The DWP '99 Invitational Summer Institute The DWP teachers write! Introduction The Dakota Writing Project's '99 Invitational Summer Institute (June 14-July 1) involved 20 teachers from various parts of South Dakota in a variety of disciplines--English, history, special education, technology, journalism, and art. Our group included one teacher who works primarily with deaf children, another who teaches children at a Hutterite colony school (K-8), and another who has published a children's book. This year, we had a concentration of teachers from the Sioux Falls area. Primarily, we used the Macintosh computer classroom for our space, but our activities spilled into other rooms in the Arts and Sciences building, as well as other parts of the campus. "So how was it"? you ask. We wrote; we laughed; we wrote; we shared writings; we shed tears over sad memories transformed into writing; we ate good food and drank strong coffee; we met and talked with the university president about teaching writing; we fused writing with technology; we responded to each other's writings; we took risks; we revised; we researched; we reflected; we walked in the sun and the rain; we collaborated; and we wrote in response to music, to clever one-sentence prompts, to vivid pictures, to nature, to snatches of literature, to gravestones, and more.  Read on to learn the story of this summer institute!   Materials/Information provided to the teachers Organization: The DWP '99 Schedule. We varied from this general schedule quite a bit, to meet the changing needs of our Summer Institute, For instance, when a hacker broke into the USD server and we could not do e-mail or access certain web pages, we shifted activities around. The schedule did provide a useful structure for the Summer Institute and helped the teachers to see the "big picture." Demonstrations for the '99 Institute. A simple schedule of the DWP demonstrations, which we posted on the wall for all to see. This schedule changed a number of times: two teachers decided to collaborate on a demonstration and traded times with other demonstrators; our art teacher asked if she could do the morning writing prompt, thus extending her demonstration by half an hour. Response Guidelines for responding to writing in small groups. Although the small groups may have departed somewhat from these guidelines, this gave them a place to start. The teachers really got into doing the response groups and requested additional time. That last week, they were sprawled out in the Williamson room, deeply absorbed in discussing their writing and how they could improve it. Rubrics (Guidelines for Excellence) for the Summer Institute: We created rubrics for the teachers, so that they might have a better understanding of what could be considered excellence for some of the activities of the Summer Institute. Creative Writing. Reading Log. Web Page/Web Demo Kit. MOO Activities: We repeated last year's MOO collaboration with the Marshall University Writing Project,  meeting with them online in a virtual environment in small groups. The success of this MOOing experiment in part depended upon which group you were in, as some teachers really got into MOOing and some did not. Generally speaking, teachers who were comfortable with technology enjoyed the MOO and wanted to learn more while teachers who struggled with technology did not enjoy the MOO and did not want to continue with it. Because of this resistance and the desire for more time to write and revise, we discontinued our MOOing activities for the second week and focused on writing, revising, and face-to-face responses to writing instead. A Gentle Introduction to MOOing. Discussion Assignments for First Meeting MOO Response Guidelines for responding to writing, for the Dakota Writing Project and the Marshall University Writing Project. These guidelines are an adaptation of our face-to-face response guidelines listed above. Tech Tutorials, etc.: Teachers who attend the DWP Summer Institute have the option of receiving six hours of graduate credit, which includes three hours for technology. So many of our activities focused on the fusion of writing with technology. Below are some tutorials/instructions that we used for our technology activities. Instructions for Creating Web Pages at USD, Using Frontpage On the last day, we gave each teacher a CD that we had burned, containing useful freeware and shareware for continuing some of the activities that we had introduced during the Summer Institute, including Netscape Communicator, MOO clients, telnet, FTP programs, and graphics programs.