Meet Jessica Wilber, 15 years old author of Totally Private and Personal: Journaling Ideas for Girls and Young Women.As a young writer who has kept journals all of her life, Jessica reveals how journaling not only serves as a record of events but as a way to overcome tough times. She has also found that writing down your thoughts daily is great practice and provides a wealth of material for your stories and poems. So read on to learn her secrets and tips. For more resources on Journal Writing check out Life Journal's Resources

English teachers love to find new ways to stimulate student writing. One of the most popular books here in the school library is a beautiful, visual collection of characters like Superman, Spiderman, Batman entitled Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes by Les Daniels. The other is Ultimate X-Men by Peter Sanderson. I used to get students to visually create some characters before beginning to write. Junior students always love to enter a fantasy world that is filled with heroic characters. So, when a Year 10 student showed me Hero Machine I could see the potentiality. It takes a little patience but you can design your own Superhero, save the screen, use your photo program to select the figure and then bring them to life in text. Why not make some characters and begin writing today?

English teachers are always trying to find ways to tap into new and exciting means from students to express themselves. Teachers who want to encourage self-publishing and self expression need go no further than Blogger. The new fad of 'blogs', or online journals provide a means for people to express their views in non traditional ways. Some blogs, like these at Soul Food, are used to pass on news from Soul Food, news from other sites, publishing suggestions and so on.

Despite curriculum guidelines that demand that every written piece start with a clear 'purpose and audience' here at Soul Food I am working to bring alternative forms of zine publishing into the classroom. Students are responsive to the idea of writing done by real people, for people their own age and are keen to participate. Blogging enables thousands of young people to write in public for the first time.

The potentiality is amazing. A blog can be personal or it can stick to a topic. Blogs can be used as a forum for users to have converstations online. Bloggers can be shared and have multi users. A blog can provide someone with a personal home page, a diary, an archive of their favourited destinations on the web. The blogger can link to news reports or point to other sites of interest. A student can keep their school work on a blog and be assessed online. Alternatively they can set up a blog as a kind of dream book and find some time each day to dream and muse.

Here are some other Blog publishing services
Pitas
Diaryland
Moveable Type

Join the growing group of students and patrons at Soul Food who have found self expression through blogging. A comprehensive list of bloggers, supported by and linked to Soul Food will be able to viewed at the Patrons homepage or within the Student Lounge.