Aldrin Authors

This week our professor has asked us to revisit a lesson we planned during our summer semester.  We learned about web-based learning last summer and for our final project we had to create a lesson involving the world wide web and an activity structure. (What's that? - check here Curriculum-Based Telecollaboration).  Now in our final spring semester we are learning about all the capabilities and possibilities of Web 2.0.  We have been tasked with revising our summer projects to include Web 2.0 components.  Continue reading to learn about my origninal final project and then how Web 2.0 makes it even better!

Aldrin Authors:

Buzz Aldrin Elementary students will now have the opportunity to be published authors!  Mrs. Johnson’s fifth grade language arts class will be responsible for establishing the quarterly theme, reading the submitted work and selecting appropriate samples, contacting the authors if changes need to be made, and organizing the published pieces on the newsletter.  All students K-6 are eligible to submit work connecting to the given theme.  Submissions will be collected for a month and then displayed for a month.  Each quarter the cycle will repeat.  

Web 2.0 allows users to add and edit information directly to the website.  If I were to actually implement this idea in my classroom I would create the Aldrin Author site as a blackboard account.  Blackboard allows me to enroll all students in the school in the course.  I would designate the fifth graders as instructors so they have editing priviledges.  They can upload the students writing and edit the pages.  Blackboard would also allow us to add a discussion board where students can chat about their published work.  A blog can also be added for additional opportunities to publish their thoughts.

I still like the idea of creating a site that publishes student work.  Our PTA does a quarterly newsletter which publishes student writing and drawings.  I could work with the PTA to make a blackboard site and put the newsletter online.  I still think this is an appropriate project for 5th graders since they spend much of the year focusing on writing in preparation for the writing SOL.