Article Review

Citation:

Karchmer, R.A. (2001). Gaining a new, wider audience: Publishing student work on the Internet Reading Online, 4(10). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/karchmer/index.html

Quotation:

“As a publishing vehicle, the Internet has the potential to reach the largest worldwide audience possible. This can be extremely motivating for students.” (Karchmer, 2001)

Reaction:

Karchmer’s article gives lots of great examples of how to use the internet as a place to publish student work. I think the motivation factor is a big one for students. With a larger audience reading their work, I think they’ll take it more serious. Instead of doing work just to get some grade, they are providing ideas, examples, and findings for the whole world to see. In a sense, publishing work on a web site gives that work a purpose. Too often in schools, assignments lack a purpose. Without purpose, we can not expect students to do their best.

This article was great for me to read while working on my unit plan for this course. My ideas of things students can do on the class website were constantly flowing. I think students will get a kick out of doing work that has some sort of value in it such as an environmental study of some sort about the community. Investigating a local environmental issue and creating a possible solution will require students to use high order thinking skills and to think critically. With the possibility of posting their research on the internet, the students will really have a chance to make a difference. This ability to make a difference has the potential to motivate those students who normally slip through the cracks, as well as everybody else.