Write Out with Us this Summer: Place-Based Making with NWP/NPS

Writers reside inside internal landscapes. They traverse the contours of stories and poems, learning and understanding. They turn pen on paper and characters on screens into art. They write for themselves as much as for the world.

This summer, we hope to encourage you to take your writing and teaching self outside, into the natural wonders of open landscapes and historical spaces, and explore through the eyes of connected teachers, connected learners, and connected park rangers.

Welcome to Write Out: Place-Based Making with Writing Projects and National Parks, a summer open online adventure being sponsored by the National Writing Project and the National Park Service. Write Out will run from July 15 through 29, 2018 and through it we hope to provide a range of new and interesting ways to explore the natural and historical resources around you, using as our lens the principles of Connected Learning. We will reflect together on how we might bring a sense of adventure and exploration to our own learning spaces through engaging in our own place-based writing and making activities together as educators.

This open and online collaborative project—a riff off what is known as a connectivist MOOC, or  Massive Open Online Collaboration—will be designed with multiple entryways for you to engage with historical and natural spaces. As with any open project, where your interest takes you is where you should go. Think of our suggestions as Cairns, virtual markers for a possible pathway but not the only path. We hope that educators in National Writing Project sites will find National Park sites, and vice versa. And if connections already exist, we hope you will strengthen them.

In other words, it’s OK to head into the wild.

• Learn more about Write Out via NWP Radio, May 24, 2018.
• Sign up for more information at the Write Out blog.
• Read more about the National Writing Project and National Park Service partnership work at our collection Opening the Doors of the Classroom and Boundaries of the Park
• Connect with us via Twitter at #writeout.

Co-Authored by Write Out leadership team; special thanks to Kevin Hodgson.