Welcome!

Thanks for stopping my blog! It was created for Introduction to Children's Literature (EDTL 467), a class I'm taking this quarter per state licensure requirements. I've decided to explore the intersection of children's literature and technology, with a special emphasis on web 2.0 tools that have the potential to revolutionize our pre/during/post reading framework. I hope to continue blogging after the class is over, but for now, I'm focused on my course assignments.

I'm using a YA anthology of short stories called Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope by Beverly Naidoo. Here's an annotation, courtesy of the Barnes and Noble web site:

Naidoo, B. (2008). Out of bounds: Seven stories of conflict and hope. London: Puffin Books.

Seven stories, spanning the time period from 1948 to 2000, chronicle the experiences of young people from different races and ethnic groups as they try to cope with the restrictions placed on their lives by South Africa's apartheid laws.

I used this anthology with a sixth grade class as part of a semester-long seminar on South African history and culture that I developed after participating in a Fulbright-Hays seminar abroad to South Africa and Botswana in 2005. The seminar was very successful, but did not utilize a great deal of technology. I decided to revisit the work for my midterm and final projects for this course.

For the projects, I'll be creating eight assignments using various web 2.0 tools - one per story, and a final assignment encompassing all seven. In doing so, I'm assuming the role of a middle school student reading the book as part of a unit on South African history. I'll post a separate entry for each assignment, sharing my work as well as a description of the purpose and my reflection on the tool and its potential use in the classroom.

If you're reading this, feel free to share ideas and insights! I hope you're inspired to read Out of Bounds or check out some of the tools I'm exploring through this project!