Final Project ideas, etc.

I feel like the school year is just beginning, so thinking about a final project idea already is somewhat daunting. That being said, I would like to focus on a project that will adapt well to my English 11 (American Lit) classes. I also teach the CIS Literature and Composition classes at my school and typically my time and creative technology use is confined to those classes for one practical reason: I can't assume that my English 11 students will have the access to technology or take the time to use it outside of class. I try not to use entire class periods for work on projects that could have just as easily have been done outside of class or without my guidance. I'd like to create a project involving digital writing that will involve class time in a meaningful way and still be accessible to my regular, homework-avoiding students.

One major focus of English 11 is a research paper. I hope to develop some sort of project that will involve my students using multiple databases, wikis, blogs, delicious, and incorporates a video or audio component. We spend a lot of time in class talking about how solely using Google as a search engine for research is not necessarily reliable (or reputable), but that deepening knowledge using some of our library's resources is more helpful. When beginning projects for my regular students involving research, I tend to steer them towards Opposing Viewpoints first since it offers a nice brainstorming-type list for students who are having a difficult time developing a topic. For those who have already come up with a topic and are looking to refine their knowledge further, I also send them to eLibrary or CQ Researcher. There are a few other topic-specific resources available in our library, and our media specialist really enjoys working with the students to help them further their own research.

For my personal research (and in teaching my CIS classes), I tend to veer toward JSTOR and Education Full-Text. With these databases, I've had more luck finding reputable articles in their full-text versions; as much as I'd like to say I take full advantage of resources available at the physical library, there isn't always the time (or inclination) to drive there. Because of teaching the CIS Literature class, I've become much more deliberate in my own search techniques. The CIS Lit class requires students to locate and reference critical articles for the literature we're reading in class. They have access to the U's databases for the first time in this class, so many of the students are simply overwhelmed by the amount of information available to them. For the first two novels or so, I pull literary criticism for them to read so they get a good idea of what kinds of things they're looking for. During the third novel, I model for them on a projector how I go about searching for criticism in a database: advanced searches, a variety of search terms, different combinations, etc. High school seniors (and humans) tend to get frustrated when they can't quickly find the information they're looking for, so seeing me having to perform a search several times in order to find exactly what I want is valuable for them. I wish that a teacher had shown me these resources in high school instead of having college professors my freshman year say "go find sources" with no guidance.

This class has been my first experience with using blog readers, so I'm still determining how best I'll make them useful to me. I see the value of a project like the one described in Chapter 2 of Beach, Anson, Breuch, and Swiss ("Using Delicious Tagging in a Literature Class"), and I'm excited to spend some more time developing how best I can integrate this type of project/research into a class. I've had students perform basic Webquests in the past for some background research for a particular topic or author, but I do like the idea of integrating some of these other resources as well. Particularly in a class where a research focus is so prevalent, needing to determine the validity of a source or another person's tagging of that source is a really good exercise. The sooner that students develop the habit of being critical of sources they find on the web, the better. Too many of them are still willing to accept at face-value what they see in print.