Hello Everyone! I apologize for being behind on my "Weekly Websites." They haven't been so weekly lately, have they? Well, as you all know well, life gets crazy sometimes. But I don't want you to think I've forgotten about you. In fact, there are several things brewing as we 'speak.'

One of the things that I have been doing lately is co-facilitating, with teacher Rita Sorrentino, a course called "Participating in the Grand Conversation: How can Internet Technology support teaching and learning in schools?" This class is being offered through the Philadelphia Writing Project and the Philadelphia Education Fund for Students at the Center. I wanted to tell you a bit about the course because we are using many resources that might be of interest to you.

First a little context -- Students at the Center is an initiative of DeWitt Wallace-Readers' Digest Fund. Students at the Center gives teachers an opportunity to learn from their peers and other members of the school community. It is a collaborative program here in Philadelphia with Beaver College, the Franklin Institute, the Philadelphia Education Fund, the Philadelphia Writing Project at the University of Pennsylvania, and the School District of Philadelphia. Through summer programs, teacher networks, and other professional development opportunities, Students at the Center focuses on helping teachers create classrooms that are student-centered and teacher-directed, where students are active and engaged participants in their own learning, and where student performance demonstrates their successful attainment of high standards. (There are also SATC sites in New York and Chicago.)

Now, back to this particular course -- It was offered as one of many professional development opportunities for the spring. There are currently fifteen participants in our "Grand Conversation" course. We have been exploring the World Wide Web in a variety of ways to get familiar with the resources:

• We started with a Guided Tour.
• Followed by a Scavenger Hunt after which we shared the resources we found and how we found them.
• We have also signed up for a free email program called Hotmail so that we have the ability to communicate on-line.

Much of work is also influenced by a fantastic book called Teaching with the Internet: Lessons from the Classroom by Donald J. Leu, Jr. and Deborah Diadium Leu. This book is published by Christopher Gordon Publishers and also has a companion website of the resources included in the book. Click on "Sites in this Book" for the resources organized by chapter. The Teaching with the Internet website is a fantastic directory of links that you might want to bookmark for future reference. And the book is great -- it's been getting rave reviews by all the class participants for its ease of use and connections to teacher stories and classroom use. You can purchase it on-line through Amazon.com.

I also wanted to introduce you to this course because, in much the same way that students learn from hands-on student-centered projects, the participants in the course will be doing their own in-class projects. The projects that we have decided to do is to have each participant create their own weekly website over the coming months. We will be doing it in-class, with Rita and myself giving each person the time and attention to do some in-depth world wide web research while also learning to publish their own webpage. We will point them to several on-line resource to support website development including Leu and Leu's Developing a Homepage for your Classroom site and the National Writing Project's How-To Make a Homepage resource. We will also learn to evaluate websites and collect appropriate resources for the classroom.

Everyone is choosing a topic that is of interest to them and that they think could be helpful to themselves and other teachers. Some of the initial ideas for sites that have come up include: a collaborative multi-themed history of African-Americans over this last century, Islamic resources, children's literature resources for librarians, resources for exploring natural disasters, on-line educational resources for parents, and more! I think it'll be an exciting diversity of resources and topics. Some participants may choose to share their Weekly Websites here, so keep an eye out for them come April and May.

I hope everyone is well! Christina