The newspaper site is just about ready…thanks in great part to Seb. It’s been very cool actually working on a project collaboratively with someone. We’ve come to the finishing touches pretty quickly, and now I’m getting anxious to start using it.
I don’t want to duplicate what the school paper is doing, so I’m going to have them focus on making editorial decisions about outside stories to link in the Web log with some annotation. At some point, they will also be contributing original writing…at least one story each. I want to try to simulate as much as I can the workings of a real news room for at least a couple of weeks and see what happens.
Here’s the plan as it stands right now. I have 23 students, six sections. I’m thinking six groups of four (one will have three students). Each day, the group has to come up with four potential news items to post to their sections. They’ll post these individual ideas in their own weblogs and write about their decisions. Ideally, they will then work as a team to decide on only one which will actually get posted. They’ll briefly summarize their selection process each day in their personal weblogs. Once each group makes its selection, a rotating group of editors will decide which of those six stories will be given the “Top Story” status. I’ll sit in on those discussions…while trying to figure out how to assess all of this!
In the meantime, they will be working on their own personal, school-related stories which they will post at some point. We’ll also have some mini-lessons on digital photography, and at some point each person will post an original photo.
So here I go again, flying into a cloud, hoping to come out right side up…
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