It should be stated that the population of students with which I work predominantly falls in the lower socio-economical section of the overall population. A great number of my students are at-risk students. The high school into which they will go has the highest dropout rate in the county.
According to researchers like Ruby Payne and Larry Bell, these students prize relationships above everything else in their lives. Joyce Divinyi points out how difficult it is for these students to see themselves in any other situation than the here and now. These two factors greatly affected my choice for the projects in this assignment.
It should also be noted that, as a language arts teacher, I found it difficult to find projects suited to my discipline and age group. Middle school focuses a great deal on skills, while high school focuses on content. This and the fact that language arts projects seemed to be an afterthought or attachment to others (social studies, primarily) really seemed to limit projects geared toward my discipline and age group.
The "Day I Was Born" Project requires students to collect and record historical data about the day and time period of their births. They must organize this data and prepare a web page presenting their findings. This work allows them to become, in the words of the creators, "an author of the first online, student researched history book!"
As stated above, at-risk students rarely see themselves anywhere but in the here and now. This project requires them to look into their past. It also requires them to place their birth in the grand scheme of history. What was going on in the world when you were born? What place might you have in history? Students can begin to see themselves as a part of history, in a way that most social studies classes do not address.
From the point of view of language arts, the project objectives require students to perform research in various forms. The project site itself offers an online way for students to find out what was going on in the world on the day they were born. The site also includes links to sites like the History Channel, "The Man in the Moon and You," and "If You Really Were a Viking Baby." Students would have to do research in the library and would have to perform some primary research through interviews with family members. Obviously, the information would have to be written down in a useful format before posting/creating the web page, and project-oriented writing is much more motivational to my students than essays that they sometimes cannot relate to.
As with many such projects, the greatest requirement to work with is time. Students would have to have time to gather research information in the media center and outside of school at the public library and in relative interviews. Time to compile their work could be done in the classroom, but time to create the web pages and experience other students' work on the web would require the computer lab--probably a week to two week period. I estimate total work time to be the average length of a unit--one month to six weeks.
The "Proofreading and Web Site Evaluation" Project is designed to provide students the opportunity to both create and analyze web sites. It allows students to practice the fine art of evaluation and provides feedback for their creative works through the evaluations by others of their sites. There is no particular time frame for this project--when the students have a site ready for evaluation, the teacher contacts the project facilitator and comments about the sites are forwarded to the teacher. Students evaluating sites can do so at any time. Comments are recorded and sent to the facilitator who forwards them to the teachers involved.
This is the one project that is wholly related to language arts curricula. Proofreading practice of items other than teacher-generated sentences and paragraphs is invaluable. Not only that, but this project allows for the exposure to many other works by students, promoting one's own students' creativity. The fact that this project incorporates a medium my students love and permits evaluation of sites from students from all over the world makes this project definitely something that cannot be accomplished in my classroom in the normal way of things.
While time is a requirement here as well, I love the variability of the set up. The fact that there is no time frame means this can be incorporated into virtually any unit, including skills units. Since it doesn't only function during one part of the year, it permits a tremendous amount of planning and scheduling freedom.
Students would have to know, of course, how to evaluate the sites of other groups, and this can be part of our proofreading skills lessons or part of their work with the computer teacher at the school who works for a quarter at a time with various teams and grade levels. The project site offers several links to sites that deal primarily with web site evaluation.
This project is a worldwide project collecting work about and fostering powerful relationships between students and their grandmothers. Each month, students discuss proscripted topics concerning or involving their grandmothers. This discussion takes place on a web mailing list and concerns such topics as the best advice your grandmother ever gave you, the special events occurring in history when your grandmother was a child, and what inventions we have today that were not present for your grandmother's childhood. Students can also become involved in a collaborative writing entitled "A Grandmother Storybook."
As stated above, relationships are of the utmost importance to at-risk students. The development of stronger family bonds makes this very valuable to my students. The importance of being able to communicate in the web mailing list in an effective manner should not be overlooked, however. Students also are introduced to family customs and cultural systems from countries like Japan and Portugal, so while these seem better suited for a social studies class, it begins to seem that this is a project that my entire team at the middle school could become involved in.
Students must be subscribed to the list, as do teachers, and students are required to submit discussion topic responses monthly. At first, I felt this was a bit much. However, the kind of work students have to do in order to be involved in the discussions is not like the work they normally have to do. I doubt many would perceive it as work at all.
Also, since the students themselves are members of the list, they can access and add to the discussions from anywhere--they don't have to do so as part of the class' activities. Students could use the computer in my room individually once the system is established with them. The project lasts all twelve months of the year, but as I stated before, students would likely continue this activity, and certainly could without my help, into the summer months, if they felt it was fun or valuable.
The Junior Webmasters Challenge was absolutely my favorite project, and I include it despite the risk that it might be considered invalid since the project dates are for 2002. Technically, however, this is a project that my students could be doing, and so I feel it has a place here. The main site, www.gigglepotz.com, contains myriad information of all kinds for instructors and parents, and several other projects could be discussed here, but this one suits my purposes so well.
The project is appropriate for students in grades 3 through 12, allows students to address the notion of heroism in several ways: (all versions require a web site be created to present information) developing a web site explaining the qualities of a here; a site explaining the different views/definitions of a hero from around the world; biographies of people students admire and explaining/showing how these people are heroes; explain how a character from a novel or a historical figure represents heroism; and so on.
Students can work in teams as small as two or as large as they want. Students must do some kind of research to develop the information presented in the site. Students must develop their web site under the guidance of a teacher.
Where shall I begin? The notion of a hero is something that all of my students can discuss, even when they don't seem to qualified to have a rational discussion about anything at all. I would want to incorporate this into our Outsiders unit, that novel being the one book I know I can pull out and have every student reading avidly. We already discuss who one could consider to be a hero in the novel, and it fits perfectly with this project. Even if students didn't develop web pages explaining why they feel that Johnny is a hero, they could certainly develop their community awareness by heroizing someone from their neighborhood or someone they admire.
As with other projects, this one requires research, and again, it is the kind I think my students could complete without feeling pain as they do it. Cooperative work styles will be developed through the project, and even problem solving and creativity will be addressed in the creation of the web page.
Unfortunately, time becomes an issue again. The project developers estimate the time to research, plan, and design the web pages to take two to three months. The project site offers lesson ideas and a planning guide, and it seems obvious that this project is not meant to be worked on every day by the entire class. It could begin as soon as the students were into the novel, and they would have a great deal of the research completed by the time the novel coverage in class is concluded.
The most profound requirement from the teacher would be keeping up with a potentially high number of groups, and keeping them working over a period of time outside of the daily school routine. Regular work days could be worked into the schedule, say once a week, to help keep them (and me) on task. It's the kind of thing that would really drive them.
It should be noted that none of the above projects placed technological or information demands on my current system that present a problem in being able to implement any of them.