Dear Teachers,

I am writing this to you as an invitation to join in a new avenue of experience for your students.

My name is Deanna Rittinger and I am the owner of a peer-review, writer’s community called NoteBored. Here at www.notebored.com, we encourage writers of all ages to participate by submitting their work to our password-protected forums for comments. We are a moderated, family-friendly community of writers who are serious about learning the craft and supplying an open atmosphere for younger writers to grow.

We offer a challenge forum (where we all write stories from a trigger, then vote on the best story) and workshop forums to improve our skill through thoughtful critiques. We also have a market forum designed to share publishing information about both print and online magazines.

We then expose students to authors who are actively shopping their stories with publishers. They share in the excitement of seeing a story they helped comment on, get accepted or rejected for publication.

My biggest concern, in regard to inviting students into this community, is that of predators. My response to this concern is three fold. First, I tightened the security features of the NoteBored. You must request to register for the forum through an e-mail, where I can interview potential members. Two, I have trained my staff to moderate effectively and given them tools for which to act should the need arise. Third, I have established a relationship with a detective of the computer forensics division of the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s office in Michigan. In this way, I feel confident that I have made it as secure as I possibly can, and still offer the kind of experiences that I think will be beneficial for the next generation of writers.

What does this have to do with you? I believe that the very best way to get the student community to see themselves as powerful people with a voice is to give them a platform from which to speak. To that end, I have launched an internet magazine featuring the members of the NoteBored writer’s community. It is my desire that a portion of this magazine publish student writers.

I invite you, as educators, to register at the forum (www.notebored.com/board) and see if we have anything to offer your students.

Thank you for your time.

Deanna Rittinger