’s car in the supermarket car park, and introduces him to Jack, Harriet’s teenaged son.  Go to the website, and click on ‘Jack meets Yacub’. 

Hackasaurus and Hive NYC:  How to write the next episode of ‘Inanimate Alice’

21 May 2012

Mozilla, in collaboration with Hive NYC, have launched their new tool in beta - the Hackasaurus X-Ray Goggles, and they’ve chosen ‘Inanimate Alice’ to work with.  Along with all the remixed and new episodes of ‘Inanimate Alice’ created by students over the past three years, this is, quite possibly, the coolest thing ever to happen to one of my writing projects. 

Grey Water Lady - Canada Writes short story

25 November 2011

CBC Radio commissioned me to write a new short story for their Canada Writes series, with the theme of ‘Winter’.  ‘Grey Water Lady’ is my contribution - there’s an audio recording of me reading it aloud as well. 

How to Tell a Story: UEA /Guardian Masterclass:  Six Months Course starts January 2012

10 October 2011

UEA-Guardian Masterclass: From January 2012 I’ll be teaching a six month long course called ‘How to Tell a Story’.  I’ll be teaching alongside my friend Jill Dawson; we teach on the same night, and we are teaching the same course, but we don’t teach together.  The weekly class takes place in the Guardian building here in London.  There’s a full outline of the course here. 

Guardian Masterclass

McGill Drop-Out Gets PhD

22 July 2011

McGill Drop-Out Gets PhD:  Yesterday I had my Viva, otherwise known as oral defense, or external exam, for my PhD by Published Works.  I passed, ‘with minor amendments’.  Soon you will all have to call me DOCTOR!

Ebb & Flow: Ipswich schools digital stories project

29 June 2011

The digital stories project, Ebb & Flow, which I helped create with five secondary schools in Ipswich is online now, and looking great!  For details of the project click on the link on the project homepage, but make sure to check out the great array of digital stories as well. 

ELMCIP Electronic Cabaret - 16 June, 2011, Karlskrona Sweden

31 May 2011

Here’s the poster for this event in June in Sweden - can’t wait!