Login | Create an accountDiscussion Boards | Comments Stream
Login to use bookmarks

Falling Down the "Alice Project" Rabbit Hole: Inverting Traditional HS English Research and Writing

When:
Session Two: Saturday 12:30pm–2:00pm
Where:
Room 204
Who:
Christian Long, Jason Kern, Benedikt Kroll and Michael Nathman
Affiliation: The Oakridge School, Arlington, TX
Conversational Focus/Audience:
High School
Conversation Description:

For 6+ weeks this academic year, 3 sections of 10th grade English students (at a college prep, independent school in Texas) publicly analyzed Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (via The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition). Instead of the traditional approach to analyzing a text (with a teacher-lead conversations around pre-determined themes), students were challenged to "fall down the rabbit hole" (like Alice) throughout the duration of the project, therefore trusting their own instincts as they made their way through Wonderland's themes. The teacher shifted from running the class (and a single class blog) to being an as-needed literary resource and blog entry editor before posts/comments went public.

Conversational Practice:
* I will be opening up a session wiki and creating multiple Survey Monkey questionaire's (for each of the 13 student blogs and 1 for the project as a whole) to allow visitors to offer suggestions/evaluate what they discovered. * I plan on additionally using CoverItLive and/or Elluminate to provide a 'live-blogging' (and possible additional video stream) experience during the Educon session.
Website:
http://aliceproject.wordpress.com/
Elluminate Rooms ( instructions for launching Elluminate )
Stream via Elluminate: Room 204 — Channel B

Comments

Wow. What an incredible achievement! I just spent some time on the Alice Project website and was very impressed with so much. The student maturity, achievement, creativity and insights are wonderful; the way you designed the project and documented the the details of it from beginning to end are marvelous. Congrats!

Sun 24 Jan 2010 05:59:22 PM EST