Final Project

For my final project, I wanted to create a group novel project that would be adaptable to many of the novels I teach in my 11th grade American Lit course. Additionally, this class is intended to focus on the Historical/Biographical lens (it's taught chronologically) and to have a large research component. Even though this novel unit would not be the only place these skills are taught, I wanted to incorporate elements of them here.

http://novelprojectwiki.pbworks.com/

While I have a wiki for the course on which I include projects and assignments (with possibilities for student interaction), for this project I want students to create their own wikis in groups so that they have the opportunity to plan the organization on their own.

As the project stands at the moment, students need to (in groups) conduct Historical Research on the author and time period of the selected novel, individually create a blog for one character where they include a character profile (similar to a facebook profile), a comic demonstrating a defining moment for their character, and blog posts responding to the events of each chapter as that character. Students will then individually create bubbl.us maps for their characters connecting them to themes in the novel and will use the information contained on those maps to collaboratively write a literary analysis essay. All of their sources must be included on the Works Cited page and in-text citations must be used appropriately.

Portfolios

I have used portfolios in composition classes in the past, but never in the digital realm--until this semester. Typically when creating a portfolio, I ask my students to include a certain number of essays they've previously written (in a final, revised version), along with a "Dear Reader" letter which details the struggles, challenges, and triumphs involved in all of these pieces of writing.

This semester, I considered the portfolio project I generally use in my CIS Composition class and allowed students to create a digital portfolio via wiki if they wished. More than half the class took me up on it (which surprised me as it was a trial project).

The project:

Create a portfolio about yourself as a literary person—an intellectual or artistic bon vivant. Imagine your portfolio will be appreciated by those attending a graduation open house or as an artifact of your life in 2009. Directions:

1. Title your portfolio on the front page of the wiki.

2. Include the following links:

a. a fully revised and edited personal narrative

b. a fully revised and edited personal essay

c. a fully revised and edited literary analysis

d. a fully revised and edited review

3. Additionally, include any of the following:

a. A tribute to your favorite childhood author/book/movie.

b. A tribute to your current favorite author/book/movie.

c. A tribute to those who have helped you become a literate person, or a description of

obstacles you have overcome on your path to literary enlightenment.

d. An explanation of the criteria you use to evaluate the worth of a literary text.

e. Photos, illustrations, passages from literary works, famous quotes, jokes, song lyrics, poems,

etc. that further illustrate your path to literary enlightenment.

Additionally (after creating all of these entries), I have students create a page where they reflect on their writing development within the course. I have found that students enjoy this project because of the items in #3 above; they love talking about childhood books or movies or other influences. Once they've looked back at their writing from the beginning of the course (as well as some from years previous), they can really articulate areas of improvement and struggle that they have found. Even though they haven't necessarily thought about this consciously before, they are generally reflective and notice these trends as the course progresses.

See these samples from my class this semester.

For my own learning, I appreciate blog entries as a concrete place to look back. I'm not necessarily always organized enough to keep track of actual paper products, so a digital record of thoughts is important. For this class, it's been important for me to look back at the various technologies we've learned as my own teaching moves along. Applications that didn't previously occur to me suddenly do based on what we're doing in class. Something else I've started this semester is a blog for my daily lesson plans. I give the address to my students (for when they miss class) and their parents (to find out what their children should be doing), but it also will be super useful for me to look back on in future semesters. I've always kept a general paper calendar of the structure for the semester, but the more specific daily blogs will help me to remember more specific activities that worked well. Sometimes if there are new projects, I'm guilty of forgetting what they were.

Feedback on digital writing

With any sort of writing project I do in my classes, I prefer to have a peer-feedback stage before it comes to me--it's just not practical for me to read three drafts of 70 papers in a timely manner.

One of the problems with peer-feedback is that many students just want to focus on the editing level when I would prefer they begin by looking at more big-picture issues. One way to solve this problem is to have students in writing groups and then create a wiki. On the wiki, each person can post their completed paper for other group members to read. Rather than each student editing the first draft of the paper, they need to begin by leaving one comment at the bottom of the page. That will help them to focus their comments on large ideas, rather than trying to tell what sentence to edit commas in.

I will also use this method to comment on big-picture issues and on in-process papers. I've used this method in the past and the students have found it really helpful. I hesitate to actually edit on a student's wiki page because I want them to do more of the editing than to have me do it. Even when I reach the nearly-final project stage, I can comment on the types of errors they're making or the concerns I see and they can then go through and fix those on their own.

Since I tend to see my students every day or two, I find this method of feedback more useful than other more technologically advanced methods. There are times when I would create a vlog or podcast entry if I see errors that many students are making--or I will make edits on a wiki or blog assignment sheet.