EdtecComet

Not Another Book Report!

Responses to literature are a standard in the upper elementary grades. Frequently they are boring for the students to do, cumbersome for the students to complete regularly, and frustrating for teachers to teach and grade. A solution to these problems could be found in Web 2.0 technologies. Blogs, Wikis, and social-networking are interactive, collaborative ways the students can use the internet to share information and create.

California Language Arts Standards for Fourth Grade

• Literary Response and Analysis – Students read and respond to a wide variety of significant works of children’s literature. They distinguish between the structural features of the text and the literary terms (them plot, setting, characters).
• Writing Strategies – Students write clear, coherent sentences and paragraphs that develop a central idea. Their writing shows they consider the audience and purpose. Students progress through the stages of the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing).

Traditionally, teachers have met these standards by assigning a multitude of book reports. Therein lies an abundance of problems:

• Students are bored with the tedious task of writing a structured book report.
• The students’ writing style is boring.
• Students are lazy and careless with grammar and punctuation.

because

• Students don’t have an actual audience or real purpose.
• They rarely get feedback on their writing.

Teachers rarely give feedback because:

• The students’ writing is boring.
• The teachers have to make so many corrections.
• Who cares what the teacher has to say?
• Previous corrections are corrected again and again.
• There are too many students’ papers to grade.
• Shuffling papers around (making copies, filing, passing back, and student revisions) is tedious for the teacher.

My goal is to have students:

• Be excited about sharing their thoughts and ideas about books that they have read.
• Use their own voice in their writing.
• Care about what they are writing, so that they make less negligent errors in punctuation and grammar.
• Share their writing with their classmates, family, and friends.

Audience

The audience will be upper grade elementary students between the ages of 8 and 12.

• According to school records 85% of the students are English language learners from beginner to fluent.
• Forty percent of the students are classified as Gifted.
• Reading levels range from second to fifth grade.
• Writing skills vary from three to four sentence paragraphs to complete five-paragraph essays.
• There is a discrepancy between the students abilities and the level of their work primarily because of a lack of motivation and interest.

Technology

The students at Normal Heights Elementary have bee using laptops for word processing, research, and projects for two years, so their knowledge of computer terminology and processes is good. They know how to

• Turn on and off the computers.
• Open and use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
• Use web browsers and search engines.
• Save pictures and documents to designated files.
• Some students have had experience with creating GooglePages.

User’s Needs

The students need:

• To see real world applications of literary discussions.
• Be involved in real world literary discussions.
• To have an audience that reads their work.
• Regular feedback on their work by peers and teachers.
• A place to create and save work online so that the teachers and other students can read and review.
• A way to be creative and still meet the state standards.
• Easy to follow directions to refer to while they are accessing the online environment.
• Simple website to access, use, save, and add to.

Environment

The students will be using their classroom computers to access the website, but they should also be able to access it from the library or from a home computer. Therefore passwords and user names will need to be accessible to students. The site also needs to be protected to avoid any “Imperial entanglements.” Parents and administration feel more secure when the students use protected sites.

Wikispaces allows teachers to create a protected site for free. The only requirement is that users have an email address, which could be bypassed by creating a pseudo Gmail account for each student.

The teachers need to be able to view recent additions and changes to monitor activity both productive and non-productive, so the teacher needs a site that provides notifications and history logs.

Wikispaces gives the creator of the site the ability to view the history of pages, give feed back through the discussion tab, and get email updates or RSS feeds about recent additions to the site.

They will need a site that is easy to use and fun looking to increase usage and motivation.

Wikispaces is easy to use. Adding text and text features (bullets, headings, and pictures) is similar using Word, by using the toolbar. The tool bar also lets the users add links, widgets (calendars, video, and maps), and tables. The side bar makes connecting the students pages easy.

Resources and Limitations

• The students have laptops with wireless internet connection. Although only 40 % of the students at this school site have access to computers at home, the library has computers available for use before and after school.
• The teacher will need to create email accounts for all students, so the students can be added to the Members list. This could be very cumbersome for classes of 25 or more students. There is no other way to add users at this time.
• At this time, the prototype will include three members as examples.
• Prior to presenting this website to students, the teacher will need to find acceptable uses of book talks, blogs, and wikis for examples to students.