Guidelines for E-facilitators

Date: April 12, 2010

Summary: These guidelines will provide an idea of how the e-facilitator and summer institute leaders can work together for an enriching and exciting E-Anthology experience.

As the E-facilitator at your Invitational Summer Institute (ISI), you can support your writing project site's involvement in the E-Anthology in several ways. In addition to introducing the NWP website, NWPi membership, and the E-Anthology to the new fellows, you will also be responsible for registering participants and trouble-shooting problems in the first days of the ISI.

You should be available for questions, and any you can't answer should be forwarded to the NWP E-Anthology support staff at eanthology@nwp.org.

The Role of the E-Anthology

In the planning stages, begin a conversation with the directors at your site about the role of the E-Anthology in your ISI. Answering the following questions before the ISI will help you clarify your role as E-facilitator:

• How many posts and responses will you expect from each fellow?
• Will you expect them to participate in each of the forums: Open Mic, Classroom Matters, and A Day In The Life?
• If participation is not mandated, how will you encourage posting and responding?
• How will participants access computers?
• Will fellows use meeting time to post and respond? Will they be expected to work on the E-Anthology in the evenings and on their own time?

Here's some wisdom from past E-facilitators about how to best plan and use the E-Anthology.

Planning: Before the ISI, During the Pre-institute

• Plan with your directors for how your ISI will use the E-Anthology.
• Set your ISI requirements for posting and responding. Many ISI leadership teams expect fellows to respond three or more times for each time they post.
• Familiarize yourself with the E-Anthology forum and the following resources: Posting and Responding Tips (located on the homepage of the E-Anthology) and Getting To Know the E-Anthology.
• Be certain your participants are using a current email account for their address in their NWPi profile.
• Encourage them to join NWPi as soon as possible, before the ISI actually begins is best.
• Participants should not set up duplicate NWPi accounts.
  
• Sign the Guest Book.
• Once your participants have joined NWPi, you can add them by following the directions on the E-facilitators homepage.
• Introduce the E-Anthology. This should be a short presentation. Reassure the participants you'll be available, either in person or by email, to answer any questions.
• Model how to post a piece and how to respond if there is time.

Using the E-anthology During the ISI

• Once the ISI begins, if possible, plan to attend several days a week to be there to answer questions, provide encouragement, and remind participants about the importance of their work on the E-Anthology.
• Participate with the others on the E-Anthology. Occasionally respond to the fellows. Model helpful responses, ones that lead the author to a deeper understanding and follow the author's intent. Model the power of questions and personal response.
• Print out and share the Activity Report (a link on the E-Facilitator's homepage). This is a valuable record for writing coaches and directors.
• Encourage some healthy competition for "most responses" instead of "most posts."
• Have conversations with the participants:
  • Encourage cross-site responding.
  • Explain that they are are to post current pieces, not pieces that have been written for other venues.
  • Define "bless," "address," and "press." Develop a site definition of each. "Press" usually means the author is ready to hear responses that may be challenging. Be certain your participants know the differences and choose carefully.
  • Demonstrate bookmarking the E-Anthology page and simply signing in, instead of going through the main NWP website each time.

Suggestions for Individual Forums

Open Mic

• Urge fellows to respond to participants from other writing project sites, not just their own ISI.
• Ask authors of long pieces (novels) to post short excerpts with summaries of previous posts.
• Use your role as E-facilitator to post many responses yourself. It's a great model and keeps the E-Anthology running smoothly.
• Strongly encourage participants to respond to several other writers as well as to post their own writing. Both experiences help E-Anthology participants grow as writers and teachers of writing.

Classroom Matters

• This is a forum to share bibliographies, book reviews, teacher research, and teacher stories, not a forum to ask for help with ideas or resources; many of those requests go unanswered because others don't have the expertise.
• Remind participants to visit this forum and respond, as many of the discussions are lively.

A Day in the Life

• Show participants how to publish A Day in the Life posts and encourage participants to experiment.
• Note that A Day in the Life is open to all users of the E-Anthology. Insider jokes and conversations about your ISI are great, but too many limit the accessibility for other users.
• Point out that responding allows us to see both how different and how alike our ISIs can be.
• Ask participants to post reflections on their day or their week in addition to the Daily Log. Often ISI fellows have found these conversations particularly rich.
• For more, see E-Anthology Suggestions: Enhancing A Day in the Life (PDF).

Your Role

Your active participation in all the work of your ISI, and your leadership in the E-Anthology can help your fledgling participants strengthen their own skills. Your encouragement and problem solving will calm participants who are feeling overwhelmed. Simply attending the ISI as a participant who is available to answer questions will go far in helping to ensure that participation in the E-Anthology is a fun and productive part of the summer institute.