The poetry
annotation project serves two purposes. It is designed to
help students understand some of the issues surrounding Native
American culture today and to help students understand some of
the historical events that continue to impact that culture. It
is also designed to help students learn how to put together a
simple website. I show students how to make links, how to save
to our server, and I model ways
to think about developing their webs.
Students use both traditional reference materials from my
classroom library and from the school library as well as on-line
sources. I remind students how to use an index in a traditional
reference book, and once we can get into the computer lab, I
show them how to search for information on the world wide web
and give them tips on how to read a search engine results page.
My tips, however, are not as powerful as the actual experience
and students seem to learn more through trial and error than
through any lesson I plan for them.
We start this project at the very beginning of the school
year, before the computer lab is operational. And so we begin
by simply reading a collection of poems written by Native Americans
and discussing them. We use the traditional reference materials
to start the annotation process. I also give students large pieces
of paper and after showing them a hand drawn map of a poetry
annotation, I ask them to draw their own concept maps of several
poems. Ultimately, they will chose one to focus on in more depth.
And, using an lcd display panel (our district has yet to purchase
an lcd projector) and an overhead projector, I show them hypertext
maps of several poetry webs from previous years. These maps are
made using Story
Space.
Students are generally very excited when we finally are able
to get into the computer lab. But some students quickly become
very frustrated with this project because they don't know the
technology. They experience problems when they don't save to
the proper file, or their computers freeze and they have forgotten
to save their work regularly. But these are necessary lessons
to learn and ultimately help them become more computer literate.
In the beginning I remind students daily how to save to the server
and how to access their individual files on the server. And we
go through a periodic "save ritual" where everyone
saves their work at the same time. After the first week or two,
students have mastered how to find their files and save them
properly. It is in these first two weeks that I show students
how to add color and to insert graphics in their webs. I take
them to free graphics sites such as Iconbazaar and Realm Graphics. From there I work individually
with students on how to use tables and other web design features.
Some students are ready for these lessons, and others are not.
What often happens, however, is when I teach one student how
to design a page using tables, that student teaches others. Color
and graphics seem to heighten the element of play in hypertext
web creation for my students. But it isn't all play.
Students sometimes have a difficult time envisioning their
webs in their entirety. This shows up when they trap a reader
in an endless cylce of three or four lexias without providing
a way out. For eighth graders, keeping track of the small parts
of a large web can be very difficult. I have found that Story
Space is a good program to help them envsion their webs. The
mapping feature of Story Space is excellent and students are
better able to see where they have linked text. But it isn't
a cure-all. But my students seem to learn from these problems,
even though they sometimes neglect to fix them. I have found
that such linked traps seldom occur in the next web project my
students do--the biography webs. They
seem to have to make the mistake in order to get beyond it in
their next project. Such mistakes, to me, are evidence that students
are taking risks with their writing. And Patrick
Shannon points out that such risks are necessary if student
writers are to grow.
Hypertext stretches them as writers,
as users of text, and encourages them to imagine text as something
that others read. It challenges them to think of themselves as
writers who must create something that will make sense to an
unseen audience. Many students do not do this very successfully
with the poetry webs, but something magical happens to them when
they begin working on the next project, the biography
webs.
