TESOL 2003 Electronic Village Online Session Our Syllabus onlinemag YahooGroup Site 2003 EV_Online Session Moderators: Sandy Peters Anne Davis Julia Karet

Creating an Online Magazine for Student Writing Syllabus | Welcome | Members | Week 1 | Week 3 | Week 4 Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 Week 2: Examining existing online magazines This week we will look carefully at some online magazines that publish writings by ESL/EFL learners. It is a chance for you to begin reflecting on what kind of magazine you would like to produce and how you would like to publish your students' work. If you are teaching now, you might like to consider how you would organize and present online what your students are writing. Before you begin to make these decisions, you need to reflect on how an online magazine can be organized and what its components should be. Examining what others have done is a good way to begin. Activity: Click on the links below to visit some online magazines and take a look at each one. Spend some time exploring them. As you do so, consider the following questions: How is it organized? How are these writings grouped? How often is the magazine published? How many issues are there? What are the student writings about? Are there articles exploring topics or issues, personal stories, school or local news, class projects, opinion pieces, cultural topics, other...? How easy is it to navigate the site? Can you easily go from one page to another in the magazine, get back to the home page, and see connections between student writings? What other kinds of features are included in the publication? Are there interactive aspects that provide chances for readers to respond or react to the topics, ideas, and opinions found in the student writings in the magazine; for example: response forms, e-mail links, opinion polls? What kinds of classroom learning and classroom learning projects might generate the kinds of writing you see? What types of articles or student projects do you find interesting? What ideas do they give you for publishing your own students' writings? Samples of online magazines publishing ESL/EFL student writing: If you know of other good examples, please let us know. If there are any that you might want to explore more thoroughly later on, you can add them to your bookmarks or favorites now. Currently publishing: TOPICS Online Magazine http://www.topics-mag.com Published by Sandy and Thomas Peters since January, 1997, this magazine is designed to provide English-language learners opportunities to express their ideas and opinions to an authentic worldwide audience. We will be taking a closer look at some of the projects published in this ezine in future weeks. E-News and Views http://muelc.monint.monash.edu.au/enews/Default.htm This excellent magazine is student-produced at Monasch University in Australia. It was originally published as a print version, but an online version has been available since 1999. Renata Chylinski started this student ezine, and fortunately for us, she is one of our members. She is looking forward to sharing with us, so please feel free to turn to her for more information about this magazine. No longer publishing issues, but past issues remain online: Write Away! http://www.nceltr.mq.edu.au/writeaway/ This attractive magazine contains fine collections of writings by migrant students learning English in Australia. It was created by Colin Oriti with the support of of the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research (NCELT) in Australia. Unfortunately, it is no longer publishing issues. Daejin University Online English Magazine http://english.daejin.ac.kr/~duo/main.html Sorry, this was here a week or two ago, but the link no longer works. We will try to find out if it is still online. This is the second online magazine that has vanished since we began preparing for this project! This online magazine was published by students at Daejin University in Korea. Although they do not appear to be publishing more issues, we wanted to show it as another example of a student-produced magazine. The LEAP Star http://leap.alcmn.org/LS/ This online magazine was published at LEAP English Academy, an ESL high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Although there do not seem to be any current issues, it may be of interest to those of you who are teaching in high school programs.The published articles deal with a number of interesting topics relevant to ESL high school students. A publication of student writing that is very much like an online magazine: Silver International Newspaper http://silverinternational.mbhs.edu/ This is an online newspaper for students learning English. It is published at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland and has lots of interesting articles. Again, it should especially appeal to those of you who are working with ESL high school students. A non-ESL/EFL online magazine that publishes student writing: MidLink Magazine http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~MidLink/ This is an superb online magazine by and for students aged 8-18. It is. sponsored by SAS, North Carolina University, and the University of Central Florida. It is not designed for ESL/EFL, but  it is an excellent publication to explore, both to see how it is put together and how they include lots of project work. Assignment: Once you have perused these magazines, post a message and share your ideas about some of the following questions: What types of articles and projects did you find interesting? What ideas did they give you for publishing the writings of your own students? What kind of student writings would you like to include in your own future publication? What ideas are you beginning to formulate for the content of your own magazine? Are you beginning to get any ideas about how you would like to design a magazine? How might you organize your students' writings? How useful or important is it to use graphics such as photos and student drawings? What kinds of interactive features would you like to use? Return to: Welcome | Members | Syllabus | Week 1 | Week 3 | Week 4 Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Our YahooGroup Site | 2003 EV_Online