Seminar Abstract

Project Description:

I will use a website called www.edu20.org to create an online course for a new subject being taught next year at our school. The course is titled "Writing through Technology". My goal is to have this site serve as the outline and resource for the course next year for the teacher to organize their content and for the students to engage in learning. The teacher will post lessons, enable forums for class discussions, and provide feedback and resources for students to use throughout the duration of the course. I will post resources and activities for the 4 quarters of English/Language Arts instruction in middle school Language Arts (Narrative, Exposition, Response to Literature, Persuasive).

Seminar Project Abstract:

As an instructional coach at the middle school level my focus has been on improving literacy skills among standard English-Language Arts (ELA) and English as a Second Language (ESL) students. As students progress through elementary and secondary classes many complete the required levels of ESL coursework, but do not score at a proficient level on district and state assessments. These students are rarely reclassified out of the ESL program and are generally not successful in mainstream ELA classrooms. Because of this large group of struggling students many schools have created intervention classes and targeted instruction to help improve student performance. Along with Saturday classes and after-school classes this course has been designed to replace the traditional "Computers" class to target both writing and technology skills simultaneously. The goal of this project is to use technology and specifically EDU20 to help support ELA and ESL instruction in an elective class setting.

In order to foster writing skills among students, a new elective was created called "Writing through Technology" to serve the needs of struggling ELA and ESL students. The elective would support select 6th, and approximately thirty percent of the 7th and 8th grade classes. The writing elective would parallel the work in ELA and ESL classes and help students improve their writing skills. Students would engage in the writing process, create standard-based projects, and use technology to write, review, and read content material. EDU20 would provide the framework for students to use teacher-created materials, take assessments, and maintain their collection of writing materials. The majority of the coursework would be online and the teacher would serve as the facilitator, simultaneously teaching technology and writing skills.

The focus of this project is to showcase some of the activities students would engage in during the school year. During the presentation learners will engage in a narrative lesson designed entirely online. Initially they will engage in a review of content to support the ELA/ESL class, then engage in short activities demonstrating the different modalities of student learning using EDU20. The lesson will feature some of the tools our teacher will use during the year with real content from the 1st quarter of the school year. The lesson is designed for 7th and 8th grade students in the Narrative Writing quarter (September-November) of the school year. Learners will participate in an online quiz over learned content, a class debate, add content to the class wiki, write to the class forum board, and engage in other resources posted to the class. The culminating task for this project is a short quiz to demonstrate the capabilities of EDU20.