Over the next few months, the National Writing Project will be rolling out a resource that defies description: Digital Is. I had the good fortune the join the group back in April in Berkeley for an initial conversation about resources for 21st century teaching and learning. We reconvened over the past few days at Lake Tahoe, where my colleagues shared works-in-progress that pretty much leave me speechless.

For a starter, check out Bee Foster’s approach to teaching non-traditional text. Let’s start with Bee’s attempt to decode a high school football coach’s diagram for an offensive play. Such a great piece to get us thinking about student literacies not always recognized and rarely valued in a test-driven climate.

And if you’d like a window into how Bee teaches graphic pieces, join her for a tour of Hurdles.

Besides teacher-created media, my NWP colleagues have also gathered outstanding samples of student-created multimedia pieces, such as this documentary by Clifford Lee’ students on crime in the city of Oakland.

The above samples are but the tip of the iceberg in the Digital Is project. The resources to come span K-12 grade levels. Although she hasn’t uploaded her student samples of “smart thinking” yet, I can’t wait to share with primary teachers  Renee Webster’s use of podcasting as way to build literacy using selections such as Bill Peet’s Wump World!

As soon as the Digital Is site is officially ‘live,’ I’ll post the URL! In the meantime, I’ll continue to share pieces that have already been uploaded.