Classroom Case: Rising to the Challenges of Web Publishing
A former high school English teacher from Virginia designed a four-week project in which she asked 11th-grade students to publish a page on the school’s website in which they would analyze themes and ideas from the Ralph Ellison novel Invisible Man. Students were taught to write and design webpages with HTML (hypertext mark-up language).
According to the teacher, students embraced the project and created pages that far surpassed her initial expectations. Each student chose a chapter and was responsible for summarizing, analyzing, and identifying significant quotations from it. Students searched the Internet, located graphics, scanned images, and created a detailed bibliography with links to pertinent sites. In doing so, students met the state language arts standards for research as well as those that ask students to demonstrate competence in reading a variety of texts and communicating their discoveries in ways that suit their audience.
At the conclusion of the project, students worked in teams to critique and edit one another’s work. They then presented their webpages on a projector. Students’ comments about their content and design choices revealed a sophisticated understanding of the novel. Their work was assessed based on the student-authors’ ability to organize information, the quality of their analysis, the depth of information they gathered, and the inclusion of pertinent links.
From “Literacy Learning on the Net: An Exploratory Study,” by M.L. McNabb, B. Hassel, & L. Steiner
Reading Online, June 2002
© 2002 North Central Regional Educational Laboratory