Brief Description Objectives Materials and Resources Activity Description Internet Resources

• Grade level:Elementary, High School

• Subject Area: Social Studies, Language Arts

Brief Description

    Students write reports of their research findings to be shared with friends and families. Students should draw on the criteria developed during their initial explorations to guide the format of their reports. Students develop their reports into web pages for publication on the Internet. The students' web pages are assembled into a virtual museum.
Objectives

Students will:

• practice writing skills through the processes of writing and revising their research reports.
• synthesize their understandings of the concepts of immigration.
• learn more about their heritage and experiences of others.
• gain a wider audience for their work by publishing their research on the web.
• learn how to create web pages.
• report their findings to parents and community members so that they will also have a chance to view and share students' work.

Materials and Resources Needed

     In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about the hardware and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the LETSNet website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or activities have a computer (PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP software, networking or dial-up software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape, but perhaps Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special" hardware or software requirements for a lesson or activity - over and above those described above - as well as our sense of the Internet access required to do the activity.

1. Special hardware requirements: Access to a Web server on which to place the students' reports. Access to a scanner for digitizing images that students collect for their pages.
2. Special software requirements: An html editor and/or word processing software with html extensions.
3. Internet access: Internet access and access to a server to store students' web pages.

Activity Description

• Students create rough drafts of their reports.

• Students peer-edit each other's drafts prior to teacher editing.

• Students create final drafts, incorporating comments from their peer and teacher editing.

• Students select images to include in their reports and digitize the images using a scanner.

• Convert students' reports into web pages. You may choose to do the conversions yourself, have student volunteers work with you to convert the reports, or have all students learn to create web pages. See the Internet resources below for advice on how to create web pages. At this stage you will also insert any scanned images into students' pages.

• Write an umbrella page to serve as the entry into the virtual museum with links to each student's page and a brief description of the page.

• Invite parents, community members, and other classrooms to come and share in a presentation of the students' work.

• Publicize the students' projects-- see below for a list of places to post information about student Web projects.

Internet Resources

     The following are a brief list of some sites where you might submit a notification about social science related essay exchange projects.

• Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connection
  [http://www.stolaf.edu/network/iecc/]
  St. Olaf College site lists a number of places where you can join e-mail discussion lists to connect with classrooms around the United States and the world. h the United States and the world.

• Humanities Net e-mail discussion list on hypermedia
  [H-MMEDIA@MSU.EDU]
  Send e-mail to this address to join a discussion list moderated by a history professor interested in integrating computers and multimedia.

• Humanities Net e-mail discussion list for history teachers
  [h-teach@MSU.EDU]
  Send e-mail to this address to particatipate in H-Teach. H-Teach is a list dedicated to teaching history on the college-level.

• Humanities Net e-mail discussion list for Teaching Social Studies in Secondary Schools
  [H-HIGH-S@MSU.EDU]
  Send e-mail to this list to participate in discussions on secondary social studies.

• Ednet
  [ednet@noc1.oit.umass.edu]
  This e-mail discussion list is a general education list that led the way in educational e-mail discussions.

• Edweb Discussion List
  wwwedu@elanor.oit.unc.edu
  An e-mail discussion list run by Andy Carvin, based at Edweb.

    The following sites are places you can go to learn about making HTML documents.

• Setting Up A Web Site For Your School: An On-line Presentation
  [http://bigdog.fred.net/nhhs/html2/present.htm]
  A site developed by George Cassutto which explains terminology and outlines steps you can take to establish your own web site.

• Beginner's Guide to HTML
  [http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html]
  A good place to start learning about html.

• Web66
  [http://web66.coled.umn.edu/]
  The sections on technology and information offer help on issues such as setting up a server, getting started with e-mail and other Internet needs.

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