TO: Jeff Wilson, Office of Instruction

FROM: Scott Bevill, T. L. Hanna High School

DATE: 8/14/06

RE: Blog Proposal for English IV and Film Studies

Purpose:

-To allow students to set up individual weblogs through the service on www.blogger.com for research journals, weekly writing assignments, an e-anthology and literary discussion.

-To allow student use of a message board hosted on my personal server for class discussion, dispersion of on-line assignments, and collaborating on their on-line textbook. Site address is www.sebevill.net/forums

-To allow students to use a Wiki in order to create an on-line textbook for the class Film Studies. A wiki is a collaborative webpage, that anyone can edit. The framework for the textbook is hosted on my personal server at www.sebevill.net/wiki.

Standards:

-R1.9 – “Demonstrate the ability to read several works on a particular topic, paraphrase the ideas, and synthesize them with ideas from other works addressing the same topic.”

--Students will use their blogs to create an e-anthology of open domain texts that relate to their study of Night. They will use their blogs to not only organize the other pieces of literature, but also introduce and reflect on why they have chosen them as a part of their anthology.

-R2.8 – “Demonstrate the ability to apply personal criteria for evaluating texts in a variety of genres.”

--Students in the Film Studies class will use their blogs for their weekly genre assignments, as they analyze the typical characteristics of a variety of film genres.

-W1.1 – “Demonstrate the ability to choose a topic, generate ideas, and use oral and written prewriting strategies.”

-W1 – “The student will apply a process approach to writing.”

-During the Senior project, students will use their blogs as a research journal, detailing their research process, and sharing their discoveries. As each blog is posted with a timestamp, I will be able to see that every student is treating the reseach paper as a process.

-W1.6 – “Demonstrate the ability to write and publish in a variety of formats.”

-W1.6.5 – “Demonstrate the ability to use the internet to communicate with others.”

-Using blogs, forums, and wikis will fulfill both of these standards.

-C1.13 – “Demonstrate the ability to analyze and refine varied presentations through collaboration, conferencing, and self-evaluation.”

-A web based forum provides a virtual option for collaboration on presentations…will be especially noticed in the creation of our on-line textbook.

-RS3.3 – “Demonstrate the ability to present his or her research findings in a variety of formats.”

-The research blog will be used by students to present their findings throughout the process, but is only part of the project…they will present using an actual research paper, and a verbal presentation at the end of the semester.

-RS3.4 – “Demonstrate the ability to differentiate among standardized systems of documentation.”

-Hyperlinked text is becoming a prevalent form of writing on the web. Students will use typical documentation on the actual paper, but they will also learn proper forms of hyperlinking when publishing to their blogs.

-RS3.6 – “Demonstrate the ability to distinguish his or her own ideas from the ideas and discoveries of others.”

-The blogs are a much more informal setting for their writing. Pieces published to the blog will be much more focused on presenting their own ideas and thoughts on a topic…a place for more reflection than academic writing. So there will be a definite distinction between presenting their own ideas and what they have learned.

Instruction:

English IV CT – In my English IV class, I plan to use student blogs and an online forum for a variety of purposes and for a variety of reasons. In a communications for the technologies class, I believe that it is essential that the students learn to use the Internet as not only a medium for research, but also for communication. The ability to use Internet communication tools is necessary in today’s world, and my assignments will be focused on teaching those skills.

The Senior Project – With a few other teachers of senior level English teachers, I am pioneering a new variation of the senior project. This project will last all semester long, and encompass a large amount of research, writing, and presenting. I will set up all of my students with personal blogs to be used as a research journal. Each student will be required to post 2 entries per week detailing what they have learned about their topic in the lab or library. Their entries will be focused on how they found the information, what sources were helpful, what sources were biased, and where they may find more sources to continue their research.

I believe that students blogs will be the best way to do this because of the accountability of them. I will be able to see their progress through their posts constantly. I have done research journals with pen and paper before, but have always seen some students simply make up their journals on the day before the paper is due. With a time-stamped blog, they will be unable to do this.

The E-Anthology – Students will use their blogs to create an e-anthology of texts relating to the themes of the novel Night. This assignment will teach them to find open domain literature on the web, catalog it, hyperlink it, and reflect on it. Students will be reading and writing on a variety of texts and putting it together into one final anthology.

Blogs are the best method to complete this assignment for a number of reasons. The ability to hyperlink sources is an essential part of Internet communication. Students will not need to print reams of paper to put this together in a portfolio, they can simply collect the documents through a system of links. And as the grader, I will be able to easily access all the works my students have chosen to read by viewing their blogs and the links they provide.

The Message Board – I will be able to use a fully moderated and private message board to give various assignments to my students, saving myself the time and paper of printing out and copying the assignments. Students will have an area to use as an online study group for my classes, and will be able to post their completed assignments in response to original threads I make. The message board is simply an extension of the classroom community…and can be accessed from anywhere by my students and my students only. I have used message boards in the past, please visit http://sbevill.proboards51.com/ to see how I used it with my English II classes last year to facilitate a self-selected reading assignment.

Using a message board to deliver assignments is extremely easy. I can start out our time in a computer lab by sending students to one website and check their progress by viewing their responses to my initial post. Very convenient for organizing lab days, which have a tendency to be chaotic.

Film Studies:

Genre and Outside Viewing Assignments – By using student blogs for these weekly and quarterly assignments, students can work at their own pace. The genre assignments are due every week, but students have multiple chances to revise these assignments as the semester progresses. By using their blogs, I can easily comment on their assignments and see their revisions immediately. There are two outside viewing assignments due each quarter, so having students post them to the blog allows them to finish their assignment immediately after viewing the film. There are no excuses for missed assignments…the dog can’t eat a blog post. :)

The Textbook Wiki – This class does not have a textbook. Last year, I required students to create their own textbooks using a notebook and paper. Each of these student textbooks varied in quality. Some students would take copious notes and be better prepared for assessments than others. By setting up an online textbook, I hope to put students on equal footing in this regard. But the textbook is only as good as students are willing to make it. And it is a collaborative, evolving text. I will step in occasionally and help write it, but I really want it to be fully student-created. Through the process, they will learn about writing in a different format (Wiki), learn about a different style of documentation (hyperlinking), and work collaboratively in creating a full class text.

Safety:

I take on-line safety very seriously and want my students to be safe, responsible members of the Internet community. So everything I do in my classes with these assignments will be focused on teaching my students how to use this technology safely and responsibly.

Anonymity – Students are not allowed to use any personally identifiable information aside from their first names. They are not allowed to mention the school, their last names, their location, or other personal information that may compromise their anonymity. In fact, many of my students will use aliases when posting on-line to take this one step further.

Administration – On each of my student’s blogs, I will be given full administrative privileges. I will be able to edit posts, comments, and the full design of the page. Since the message boards and Wiki are hosted on my server, I have full administrative rights to block, ban, delete, and edit any inappropriate content. I will also lock down my message boards so that only users registered with the board and with my classes may access it.

Monitoring – I will also monitor each blog through the use of an RSS reader. Blogs syndicate themselves online using xml. An RSS reader collects each new post from every blog on its subscription list as soon as it is posted. So I will have every update from my students in hand as soon as their sites are updated. I will also have my students set up an RSS reader for themselves so that they can view the contents of their classmates blogs and engage in discussions with them as they post.

Conclusion:

Thank you for taking the time to consider this proposal, and I hope to have addressed any concerns with the use of internet applications in my classroom. If you have any further questions on how I plan to use these technologies over the course of the year, please let me know.

Scott Bevill