Students Use the World Wide Web to Share Their Work
Mark Morton
Mendocino Grammar School
California State Framework Area: Social Studies
Grade Level: Fifth Grade
Unit Length: 8 weeks, some ongoing work after that
Produced in conjunction with the NASA NREN K-12 Partner School Program and the California Telemation Project
I. INTRODUCTION
Students learn to value research, writing, and art when it has a purpose. When children are able to publish their work, share it with others, and experience a response to what they have done, their work takes on meaning. Students want to communicate and teachers have many opportunities to help them learn to do that well.
The following quote from Handbook for Planning an Effective Writing Program, Calif. State Dept. of Ed. illustrates the power of writing beyond the classroom. "Too often students see their writing merely as products for teachers to grade. This limited view leads many students to compose stilted or meaningless prose rather than to communicate something that they care about to an audience they care about. By including postwriting activities as part of certain assignments, teachers can help their students realize the value of their writing."
When I wanted to publish student writing and art before personal computers had arrived, I brought an antique printing press into my classroom and students set their writing in lead type. When the Macintosh computer and LaserWriter became available, we printed books and broadsides that way. Now the Internet has arrived in my classroom and I want to know: What does it mean when a student can share her writing with (potentially) thirty million people? Are there good reasons for doing that? Will it increase students' ability to value and find meaning in their work? Is this new kind of publication dangerous? If we set up a structure for receiving feedback, will what we get be useful? Will 10-year-olds be able to comprehend such a large audience? Can fifth graders provide information that is useful to others? Who will read their work? Who will respond?
The Internet was built at military and university sites and therefore holds much information that is not useful to a fifth grader. This project is an attempt to begin to provide more information on the net that is appropriate for younger students, while at the same time allowing students to experience world-wide publication of their thinking.
This project will consist of a publication effort in the area of American History. Fifth grade students will publish on our World Wide Web server illustrated letters they write to themselves, purportedly from an imaginary 18th Century colonial child, and then letters that they write back to that imaginary person. The first letter will describe the life and times of the colonial child and the return letter will describe the life of the modern student.
We will set up a student and teacher developed response form accessible by Mosaic 2 and other Web clients that allow form access. The form will be structured to hopefully provide useful information, such as anachronisms found by others in the letters written by imaginary colonial children, who our audience is, where they live, more information about the lives of colonial children, praise and criticism.
II. STUDENT OUTCOMES
This is an experiment and frankly, I am hoping for some surprises, some unexpected outcomes. The Internet is a rich and unpredictable medium and the development of student uses is in a very early stage. Be that as it may:
Students will:
1. Work cooperatively to find and share information about the life of a colonial 10-year-old in America. (This will be primarily a book- based activity as there appears to be very little historical information on the net.)
2. Write and illustrate two letters using ClarisWorks, one from the point of view of a colonial child living in the year 1750 and a return letter from themselves.
3. Learn the basics of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and translate their letters and illustrations into HTML documents for publication on our Web server. (In the second year of this project students will develop appropriate hypertext links to documents published the year before and hopefully to student work at one other site.)
4. Help to develop an assessment tool which will be programmed as a Web form by the teacher with the assistance of local high school students.
5. Collate and evaluate the responses to their work received over the net.
6. Modify their work where appropriate, based on the received feedback.
Beginning
--Students will read from a variety of sources, fiction and non- fiction, about the life of a colonial child in America.
--Students will gather and share information from their reading in groups of four, develop notes, and share what they have learned with the rest of the class.
Writing and Drawing
--Students will compose, revise, edit, and illustrate a letter written to them by an imaginary child of about their age living in the year 1750. The letter will contain references to customs, beliefs, and other information derived from the students' research. Students will work in groups on peer revising and editing.
--Students will then write a letter back, using the same process, telling about their life now. In this letter the writer will try to explain some modern technologies to his colonial counterpart.
Publication
--Students will learn the basics of HTML and create some practice documents on a local server, with links to other students' documents.
--Students will publish their two letters on our Web server after formatting them in HTML.
Assessment
--Students and teacher will generate questions to be developed into a feedback form which will be an accessible link at the end of each student document published on the Internet.
--During the remainder of the school year, students and teacher will gather and analyze feedback received over the net via the response form.