That's what my co-worker informed me recently. I won't even take you back as far as my first typing class in High School; I might have to explain too many of the terms from that era! (lol!) However, even just as far back as 1993, I remember going to my children's elementary school to work in the publishing center. Moms brought in their sewing machines, books of wall paper samples, slices of heavy-weight cardboard, and typewriters!!! The 2nd grade students brought their handwritten stories to us and we typed them up. Mistakes were corrected with correction tape or "whiteout". We then sewed the pages together, and glued them into a homemade "hard cover" book. We were all so proud of our young authors! They returned to their classrooms to read aloud their books to their fellow students, then brought the books home to share with their parents.
Fast forward to my first grade Spanish Immersion classroom. It's been my dream for several years now to find a way to get my students' writing published online. My passion for publishing was two-fold: I wanted to highlight my students' successes in writing, and I wanted to provide more Spanish books for my students to read. While our district has done a terrific job of purchasing Spanish books for our library and classroom libraries, it is still a slim reflection of what the traditional English programs and public libraries have available for their students. Neither have the local bookstores caught on yet to the market that is blossoming in West Michigan for Spanish children's books. And taking trips to Spanish speaking countries to buy Spanish books is a little cost prohibitive. So I set out to find an economical way to contribute to my students' personal libraries.
After several failed attempts at finding an economic medium for publishing, I was introduced to VoiceThread in a grad class. Being the "digital immigrant" that I am, I definitely needed help learning to use VoiceThread, and called on my computer savy friend to come to my aide, which he graciously did. The result is a quickly growing list of my 1st graders' Spanish stories. It has become not only an outlet to "shine", but a natural motivator to write more. The students have practice writing, revising, editing, and in addition refining their oral language skills in order to record the books. They may read these books at school, at home, at their friends' homes, on vacation, in the hospital, you name it!
I invite you to visit my website http://www.senoradalman.com/ and click on "Related Links", then VoiceThread and select some stories to listen to. Some stories are written collaboratively, others are individual student authors. I look forward to adding to this list year after year. If you teach upper elementary students or Middle or High School students, there are so many more complex options in VoiceThread that you can access to build more depth into the writing experience. Check it out! Let us all know when you have books for us to read, too. I would LOVE to see an explosion of new stories for our immersion students to read!
I can't wait to see where these "digital native" students will take us someday!
~Sheryl René
No comments:
Post a Comment