This section is intended to show how some of the computer and Internet resources mentioned elsewhere in this site have been integrated into a content-based course which I teach at the ISALC, Lewis & Clark College. By presenting this narrative, with links to relevant resources and assignments, I hope to illustrate how computer/Internet activities mesh with the content instruction and language objectives of this particular course.
Overview of the Course - This semester-long course meets 10 hours/week and is offered to students in the advanced level of our program. The following excerpt from the Course Description gives a sense of the content and objectives of the course:
"Core 411 is designed to serve as a "bridge" for students, a transition from ESL courses to regular academic study. This class will be content-based. This means that university level content materials will be studied in order to improve students' academic study skills, learning strategies and language abilities in all four skill areas (reading, writing, listening and speaking). Some of the materials in the course are taken from the L.C. Inventing America course in order to better prepare students who plan to continue in the undergraduate program.The content focus of this course will be "Diversity and Civil Rights in the U.S." Why have certain groups been subjected to violent mistreatment since before the birth of the U.S.? What historical events led up to this "revolution" which we call the Civil Rights movement? What has been the result for African Americans (as well as for other minority groups)? Why does discrimination against minorities persist? What part does the U.S. political system play? What about the views of private citizens? Are there any parallels between the experiences of minority groups in the U.S. and those of international students studying in the U.S.?
The main text for the course consists of teacher-prepared materials compiled from a variety of sources. In addition, students read parts of Us and Them, A History of Intolerance in America, Carnes, Teaching Tolerance - Southern Poverty Law Center, 1995 and To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, Warner Books, 1960. Looking at the Outline/Table of Contents for the course provides a good overview of what is offered.
Computer/Internet Activities in the Course
Class Web Page - The basic Internet resources for the course can be found on the Class Web Page. This page serves as an Internet "meeting place" for the class. Here, students find Internet resources which have been pre-selected by the instructor as well as assignments based on these resources. In addition, the Class Web Page serves as a publication medium so that student writing can be published across the Internet as the semester passes. The Class Web Page grows as the class progresses, with new resources, assignments and student writing being added.During the first week of the course, students are informed that we will be using the Internet as a resource and they are asked to read guidelines covering Internet use. They are also asked if they would like their writing and/or photos to appear on the Internet. This is formalized through the use of an Internet guideline and permission form.
Building Background Knowledge - Students will be dealing with questions of racism and prejudice in this course. In my experience, the students who take the most from the course are those who are able to open themselves up to the realization that all people have some racist attitudes. To prepare them for our study, students complete a Subject Sampler (Facing Facts: Prejudice), one of the Web-based activity formats which can be built using Filamentality, a click n' build Web resource. To prepare students to read To Kill A Mockingbird, and to help them understand material to be presented later in the course, it is very helpful if all students share some basic historical knowledge as background. (Slavery, Civil War, Great Depression, Jim Crow). I try and accomplish this through Background 1 on our Class Web Page. This requires students to examine websites, take notes and "jigsaw" to share orally what they learn with their classmates. This process is repeated mid-semester with Background 2 as we begin to study the American Civil Rights Movement and contemporary racial issues.
Slavery in the American Colonies and Early U.S. - Before beginning To Kill A Mockingbird (TKAM), students study slavery in the colonies and the early U.S. After completing Assignment 2 on Alex Haley, they read a chapter from Haley's Roots and watch the first two episodes of the Roots video series produced by ABC-TV in the 70's. In preparation for a writing assignment on Roots, students take part in a collaborative computer session discussing their views on the most impressive portion of the video series; this serves as an effective pre-writing activity. After students write a rough draft, conduct a peer review, and revise and edit their essays, the final drafts of student essays are posted to the Class Website. As a final writing activity, students express their views on slavery and Roots by completing a Diamente poetry assignment, with the resulting diamond poems posted to the Class Page. Students delve further into the institution of slavery in early America by completing assignments from "The Terrible Transformation," a segment from the PBS "Africans in America" series.
Gaining input from minority students on campus - Former students taking this course have expressed a desire to have more contact with minority students and the local minority community. Field trips included visits to a "black" church service, local school with a high minority student population and guest speakers from the African American community, but students wanted more interaction. One semester, an arrangement with the Black Student Union (BSU) on campus was created to form an intracampus email list comprised of BSU members and students in our class. As our class wrote on the various topics in the course, I pulled out bits and pieces and posted them to the list for comment. BSU members then gave their perspective and an Email interchange occurred.
A Novel: To Kill A Mockingbird - At this point in the course, students begin reading TKAM, which provides an excellent illustration of life in the South during the Depression and the relationship among different social classes and racial groups existing at that time. After students read the first chapter of the novel, they complete a WebQuest: To Kill A Mockingbird: Growing Up in the 1930's. The WebQuest activity provides solid background on life during this time period, enabling students to better understand the remainder of the novel. TKAM also serves as an entree to the study of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's. Students keep reading journals (paper, not electronic) and answer guided study questions.
Written electronic conversations are used to generate material which can later be used as a springboards for student essays. Writing assignments instruct students how to copy and paste from these collaborative transcripts in order to get started on their essays. Computer collaboration also helps students understand passages from TKAM which may initially prove confusing. A good example of this can be seen from students' discussion of the final chapters of TKAM.
A super TKAM website, produced by NCTE and American Film Institute is available which provides a wealth of material on both the novel and the Academy Award-winning movie. There are numerous writing activities dealing with character, point of view, setting, plot and symbolism. An indispensable resource for students is the TKAM Student Survival Guide. It provides background for the novel, chapter by chapter vocabulary support, and also sections explaining allusions and idioms in the novel. This is a terrific resource, especially for weaker students who find the vocabulary load in the novel particularly challenging.
Another resource which would work with advanced students has been created at the American Memory Web site and is described as follows: "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a lesson plan for teachers that uses primary source materials on the Depression & Southern & African American experiences. The unit emphasizes language arts & offers activities including an analysis of oral histories from Alabama collected between 1936 & 1940, primary source readings on mob behavior, & visual literacy activity with photos of Alabama during the Great Depression."
Near the end of the novel, to assist students in moving beyond the surface text and to relate the novel to events occurring in the U.S. at the time it was written (during the 60's Civil Rights Movement), students complete Assignment 4 based on primary historical materials found in the TKAM website. Students read transcripts from the Scottsboro Trials (which closely parallel the Tom Robinson trial in TKAM) and they study an interview of three women who grew up in the deep south in prominent families during the 1930's, the setting of TKAM. The women were interviewed on topics which are integral to TKAM (including relationships with African Americans, the meaning of "good families" and the image of the "Southern Belle").
The U.S. Civil Rights Movement and Contemporary Racial Issues - As the course progresses, students turn the focus of their study on the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's. Before beginning this part of the course, they complete Background 2 in order to learn about the major players and events of the Civil Rights Movement. Depending on the time available and the language level of the class, the Civil Rights Movement is introduced with either a telefieldtrip to the National Civil Rights Museum (and a page of questions to use as a jigsaw activity ) or with a photo tour and timeline, a simpler activity. In addition, students will listen to university lectures, view parts of the video series, "Eyes on the Prize", and read and listen to major writings and speeches by Dr. King during this portion of the course. An excellent Internet activity which supports this study is the Black History Month Treasure Hunt. A variety of writing assignments can be fashioned around this exercise, e.g. summarizing the content of one of the links, evaluating the site or one of the links using a Web evaluation instrument, a "meta" assignment in which students write about the process they went through in order to solve the treasure hunt, downloading a graphic from one of the links and describing what it represents, or collaborating to answer "The Big Question" posed at the end of the Treasure Hunt. Additional activities can be found at the site, Exploring African American Issues on the Web- "Black History" , and when the class is ready to look at contemporary controversial issues such as Affirmative Action, several resources are available.
Argumentation - Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail" - Students in our advanced level are expected to be able to analyze and produce persuasive writing. Martin Luther King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" (Letter) is considered by some to be a classic example of argumentation. Students read the Letter and work through guided study questions dealing with its content. After students understand the piece well, we work through a handout which introduces the basic components of classical argumentation: logos, pathos, ethos, style and structure, and audience. Next, we move from the classroom to the computer lab where students use a HyperCard stack called "MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail" . This program has a dual purpose: 1) to allow students to research, in a multi-media environment, materials relating to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and 2) to receive instruction and practice analyzing rhetorical components of the Letter. Every paragraph of the Letter is annotated for logos, pathos, ethos, style and structure, and audience. The program also contains Hyperlinks to a library of documents, photos, audio and video clips on the Civil Rights Movement. Students complete five assignments using the stack. The first two are designed to teach the students to navigate through the stack, looking for answers to questions about the Civil Rights Movement. The third assignment requires students to show their understanding of the argumentation annotations made about the Letter. The fourth assignment extends students' analysis to a speech by John F. Kennedy on civil rights, and the fifth assignment requires students to write an argumentative text in the form of a letter to the editor. These essays undergo peer review, are revised and submitted. Using the "MLK Letter From A Birmingham Jail" HyperCard stack has proven to be an interesting and effective way to teach argumentation while facilitating the study of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
Computer Simulation - Prejudice - Prejudice, unfortunately, lies at the heart of much of the content materials covered in this course. Also, students in my class sometimes relate incidents of prejudice directed towards them since their arrival in the U.S. One way to deal with this topic (and to work on students' language and academic skills at the same time) is to use computer-based simulations such as "Prejudice," part of the "Decisions, Decisions" series from Tom Snyder Productions.(NOTE: Several of these are now available online for a fee). These simulations cover a number of topics (Environment, Immigration, Colonization, Revolutionary Wars, Violence in the Media, Campaign Trail and more). Each provide an opportunity for students to read, write and discuss within a content area. "Prejudice", the simulation, is set in a small town in which a local business is distributing racially biased materials, thereby inciting racial unrest among the inhabitants. Students are the collective "mayor" of the town and must make decisions based on the information given them by a cadre of advisors (also played by the students) who come from different perspectives (campaign manager, political activist, lawyer, and historian). The students must read informational booklets, each based on the viewpoint of one of the advisors. The mayor must decide which advice to accept, choosing among specific alternative courses of actions. The election is coming up and the efficacy of the mayor's decisions will be one factor in determining if he will be re-elected. The simulations require only one computer in the classroom, are easy to use,and come with freely reproducible supporting materials. Follow-up activities are limited only by the instructor's imaginatino. Here is an example of a follow-up writing assignment based on the "Prejudice" simulation.
Projects- WebQuest - The Tuskegee Tragedy - For those not familiar with this story. . . During the 1930's, approximately 400 black men were solicited by the U.S Public Health Service for free medical care. Subsequently, though the doctors knew the men were infected with syphilis, they were never treated for the disease (even when penicillin became available in 1947). Over 100 men died of syphilis and related complications, at least 40 wives were infected, and 19 children contracted the disease at birth. The tragedy of Tuskegee has been compared to other horrific events such as the Nazi concentration camps and the alleged flooding of black neighborhoods with cocaine.This is the background of "The Tuskegee Trajedy" WebQuest.
Steps in a Webquest: WebQuests necessitate that students employ cooperative strategies to complete content-specific projects. Students first explore common readings to build up the background knowledge of the class. Then, teams are formed (in this case, Reporter, Scientist, and Historian/Sociologist). After the teams gain expertise in one area by exploring Websites specific to their role, they meet to synthesize and summarize what they have learned before completing the final writing task.
The goal of this particular WebQuest is to compare what happened at Tuskegee with other tragic events and to see how they are similar and different. Specifically, all students 1) Read online articles about the Tuskegee Study and a few other controversial topics. 2) Analyze the similarities and differences between the other topics and the Tuskegee Study. 3) Prepare and send written comments to the authors via email.
- The Web Quest Page is an excellent resource page which covers the theoretical basis, courses and training materials, as well as sample lesson plans and Web Quest sites at http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html
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Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 2/13/05