Empower Your Teaching with Technology

Presented by B. Wu & S. Ashley

(Macbeth Illustrations)

Workshop Agenda

Part I (30 minutes): Presentation of student work and  discussion on both visual and  verbal presentations  of literary works

Part II:( 50 minutes) *Hands-on workshop to create a digital presentation (webpage) of the poem "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

Part III (10 minutes): Discussion and Evaluation of the Workshop

Objectives

• To use technology as a tool to make teaching and learning more effective and student-oriented

• To meet various learning standards

• To appeal to the different leaning styles of each student

• To integrate multi-disciplines using a inquiry-based teaching approach with emphasis on literary-based visual interpretations

• To create special effects using image -editing software

• To use online museums and other high-quality and content-rich image resources to create the visuals 

Activities

Part I: A Brief Introduction to Student-Created E-Portfolios(websites) Based on the English Language Arts

Activities-

Pick one or two websites to view and do the following. Identify-

•  how the English Language Arts learning objectives are used in students' web presentations (websites or digital portfolio). Be sure to visit reader-responses( online Discussion Forum),

  • Reading (visual interpretations), stories (verbal responses)

    • Poetry Examples

      • No Struggle, No Progress

    • Stories

      • Mrs. Flowers

      • Initiation

      • The Tell-Tale Heart

      • A Child's Dream of a Star

      • The Story of an Hour

      • A Rose for Emily

      • The Fall of the House of Usher

    • Drama

      • Fences

    • Novels

      • Count of Monte Cristo

      • The Color Purple

      • The Great Gatsby
        

    • Autobiography

      • The Color of Water

  • Writing-analysis, summary, journals, **reader-responses( online Discussion Forum), and creative writing

  • Critical thinking- making connections with other literary forms-original compositions (sample 1),(Sample 2)

  • Online research-creating authors' bios, finding content-related images from the online museums

  • Visual response to literature- collages, portraits, thematic background

• elements present in the websites that you would like to incorporate into your teaching

Click  the websites to view 

Sample 1 by Sophomores (1st Prize Winner of ThinkQuest NYC 2002-Great Contents and Visual) Sample 2 by Juniors (1st Prize Winner of ThinkQuest 2003 -Great Contents and Visual) Sample 3 by seniors (Great Visual Presentation) Sample 4 by juniors (Thematic Presentation) Sample 5 by juniors(Effective Visual Presentation)

Part II: Demonstration of Web Creation Using  the Poem "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

Activity I: Read the poem "Still I Rise" and present your understanding of the poem using a

• written response

• visual

Step 1 : Click the link to read the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou.  Use the questions to guide you to write a journal entry as the initial response to the poem (Students will use this lesson to study the poem)

Step 2 : Share your journal  with a partner and discuss further  about the poem's meaning, author (use the search engine google.com to search information about the author), theme, and the poetic style etc.

Step 3 : Share our responses to the poem in the online discussion forum.

Step 4:  Based on your journal and discussion with the partner, develop the ideas into a complete written response ( an interpretation, analysis of the theme or literary devices, and creative writing etc.). Click here for more ideas. Type your response using the Frontpage-a webpage composing program (A demo will be presented).

Step 5 : Brainstorm ideas to create a visual interpretation of the poem

• To view the lesson of creating a visual based on the poem "Still I Rise"

• To view a sample lesson on creating a visual based on any literary work.

Step 6: Demonstrate the process of creating a visual illustrating the poem "Still I Rise" using google.com , online museums and the image-editing software, ***Fireworks (Click here to learn how to use Fireworks to create an image). Avoid using cartoons and clip art.

Step 7: Use the visual resources  to create your collage (hands-on experience of creating a digital image using Fireworks and online resources) (Demo only in this workshop-see a sample illustration).

Illustration for Angela's Ashes

Activity 2: Organize the written and visual responses  on a webpage using Frontapage (  Demo only in this workshop-See a sample student work).

Activity 3: Use the rubric to evaluate your web presentation of the poem.

• Contents( Meaning-exhibits sound understanding, interpretation and analysis of the text); development of ideas; organization-exhibits coherence and direction; language use; conventions; and originality. ( 75%)
  • Written
  • Visual
• Web presentation (15%)-artistic but with clarity( i.e. text color does not clash with the background), interactive, and navigationally friendly (easy to locate the content)
• Organization ( web organization of the responses-  logical display of the contents)  (5%)

Part III: Workshop Evaluation

Please share with us your thoughts about the workshop -

• What have you learned from the workshop?
• What would you like to know but was not covered in the workshop?
• What suggestions do you have for us to make the workshop more valuable to educators in the future?

*During this workshop, we'll focus more on demos. In the follow-up workshops, we'll learn to create a website using Frontpage and create digital images using the image-editing program Fireworks.

**Reader-response is an online discussion forum where students can ask questions or share their responses to literature.

*** For easier instructions on how to use Fireworks to create a collage, go to this site.

We'll schedule to have a follow-up workshop on how to create a website and how to use image-editing program to create a digital collage to illustrate literature.

• What I think are the key ideas of the poem/story/essay? 
• If I have 10 seconds( or one minute depending on the length of the piece) to read aloud parts of the poem to share with other readers, what information would I highlight?
• What are the things described in this poem I strongly agree or disagree with?
• What do I like the most about the poem? What don't I understand about the poem?
• What topics or issues would I  like to explore further inspired by the poem/story/essay?