EduCon 2018

This session invites participants to spend time outdoors and do some writing and sharing in the style of an event called Write Out hosted annually by the National Writing Project. Write Out is a free two-week celebration of writing, making, and sharing inspired by the great outdoors (see writeout.nwp.org). We invite the EduCon community to explore the theme of the 2024 Write Out event - Poetry for the Planet - as this feels to us to be an important focus in a moment of huge technological and climatic change.

Why Write Out? Through research as well as our lived experience, writing outside and in our place gets the creative juices flowing, engages learners, and supports important connections within communities. Write Out taps into the value of the outdoors in support of learning while also building on the importance of place-based writing and education. It surfaces the opportunity to engage connected literacy and civic engagement in public spaces, both on and offline, and in this way affords an unique opportunity to explore complex questions in more holistic ways.

This session will start with an indoor gathering to orient participants, followed by an invitation to go outside and find a space to write along with optional prompts. We will stay together to write and then share our writing (although participants are welcome to find a space of their own as they choose, or, if they do not wish to go outside, they can find an inside window to sit by and write instead). We will then regather inside to debrief the experience and have a discussion about the implications and possibilities of this kind of practice in our own communities. Participants will take away a range of resources and tools to do Write Out with their own students, neighbors, colleagues and friends.