Publishing is no longer for the elite! The Internet provides a worldwide audience for student writers. Options run the gamut, from a one day project posted to the Internet by the teacher to projects spanning a term in which students learn HTML (and/or a Web editor) and upload their own Web pages. In addition, the Internet provides access to numerous venues for collaborative projects with students from around the world, creating a rich environment in which student research and writing can flourish.
Thomas Robb provides excellent step by step guidelines for creating Web-based student projects in his article, "Web Projects for the ESL/EFL Class: Famous Japanese Personages." at http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/projects.htmlFor some ideas for student projects which go beyond the more conventional "home page" model, see NFLRC: Local and Global Electronic Networking in Foreign Language Learning & Research, U. of Hawaii, (1995). Language Learning Activities for the World Wide Web - Focus on interactive Web-based projects with alternatives to the "homepage" approach. (EFL, Foreign language, Bi-lingual Ed.) at http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/nflrc.html
Some Places to Publish Student Work on the Internet: Students can publish their work via personal home pages, class home pages, or as part of an Internet Project. In addition, several forums have been created with the specific objective of publishing ESL student writing.
Exchange- publishes ESL students' work from around the world at http://deil.lang.uiuc.edu/exchangeHUT Internet Writing Project - http://www.hut.fi/~rvilmi/Project/
Internet TESL Journal - Student Projects - Alphabetical listing of numerous student -based projects. You can add a link for your students' projects. http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/links/ESL/Student_Projects/
Finding Participants for Collaborative Projects (See also links in section on Keypals.) These are largely devoted to K-12 students.
Judi Harris (Mining the Internet) has a super list of over 25 project resources.Judi also has written an article, "Using Activity Structures to Design Student Projects" which describes 18 telecomputing activities with hotlinks to actual projects exemplifying each of the 18 activity structures. Very stimulating!
Montage is another source for interactive curriculum projects involving students and teachers around the globe. The projects are all designed to create collaboration via the Internet at http://www.montage.edu.au/
Article:
Interested in hosting a collaborative project on the Internet? A step by step guide can be found in Royer, R. (1997). Teaching on the internet: creating a collaborative project. Learning and Leading With Technology, 25(3), 6-11.
Sample Assignments/Student Work: A variety: short v. long term; one-time v. continuing; individual homepage model v. collaborative group page.
Greg Kaminski's Meet the Students Project - This short-duration project involves information sharing as students interview their classmates and write introductions using the information they obtain. The audience then "Meets the Class" via links from a class picture.Michael Krauss' Culture Capsules: People, Places and Processes - a TESOL 2001 presentation. This collaborative project allows pairs of students to research and write about a person, place or process in their country and compare it with that of their partner. By using templates created with a Web editor, intermediate students spend most of their time focused on writing, but still can create attractive hypertext documents linked together into a class project page at http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/tesol2001cultcaps/home.html
Thomas Robb's Famous Japanese Personages This on-going project provides information on famous personalities in Japanese culture at at http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/famous/
- Tom has written a very informative article outlining the project and giving useful guidelines for anyone interested in doing class Web projects at http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/projects.html
Jim Duber's "The Cutting Edge: Internet & Multimedia" at http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/cuttingedge96/ is an example of a project which includes collaborative work (picture and photo gallery of the UC Berkeley campus) with students' individual home pages, some of which are very elaborate. (see one very talented student's site (novice at HTML) incorporating story-telling, a game and other resources at http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/cuttingedge96/bim.html)
Chad Green's Help Nowadays - Illustrates a Web-based student newspaper from the University of Hawaii English Language Program at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~cgreen/Fall1997/frontnews.html
Copyright Issues - These have become more complicated with the advent Web publishing. What is considered "fair use"? What about issues of plagiarism? simple professional courtesy? The following resources shed some light.
University of Texas Crash Course in Copyright - a unique interface allows you to follow different strands of the copyright "spaghetti bowl." at http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm#topDeVry's On-line Writing Support Center is a very good source of information at http://www.devry-phx.edu/lrnresrc/ dowsc/integrty.htm#property
Copyright Issues on the Web by Kristina Pfaff-Harris is a practical article looking at issues that affect us directly as CALL practitioners at http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Harris-Copyright.html
Keeping it Legal: Questions Arising out of Web Site Management by Jamie McKenzie (a non-lawyer, school superintendent). Covers concepts of "Fair Use", "Intellectual Property", Use of Clip Art , Use of Web Art, Photos, Text, etc., Publication of student art, writing, etc., Publication of district documents, Intranets: WebWhacker Files, Who is responsible? at http://fromnowon.org/jun96/legal. html#Other
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Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 3/4/02