witsalliance activism, k-12 education, teaching, wits alliance, writers in the schools, writing

Way To Go, Austin!

Badgerdog Literary Publishing, the WITS Alliance member organization serving Austin, Texas, is set to launch a new creative writing workshop series for senior citizens in East Austin this spring. This new addition to Badgerdog’s slate of education programs is made possible by a generous grant from A Glimmer of Hope Foundation, Badgerdog’s first funder. Thanks to their support, Badgerdog will serve 50 seniors at two locations in an often under-served area of Austin. All participants will be published in a new anthology—Silver Voices in Ink.

An additional bit of good news: A Glimmer of Hope recently named Badgerdog Executive Director Melanie Moore its 2010 Angel of the Year. A Glimmer of Hope made the announcement with this video that follows Melanie’s story from a career in business to the inception of a literary nonprofit.

Advertisement
witsalliance creative writing, k-12 education, poetry, wits alliance, writing

Badgerdog at Round Top

On Friday, April 17, as part of National Poetry Month, Badgerdog will once again partner with the Poetry at Round Top Festival. Students from Ojeda Junior High, Del Valle Junior High, Del Valle Opportunity Center and Del Valle High School will spend the day at the International Festival Institute at Round Top, where they will take part in poetry writing and performance workshops with award-winning authors Jeff Stumpo and Jenny Browne. Badgerdog instructors, along with English teachers from all four schools, will participate in a morning workshop with renowned poet and University of Texas professor Dean Young.

ancientpc-spring-tx1

Founded in 1971, the International Festival Institute hosts exceptional year-round education and performance programs. This is the second year Badgerdog has partnered with the Poetry at Round Top Festival.  To read more about the International Festival Institute, please click here.  To sign up for the Poetry Festival click here.

witsalliance k-12 education, wits alliance, writing

The Art of Translation: Austin Students Delve into Language

badgerdog-logoOn Friday, April 3, Badgerdog students in Austin participated in UWC After Hours’ Community Convergence: Bridging. Connecting. Translating.

Sponsored by the University of Texas’ Undergraduate Writing Center and Department of Rhetoric and Writing, this open house event showcased the pagecast projects of Badgerdog student writers who had previously participated in media translation workshops at the UWC.

Since the summer of 2008 Bagerdog has partnered with the UT Undergraduate Writing Center for a series of three-hour workshops to help students to foster creative and critical engagement with digital media and to become accustomed to seeing themselves as learners in a university setting.   To goal of this project is to introduce high school creative writing students to effective and analytic use of technology by exploring different avenues for publishing their work. These workshops capitalize on the motivation of Badgerdog students to translate their original creative writing into multimedia productions of images, music, and their own voice recordings.

This translation project not only offers students an opportunity to create digital media and thus personally engage with technological production, but it offers a more visceral connection to the rhetorical and writing strategies necessary for a successful translation, such as concepts of audience, tone, and voice.  Through this approach, we hope to encourage students to become critically engaged in the process of producing media as well as giving them an opportunity to join their own voice to the digital world.

To view previous Podcasts created by high school students in the Badgerdog program, click here.

badgerdog-photo