SOME IDEAS ABOUT ORGANIZING AND BUILDING MEMBERSHIP FOR A REGIONAL AFFILIATE

Mike Palmquist
Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Alliance for Computers and Writing
February 22, 1995

Recently, I talked with Fred Kemp about some of the work we've been doing in the Rocky Mountain Alliance for Computer and Writing. Fred thought that some of the ideas I shared with him might be of interest to folks in other regionals. In response to Fred's request, I've jotted down some of the things we've been trying. I hope that they might prove helpful to you.

BUILDING MEMBERSHIP
We're still a long ways away from having anything near enough members to call ourselves an affiliate. But we've recently become much more aggressive in our outreach efforts. The key strategies we're using are:

  1. Piggy-backing on local professional organizations. We are sending out free advertising in the Colorado Language Arts Society journal, Statement. This is a full page flier -- see attached -- that includes a brief description of the Rocky Mountain Alliance for Computers and Writing, information about our goals as an organization, a description of benefits, and a mail-in form that constitutes joining the organization.

  2. Distributing fliers at regional conferences. We're distributing information the flier at several regional conferences: the Colorado Language Arts Society (Colorado's K-12 professional group) and the parallel group in Wyoming, the 5Cs (Colorado's community college Composition convention), the Southwestern National Council of Teachers of English, the Rocky Mountain MLA, and others as they come up. We're always looking for good conferences.

  3. Coordinating our Meetings with Regional and National Conferences. Our next executive board meeting will be held at the Wyoming Conference in June, 1995. We plan to begin holding an annual summer meeting for the full membership in the summer of 1996. We may decide to continue our tradition of coordinating that meeting with the Wyoming Conference, if the Wyoming folks agree to it.

  4. Coordinating Efforts with the State Departments of Education. I just got off the phone with Alan Olds, the Colorado Department of Education's outreach consultant for English/Language-Arts. He'll be including our flier in a newsletter that he sends to every language-arts coordinator in K-12 schools across Colorado. He's also calling his counterpart in Wyoming to arrange a similar effort there. Alan, by the way, is on our regional board of directors.

  5. Calling Community College, 4-year College, and University Colleagues. We're also calling our colleagues in regional higher education institutions. I suspect we're not alone in having a region in which not every higher-ed institution is aware of our efforts.

  6. Conducting Regional Workshops on Computers and Writing. We've already held one regional workshop (actually, it would be more accurate to call it a local workshop, since we held it at one high school for the teachers in that district) and are planning additional workshops (some of which could accurately be called regional) in the coming year. These workshops are geared toward specific audiences (e.g., high school teachers, community college faculty) and are coordinated with the technology staff at specific institutions or school districts. The model we are trying to develop (and which we used in our first workshop) is to have one day of instruction on teaching methods and a second day of instruction on the specific hardware and software that is available at a given site. In our first workshop, we were able to offer continuing education credit (at the grad level) to participants for a tuition of $40. Of that amount, $10 comes back to the English Department at Colorado State University and, through the department, to the Regional (in in-kind contributions like copying and mailing). Using this approach, we don't have to set up a bank account, and we can offer an additional incentive to participants in the workshops. Our curriculum for the first day of our first workshop is attached.
BUILDING AN EXECUTIVE BOARD
We've created our executive board both opportunistically and by thinking about who we want to represent. I find we're in a strange position--we think of ourselves as a grassroots organization, yet we have a much stronger top-down orientation at this time than we'd like. We're trying to address that by asking people who represent the full spectrum of educators to join our board of directors.

Our board has three high school teachers, one member of the Colorado Department of Education (the aforementioned Alan Olds), two community college faculty, three university faculty, and two directors (both of whom are also university faculty). We're probably going to add one more community college person and a junior high school teacher.

Mike Palmquist
Department of English
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
303 491-7253
mpalmquist@vines.colostate.edu

FLIER FILE:

Do You Teach Writing With Computers?

If you teach writing using computers+or if you want to learn more about doing so+please consider joining the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Alliance for Computers and Writing. The Alliance for Computers and Writing is a grass-roots organization devoted to supporting K-University writing teachers who have an interest in computers and computer networks. The Alliance is a national organization consisting of regional affiliates. The Rocky Mountain Chapter draws its members from Colorado and Wyoming. Membership is free. Members can:

or information about the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Alliance for Computers and Writing, or to join the Alliance, please mail this form to: 
Mike Palmquist
Department of English	office phone: 303
491-7253
Colorado State University	fax: 303 491-5601
Fort Collins, CO 80523	internet:
mpalmquist@vines.colostate.edu

Your Name:	Your
Institution:
Address:
City:	State:
Zip Code:
Office Phone:	Home Phone
(optional):
Electronic Mail Address (if you have one): 
Are you interested in attending a workshop 
on computer-supported writing instruction?	Yes  No
Are you interested in on hosting a workshop at your institution?	Yes	No

WORKSHOP OUTLINE FILE:

Workshop Outline: Rocky Mountain Alliance for Computers and Writing
Mike Palmquist
Donna LeCourt
Given at Widefield High School, January 25, 1995

Introduction and Overview.

Introductions
Prewriting
Questions and Comments from Prewrite
Move to Slides

In our introduction, we will briefly discuss the idea that computer classrooms raise a new set of challenges for writing teachers. We will also provide an overview of how we'll discuss those challenges during the rest of the workshop. The key challenges we'll address include:

(Copyright 1995 by Michael Palmquist)