My Internet Projects and Other Online Resources for the Literacy Classroom

My Internet Projects and Other Online

Resources for the Literacy Classroom
by Marci McGowan

"Teaching young students how to use technology is necessary. No longer can teachers excuse themselves from this aspect of their professional roles. As teachers, we need to integrate the Internet within regular classroom curricula to support students' learning." (p 100)

Today's world is definitely not my mother's. It is global, it is fast and it is growing faster every day. Yet with the Internet, the world is at our fingertips. We are not constrained by distance nor by time. In fact, the Internet enables us to be more connected than ever before.

The Internet grants us access to knowledge not previously imagined and at speeds that would make Superman turn green. We are not bound by textbooks or limited to paper sources in our libraries. We now have access to the same historical documents, artifacts, scientific data and works of art that historians, scientists and artists do. The Internet allows students to conduct research in much the same manner as these great thinkers, enabling our students to become scholars in their own right. This rapid growth of information, coupled with the ability to collaborate with people across the globe, is clearly creating a dynamic and powerful environment for education.

Today, because of the Internet, we are only limited by our own imaginations. The Internet has the potential to immeasurably enhance the curriculum and provide rich learning experiences for every student. While this demands that teachers be adept at guiding students as they navigate the sometimes murky waters of the global sea, we can follow the lead of great broadband visionaries like Marci McGowan and Susan Silverman, and utilize the collaborative Internet project as a safe, engaging and purposeful medium to elevate learning to new heights.

"The Internet offers many opportunities for students to engage in authentic reading and writing experiences. One such opportunity is the collaborative Internet project. . . This purposeful, authentic, and engaging work begins to prepare today's learners for new literacies in the technological world of today and tomorrow." (p 86, 87)

Internet projects allow students to collaborate with peers and experts, fostering an intellectual community without borders. Students become members of a new model of classroom, where all members are actively engaged in the construction of meaning, no longer mere receptacles of rote knowledge. The GLOBE Program(Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) is an exemplary model for virtual scientific exploration, collaboration and application. Students conduct research and share their findings with other students as well as with scientists seeking authentic data to answer problems related to the environment.

iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) is another wonderful global network that enables educators and students to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects. iEARN organizes learning circles, which are interactive, project-based partnerships among a small number of schools throughout the world.

The 2006 Learning Circles projects I reviewed are awe-inspiring. They show how participants reflected and creatively shared what they had learned with others. Knowing that your work will be shared with an audience greater than your classroom can put a new perspective on how you create and present. I am currently working with my Spanish 6 class on creating PowerPoint presentations on seasons and weather. When they heard that I was going to post their projects on the class webpage, attention to detail became a priority for them, ensuring me that they would put forth optimal effort. Quality and accuracy certainly takes on new meaning when students know that their work will be shared with a world-wide community.

iEARN also offers extensive opportunities to participate in Language Arts projects, enabling students to:

• develop language, literacy, research and critical thinking skills
• experience new technologies
• develop cultural awareness
• become involved in community issues

These are some worthy projects to explore (most projects are ongoing, while others have since ended). Maybe you'll find something you can bring back to your colleagues or students:

The Art Miles-Students create murals to establish the Guinness Book of World Records for the Longest Children's Mural in the World (3 miles).
Beauty of the Beasts - A traveling international wildlife art and poetry exhibit.
Books Mark the World - A bookmark exchange between children all over the world.
Cartoons and Their Utility - This project seeks to profit from virtues and good deeds embodied in cartoon characters.
Children's Rights through Artwork - A project combining arts with a study of the Convention on the Rights of Children as a way to promote students' understanding of their legal status in society.
Christmas Card Exchange - Teachers and students prepare an envelope containing Christmas cards and send them using snail mail to the other schools in their group.
Comfort Quilts Project - An opportunity for children and youth to create comfort quilts for children experiencing needs for caring comfort while receiving emergency or ongoing needed medical care, following natural disasters, or during times of transition, crisis or displacement from their homes and communities.
Crafts for Education Project - A project that encourages students to make crafts and sell them to raise money for the cost of schooling.
iEARN-Uzbekistan - Contribute to a Comfort Quilt for communities in Bam, Iran following the earthquake.
Cultural Recipes Book: Food for Thought - Students research the recipes of typical dishes in their countries as well as the origin of the ingredients and recipes, and the legends and stories behind them.
Dolls for Computers - Students will research their culture to make dolls and other objects which will be sold over the internet to buy educational materials.
Electronic School Magazine - Students and teachers all over the world are encouraged to to write, compose announce and document whatever is proper to be on our educational magazine.
Eye To Eye Project - A project that sponsors the creation of postcard size images to an online gallery which is dedicated the ideals of friendship and understanding through visual communication.
Everyone Smiles in the Same Language - Students can amuse themselves after discussing serious problems in other forums. They share humorous stories, or anecdotes they know.
First Peoples Project - The First Peoples' Project links indigenous students around the world in an exchange of art, writing and culture.
Flowers: The Smile of Divine Love - Students share writing and artwork related to the theme of flowers.
Folk Costumes Around the Globe - Students are invited to send pictures about folk costumes in their countries, describe them and eventually write a few lines about different occasions people wear them.
Folk Tales Projects - Students study folk tales in their communities and beyond.
iEARN-Japan Coordinator, Yoko Takagi, visits children at the Paint Shop art and technology center created by the Science and Arts Foundation with iEARN.
IranGlobal Art: Images of Caring - Students create and exchange artwork and writing on "a sense of caring."
Imaginations and Superstitions -Students hope to better understand each other and the forces within us that allow us to imagine.
International Sign Language - A project to speak about sign language in different countries and collect the words and make a website for international sign language in different languages.
iQUOTE Project - A project in which students share various quotations of well known philosophers.
Laws of Life Essay Project - Students write about their personal values in life.
Let's Live Without Problems - Sharing problems together and giving advice to each other.
Let's Play Saxibol - This project uses a game to learn sport tactics which work through Internet.
Lewin - A global anthology of student writing.
Literature Collaborative Learning Project - A project to study, in both participating countries, two stories (or poems): a Hebrew one that is translated into your language and one written in your language that has been translated into Hebrew.
Little Explorers - A project for very young children, supervised by teachers, toperform a series of unusual activities such as research games and experiments.
Moving Voices Video Exchange Project - A project integrating digital video-making into social studies, language learning, geography, civics and community building and other disciplines, and engaging participants in a community of learners interacting and collaborating online.
Music Around the World - An exchange and discussion of music from all over the world, including instruments around the world, and styles of music in performance.
My Hero Project - An interactive educational website with support materials which allows students and teachers from around the world to research heroes from all different walks of life and create a webpage of their own that celebrates the hero of their choice.
My Name - Students research, find and send information about their own name.
My Perspective - Students share photos of their perspectives on the world.
Narnia and CS Lewis - Join participants around the world in a discussion of the magic books "Chronicles of Narnia" written by CS Lewis.
NEGAI Connection - Peace from Hiroshima to the World - We would like to spread our wish of friendship around the world!
One Day in the Life Cross-Cultural Comparison - Students describe a day in their life.
Origami Project - Art therapy and how ORIGAMI works.
Peace Through Poetry - Students share original poetry on the theme of world peace.
A Picture Tells a Thousand Words - Students will share an image or a picture and invite all to discuss about it in the forms of expository essays, poems, narrative, description or stories.
Portrait of the World - Picture It! - An exchange of images from around the world - photos and multimedia like movies, flash or ppt.
School Theatre International - Focused on international cooperation between schools and establishing cross-cultural performances.
Side By Side - Students create elongated portraits of themselves with symbols of their past, present, and future.
Special Place Project- Students draw or write about a local place that is precious to them.
Sweet Whisper- A forum where students share their writings and it is also a place for them to discuss their ideas and experiences of Friendship, Love, Freedom, Studies, etc.
Talking Kites All Over the World - A tradition of flying kites with personal and group images of our dreams for a better world, a world of co-existence, tolerance, acceptance of the "other" and peace.
Teddy Bear Project - An international teddy bear exchange using email.
To Talk With Santa Claus - The project provides students with the possibility to imagine, write and paint compositions about Santa Claus and to relate their experiences of the moment when comes Santa Claus to their country.
Universal Values (Primary School/Early Childhood) - An exchange of educational ideas of teachers working with the youngest children in order to establish a bank of ideas on the internet (lesson plans, teaching materials, etc.) on how to teach children about the most basic values.
Virtues Project - A project in which students highlight, investigate and write about virtues that make a difference around the globe.
"A Vision" - An international literary magazine that teaches tolerance and mutual understanding.
Ways of Writing - A forum for English Language Teachers.
What is Sacred to Me - The participants of the project will discuss and share ideas about the things that are sacred to them.
World of Harry Potter - This project brings together didactic resources about the Harry Potter phenomenon (traditional materials, interactive questionnaires, games, etc), with exchange and active participation between students and teachers from all over the world.

So many worthwhile opportunities exist online to participate in Internet Projects. I am in full accord with McGowan's aforementioned admonition: Educators are remiss if they do not embrace the Internet. We must seize this opportunity and integrate the Internet into the learning environment to achieve what I like to refer to as the three E's:
Engage each student
Empower each student
Enable each student to maximize his or her potential

Literacy and Technology: A World of Ideas

"The Internet has opened the doors for many people and has revolutionized learning. People have more opportunities to read when they are on the Internet. Teachers must seize the opportunity to learn the skills that will make it easier for them to use the Internet in their quest for learning and for creating learning opportunities for students. Children today have been brought up with this technology. It is second nature to them, and they clearly see technology as a tool that can help them in a variety of ways. We, as teachers, must look deeply and begin to see the wide range of opportunities that technology provides as we work with our students to strengthen their literacy skills." (Chamberlain, p 63, 64)

Let's face it. Technology is ubiquitous and technological literacy is a fact of life. With new technologies emerging every day, our students must possess the skills, literacies, and adaptability necessary to meet the challenges of today's ever-changing world. Just as we, the educators, are now thinking about technology in expanded ways, so must our students in order to be prepared for life in this information age. Whether they go on to college, become white collar workers, blue collar workers or parents, our students must be technologically literate as citizens of a digital and global community.

So, how do we help our students meet the literacy challenges of today's world?

We prepare our students to communicate proficiently in the 21st century by providing them with pedagogical support for the kinds of literacy practices that clearly characterize our evolving landscape. Since we encounter knowledge in multiple forms daily: print, image, audio, video, and other digital and media contexts, we must familiarize our students with these multiple representations. Our students must be more than adept at navigating informational resources, they must know how to critically evaluate and analyze them. As educators, we must guide them as they interpret the information and help them as they develop and construct meaning. Moreover, we must help them to synthesize and represent their understandings integrating these same multimodalites.

Cathleen Chamberlain, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Oswego City School District in New York and author of this chapter, offers these websites to create learning opportunities and to promote multiliteracy:

Jan Brett's Website

Technology and Literacy

Susan Silverman's Internet Projects

Susan Silverman's Webfolio

Electric Teacher

Electric Teacher Online Portfolios

Children's Search Engines

Study Zone

Searching the Internet

Educational Listservs and Collaboration Links

Creating Classroom Webpages

Visual Learning

Fun with Photos

I hope you'll enjoy these additional authentic and worthy sites that foster 21st century literacy skills:

Everyday Spelling

The Write Site

JuniorScholastic

TeenInk

E-CARDS (The Nature Conservancy)

E-Cards (Sydney, Australia)

CNN Video Almanac

Sports Illustrated for Kids

WorldVillage Digital Postcards

PetCentre Hospital Online Forms (Virginia)

United Airlines

Without a doubt, these resources "can provide enriching experiences for [your] students that will enhance the literate environment" (p 53) and, hopefully, serve them well on their learning journey as they grow into multiliterate citizens of the world.