Dear colleagues and instructors,
To give you a brief account of what kind of technology-oriented changes I wanted to do with my BIN-08 Reading Skills II students, I would have to say that I wanted to create "Reading Blogs" that somehow reflect what we are reading for this class: Short stories. The idea of having students create their own blog was to have them work on the analysis of selected stories rather than having quizzes about them. The analysis of the stories implies identifying the theme, create a characterization chart for the story characters, a plot analysis with introduction, rising action, climax, and resolutiion, and a summary of what the story is about. To accomplish all this, a WebQuest will be created so students can post their findings. Then they will be able to interact with one another about their final products.
STEP 1: Thursday, February 11
After I have explained my students what we were going to do with the following quizzes, which now will be online assessments, the very first thing I asked my students to do was to open a gmail account to have full access at blogger.com. I asked them to send me their addresses to keep a record of all students who did it, and to talk to those one who "forgot" to do this.
Secondly, I asked them to start reading the story we will be using for this PBL assigment: Doctor Heidegger's Experiment by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Once they read it, on their own, they will start completing a short story plot analysis chart to get the gist of the story.
STEP 2: Thursday, February 18
Due to the fact that this particular page was not available for public use at Ulatina, I asked our Facutly dean to help me out with this issue. The idea behind eliminating this restriction is related to the opportunity I had to demonstrate the use and settings of the blog for my students in class. Because we have Internet access in class and a giant LCD screen in the classroom, explaining how this is started -step by step- was "piece f cake." To do this, I just followed the step-by-step description given to us by our instructors, Ms. Jeffs and Ms. Healey.
With the information provided in class, they have to start their blogs and send me the corresponding URLs before next class.
And what surprised me the most is the fact that some of my students, by the time we had class, had already created their blogs including profile information and their own photos. (These "kids" are sure digital learners.)
STEP 3
Although I am in the process of working on the next step for this project, I will design a WebQuest related to the story to fully develop my idea (What I stated in my introduction to this post.). As soon as I have it ready for my students, I will also post it over here so everyone can have a look at it. And I would really appreciate it if you can provide some feedback to complete this task successfully.
I'll keep all of you post it with the next step, Step 3.
Jonathan
Hi Jonathan,
Your project sounds very interesting.I really liked your ideas. Last week, I also told my students to create their own blog and I followed the same steps like you mentioned. Their first assignment was to visit my delicious web-page and choose at least two sites of their favorite and introduce those sites to their friends. To be honest, they really enjoyed and seemed motivated because they had already reflected their thoughts and ideas on their blogs. Thanks to Sandra and Deborah, they gave us this opportunity.
Dear Jonathan,
I like your project very much because it sounds quite interesting and creative. I´ve taught introduction to literature in my TEFL program, and I´d never had the opportunity to integrate technology in the class. But with the eye-opening we have received through this online course, I guess we can start implementing these changes like the one you´re doing with your students. I guess that they will enjoy it very much, and you could even ask them (as a final step)to write their own stories applying their knowledge on literary elements or critical analysis. This last part could help them to practice their creativity and challenge their intellectual and literary skills. They can upload their stories to the blog and feel proud of their own creations.
You´re doing an excellent job. I want to see the outcomes in the near future.
Best regards,
Aleyda
Dear Jonathan,
"Reading Blogs” sounds like a very exciting idea. Your students also seem to be well informed and focusing on what they are expected of. Are you going to explain how they are going to be evaluated? I am looking forward to seeing the progress.
Sincerely,
Kazumi