.
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

Welcome | Members | Syllabus | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3
Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6

Week Seven: Wrapping it up

Getting permission to publish student writing, promoting your Web site, and wrapping up our online discussion
Week seven is here, and it's time to wrap things up. There won't be a hands-on project to tackle this week. Instead, we will briefly consider two issues:

  1. getting student permission to publish

  2. promoting your new online publication.

Then we will wrap up the session by posting messages to share ideas and to say good-bye.

Activity 1: Getting student permission to publish their work online

First of all, you need to be aware of your institution's policies on publishing student work and follow these guidelines carefully. If your school has no specific guidelines, you should set up your own.

Here are a few tips for creating your own guidelines:

  • If your students are school-age, it's best to include only their first names.

  • If you publish individual or group photos of school-age children, do not identify them by name.

  • Never include a way for readers to contact student writers directly. It is best to have all feedback sent to a project contact address. This protects your students' identities, and it also allows you to weed out any inappropriate or mean-spirited responses.

Whenever you publish student writing, drawings created by students, photographs of students, photos of student, or photos taken by students; you need to get the students' written permission. to do so. If your students are in elementary school, middle school, or high school (under 18 years of age), you will need to get the signed permission of their parents.

Here's a sample 'permission to publish' form you can use to get student (or parental permission) to publish their writing.

Activity 2: Considering ways to promote your Web site

It is important to promote your site and attract visitors. Building up a readership is the only way to provide an authentic audience for your student writers.

One way to promote your site is to tell colleagues and friends about it. You can also ask friends to link to it from their site. To build up a more sizeable readership, however, you need to submit your site to search engines and other well known sites.

To find out where and how to submit your site, go to Web Resources: How to Promote Your Website. This page contains links to web pages where you will find directions to help you do this easily and quickly. When you have time, follow the instructions your find and submit your site to as many search engines as you like.

After you visit these pages, please come back to this page to do the next activity and the final assignment..

Your last assignment:
Reflect on the seven-week session and post a message to the group to share thoughts and bring closure to our session.

It does not matter whether you have been an active participant (actually working on creating an online magazine) or just an interested member who has been too busy to participate fully but who is interested in the discussion that was generated throughout the session.

Please post a message to the group to share your thoughts about where we have gone in our discussion on publishing student writing and where you hope to go now. Below are some questions that might help you decide what you want to write about.

  • What do you now know? What are some of the things you will take away from this session and find useful in your efforts to publish student writing?

  • How do you think group discussion helped you to learn, formulate your ideas on student publication, and carry out the assignments?

  • What was the best learning experience for you in this session? Why do you think it worked well for you?

  • What would you still like to know? Do you feel that you had enough support to be successful in the session? Why or why not?

  • What’s next for you? Where do you plan to go from here regarding student publications?


We have enjoyed this session. You have been such an eager, responsive group and have always been eager to respond quickly to each other's postings. It has been a pleasure to watch you tackle new assignments with such perseverence and enthusiasm, and we have been astounded by the very fine work you have produced.

We sincerely thank all of you who worked hard to complete the assignments. We also appreciate those who have not always had time to do the assignment, but have continued to read the postings and taken the time to respond to them. We hope to receive a final posting from each and every one of you!

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2003 EV_Online 2003