As with any assignment of this type, I felt the need to develop something that other teachers in the language arts department at my school and I could expand upon and use in our real world lives as teachers. The first task was to identify what we thought would be most useful. This year has brought a multitude of changes to my school: We are using Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the school system is under the Ohio Improvement Process (OIP), and we are entering the new Teacher Evaluation System. With so many changes, we had ample ideas for what we felt would be beneficial to our department. Therein, the problem did not lie in what to do but what not to do!
Reviewing the student pre-assessments from the beginning of the school year revealed a few areas of particular need across the high school years. One feature that stood out was writing. The students are required to write three different types of essays: narrative, informative, and argumentative. Each of these may involve research if the teacher designs the essay to incorporate it. Students seem to lack experience in all areas of essay writing, from beginning the process, to documenting resources and incorporating them in an academic manner, to editing and revising a finished piece.
To make this project useful, I knew that the teachers would need resources as well as the students. The question was, what would be the best route to get information to them? Imagine my dismay when the teachers asked for me to create a blog that they could access. I hate blogs, feel that they are often narcissistic in nature, and rarely invite readers to interact. Yet, I did understand the need to have the information in one place where everyone in our department could access and respond to it. I proposed a wiki, but these are not accessible at our school. We needed a place that we could access anywhere and anytime, add information to, comment on, and return to review content at later times. This would be the same with the students. We decided as a department to begin a Google Blog for the teachers and a separate one for students. As the librarian/media specialist and initiator of the project, I would be over both blogs and add content as necessary.
What content would be needed? Teacher needs included: information on the writing of the required essays, rubrics by which to judge the quality of writing, information about the CCSS and incorporating these into the classroom, technology guides, and technology utilization and incorporation. We decided to use this as the beginning point, knowing that the needs will grow as we incorporate technology into the writing components of our classrooms.
Student content needs would be both the same and much different than the teacher needs. Students would need writing and research guides, technology guides and information, access to the rubrics by which their essays would be judged, and access to the technology to develop and publish their essays. As a department, we looked at possible technologies that would be available to students in the computer lab at the school. We decided to have students create a Google account which would serve as a place for them to build and keep a portfolio for their high school career through Google Docs. This would also allow students to access the student Google Blog as well as being able to share writing and collaborate with each other.
