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.