My Project

Writing down all of the things I learned during this project could take a whole book. In the spirit of brevity, I'll summarize:

1. Technology is a great way to engage students. Considering that kids choose to spend @6 hours on line in their free time, the Internet hold obvious relevance to them, and therefore unlimited potential for ELA classrooms.
2. If kids are engaged in learning - and they were with this project! - their behavior, interest, and focus improve. The kids I worked with were typically self-professed low academic performers who said that ELA teachers talk too much and that writing is boring. Interestingly, they were able to focus for long periods of time during our small group sessions and asked me to stay past the 1-2 hours I spent at the club. They also want to continue working on the website (which isn't finished yet) and have created a bunch of potential projects using the video cam, blogs, etc.
3. Creating a website is text-dense; there is a lot of writing involved. Just making captions for a slide show on the site took 2 hours! If you want to get kids excited about writing, this is the project for you.
4. It's better to create websites with their own URL, even if it takes more time to figure out. I had 2 versions of the site, the first done in free webs, the second with its own domain name. I found the construction of the second a little intimidating, but it gave me more options, and using office live (Microsoft's website editing package) was relatively easy once I got the hang of it. I wish I would have done this to begin with.
5. Small groups work! Instead of lecturing, I gave some tasks, talked with kids about how they wanted to achieve them, and then basically stood back and watched. The decentralization of authority (I was no longer the knowledge giver) had a profound effect on our relationship - we developed a great mutual respect for one another.
6. I learned all about video editing on the PC, USB streaming,editing URL websites, creating Cd's and uploading videos, (I burned my first DVD and CD!) and much, much more. Finally I know how to make videos from my video cam, and plan to make one of a family celebration I just attended in Indiana as Christmas presents to family; my cousin came back after a 3 year stint in Africa, and it will be a great memoir for all of us after he goes back). These are invaluable skills, both professionally and personally.

In the future, I would love to have a professional teacher critique what I did in the small groups and comment on the management style. I'd love to try it out in a classroom. I would definitely make an effort to make a quieter environment; the kids really couldn't focus with all of the noise in the lab I worked in. I would consider age appropriate tasks; the text editing group work was way over the heads of the 8th grade girls I worked with. I also would have spent less time taking videos/pictures for the site and more time creating/editing text. Overall, I needed more time to do this right - that is, to make it more of the kids' project and less my own.

The kids and I will continue to work on this project and our little technology group has been a vortex of student interest; practically all of the club members want to get involved because it is FUN. All I can say is that I need a few more of me to do this, but I'm excited to work with these wonderful young people. Kudos to Prof's Reid and Stearns for generating a true learning experience in 506!