weaving a virtual web:
practical approaches to new information technologies

edited by
Sibylle Gruber
Urbana, IL: NCTE
2000

Patricia Webb's Unit Design

· Unit One: Exploring/Comparing Real and Virtual Coffeehouses. The focus of this unit is to introduce students to the space of the Web and to compare the information provided on the Web about coffeehouses to the ethnographic information students compile about coffeehouses on campus. After completing these analyses, students write collaborative papers that compare their on-line cafe experiences with their "real" coffeehouse experiences. They cite webpages as well as their observations to support their contentions.

· Unit Two: Researching Popular Culture on the Web. In the previous unit, students will have examined and critiqued the space of the Web. For this unit, I ask students to use the Web for research and topic generation. As a class, we watch Bladerunner and then search the Web for sources that would broaden and complicate our understandings of the movie. Students then collaboratively write papers which focus on a salient issue about the movie and use the Web as their sole source of research.

· Unit Three: Creating a Collaboratively-written Webpage. Students are asked to use their experiences using the Web to help them collectively author a webpage that would serve as a newcomer’s introduction to important campus places.

· Unit Four: Critically Reflecting on the Project of Web Page Design. After collaboratively creating their own webpage, students write reflection essays which examine the process of collaborative writing/work and analyze the webpage they produced.



 


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