Chapter 10 Bee Stings, Wooden Blocks, and Web Browsers by Tim C. Lauer

Elizabeth B
Innovative Approaches to Literacy Education
Chapter 10 Bee Stings, Wooden Blocks, and Web Browsers by Tim C. Lauer

Chapter 10 once again highlights the versatility of computers, a digital camera and the Internet. Tim gave an example of how a simple incident as a bee sting had spiraled into not just an Internet project but also attracted interested viewers including an expert in his field of study (Dr. Buchman) to the site. One wonderful characteristic of young children is that they are very fascinated by everything, hence it’s really easy to generate projects that stimulate them. Young children are so impressionable; therefore it should be really fun to work with them.

The “Bee Stings” project demonstrated how students were very committed to publish correct information to the public. As soon as they were informed that their diagnosis of the insect which stung Ted was incorrect, they went full stream ahead to change the information on their website. This show how powerful and influential the Internet is. We have often read or hear negative aspects of the Internet through the media that has really over shadowed the positive influence it may have on young minds.

Tim described in detail how he created and operated his school’s webpage at his previous school – Buckman Elementary. His webpage can be compared to an electrical bulletin board. This gave the parents, staff members and other interested viewers a chance to access relevant information about the school. This will also force the novice to be come computer/Internet literate.

Tim displayed numerous snap shots of his websites. His Buckman’s website had a Welcome, Class projects and Student Work, Bus Safety Rules, Alphabet book and Special Events such as Mother’s Day.

Tim reported that he investigated variety of web-based publishing tools which utilized little technical skills, e.g. weblogs. Weblogs are quite easy to use, until you come across some technicalities. For example, for a few days I was unable to log on to my weblog site. I was just recently connected back to it, but I have absolutely no idea what the problem was.

Tim reported that he created his website for the staff bulletin, in order to publish information of interest to the teaching staff. This type of system is quite familiar to me. At my previous job in the cooperate world, my organization used an Intranet system. The entire staff was connected to one main server. Staff members were able to communicate via computers either locally (member to member) or through the World Wide Web. All the meetings and important events were listed there.

Tim concluded “that teachers and educators seek a middle ground where technology is seen as a communication tool”.

Chapter 7 Getting Connected: My Experience as a Collaborative Internet Project Coordinator by Susan Silverman

Elizabeth B
Innovative Approaches to Literacy Education
Chapter 7 Getting Connected: My Experience as a Collaborative Internet Project Coordinator by Susan Silverman

Susan discussed a number of Internet collaborative projects in detail. Before reading this book I knew nothing about the Miss Rumphius Award. In fact I was totally ignorant as to the number of collaborative Internet projects that existed in cyber space. This is primarily due to the fact that the students I teach are not allowed to use the Internet for security reasons. Nevertheless, I can still use the ideas generated from some of the collaborative Internet projects in my lessons.

Susan tells how appreciative she was of winning the Miss Rumphius Award for her project – “An Apple a Day”. Susan explained how the idea for her project developed from a 1997 Conference she had attended. She highlighted the fact that at the start of the project she had little or no knowledge about computer technology and the Internet. Bill Gates should be credited for designing his popular user-friendly computers, this made computer novices into pros in a short time.

“An Apple a Day” project objectives were to develop reading /writing skills, and poetry appreciation. The project was geared towards second graders (age 6-7). The students were encouraged to write original poems about apples using a particular format. The format includes specific number of words per line, the use of the five (W)s and the use of descriptive words. I viewed the project on line and found the poems posted by Mrs Nunneley’s class from South Africa were fun to read. My five-year old daughter and I read a couple of them. Her favorite one was by Gaby.
My apple looks tasty and good.
It sounds crunchy and crackly.
It tastes sweet.
It feels round.
It smells healthy.

The “Winter Wonderland” was Susan’s second Internet Collaborative project. The project involves participants extracting information from a selected book with a winter theme. Students were encouraged to create some form of activities from the winter book. Susan pointed out that a rubric was produced to evaluate the creations that the participants had submitted. She noted that the students were very critical of their peer work.

The third collaborative project which Susan designed was “Frosty Readers”. This project was designed to meet NY State learning standards in language arts. The project was aimed to develop literature appreciation, language skills and creativity. Susan stated that her students were very enthusiastic about the project and were very motivated to write their own stories after viewing other student’s work.

I would like to commend Susan on following through with a promise she made with one of her student. The student had asked her to do a collaborative project on bats. Adults often times dismiss ideas and comments coming from young children.

Lessons Susan have learned
- choose collaborative projects that ties into the curriculum
- internet expose students to new literacies
- students love using the computers
- peering students is a good idea
- students/teachers need minimum technology in order to participate in Internet collaborative project

Susan ended her chapter on the “Changing Face of Literacy Instruction”. Susan believes that, “As educators we need to teach our students traditional literacy skills along with new literacy”.

Chapter 6 – My Internet Projects and Other Online Resources for the Literacy Classroom by Marci McGowan

Elizabeth B
Innovative Approaches to Literacy Education
Chapter 6 – My Internet Projects and Other Online Resources for the Literacy Classroom by Marci McGowan

Marci wrote about two projects: Fall Poetry and My Town is Important. Marci reported that the Fall Poetry Project was initiated because she was unable to find suitable Internet projects to engage her students in. Marci stated that the main aim of the Fall Poetry project was to encourage poetry writing by young children. The life of the project was three months and during that time it generated a large collection of poems.

Marci reported that individual student was given the opportunity to navigate the project’s webpage. This of course is a wonderful idea of encouraging class participation. The “Fall Poetry Project” is a very good way for students to identify with a particular term or concept. The poems created from the project will not only motivate the students, but also expose them to new literacies.

This project also assisted the students to develop their map skills. Marcie explained that the class used maps to locate the countries or states the project participants were from. This is very motivating for me, because sad to say most of my students are not cognitive about places outside of their communities.

The second project was entitled “My Town is Important”. According to Marci, this “project integrated a community theme with poetry to meet literacy, social studies and technology standards”. For this project the students had to seek out information about their towns from a number of different resources such as book, the library, photographs, and historical sites.

Marci’s project “My Town is Important” was adapted by a 4th grade class from Missouri. The students created Major Missouri Cites Webquest, this webquest highlighted one Missouri city. A third grade class from British Columbia extended the project by adding an extra writing activity based on a poem by David Bouchard.

Marci elaborated how she began her own teacher webpage by using examples she had seen on the Internet. She highlighted the fact that being a member of both a listserv and teachernet.com really help her to incorporate the internet into her classroom, thus stimulating learning.

Lessons Marci have learned when using the Internet
- students need adult supervision when surfing the Internet
- all websites must be previewed before students are exposed to them
- bookmark websites to prevent students from navigating the wrong sites
- websites may change hence flexibility is necessary
- students have to be taught how to use the mouse
- students should be paired up to make the work easier and go faster
- students have to be taught how to read and evaluate WebPages
- sites with flashy graphics and trailing cursors should be avoided

Marci concluded that, “teaching young students how to use technology is necessary “, in order for them to cope in our technological global world.