In the Classroom- Literary Blog

As a virtual teacher, we do use the internet as our major teaching vehicle...but...the question remains...how do we use it as a 21st Century teaching tool? What do I mean by that? How do I use it to not only give information, but how do I use it to help the students use higher level thinking? I want them to synthesize information at a higher level, rather than just respond to answers. The greatest and most lasting learning comes from students working to create and synthesize old learning into new solutions.

Also, just the fact that others, not only your teacher, will be reading your information and creation, there is a different, more intense motivation to create well. The fact that there is an audience raises the quality of the product.

I would like to teach higher level skills in reading comprehension using Web 2.0. My Parisian Literary Blog was meant to give students a chance to respond, in a "text to self" mode, to the places I visited. I wrote about genre and about the places that these fictional characters lived in. No longer was the Seine River that Javert threw himself into (Les Miserables) just a river....it is now real...in their minds....they can see it in their mind's eye, thereby increasing reading comprehension.