These lessons are organized around four themes: getting started, the collaborative classroom, composing and researching, and literature study. Each lesson presents a rationale, a description of the activity, assessment suggestions, and connections and adaptations of the individual lesson to larger curricular contexts and to commonly used literary texts, as well as to a set of objectives and to the NCTE/IRA Standards for the English Language Arts. Specific lessons include: training students to evaluate and participate in wiki culture; understanding voice, audience, and purpose on social networking sites; developing the digital process portfolio; creating a classroom Ning; using discussion boards; collaborating, composing, and communicating using Google Docs; using word clouds to teach reading, writing, and revision; improving reading skills and/through interactive technology; podcasting the traditional book review; and using microblogging to explore character and style. The text includes numerous teacher resources and also directs readers to a companion website that offers student handouts, more resources for teachers, and samples of student work.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.