Modifying Online Work

Christine and I work together in a collaborative fifth grade classroom - regular and special ed children together. As we get further along in technology and use more online apps, we begin questioning how much to fix student work before posting. When an assignment is modified for a classified child, do we post the modified assignment alongside non-classified students' work? What if it clearly shows that this is a child with a disability? How about editing for blogs? If we make a decision not to do much editing when students post blogs, and a classified child submits a blog full of errors..or even worse..clearly not written on a fifth grade level, how much to we fix it? How have other people been dealing with this issue?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on June 10, 2007 at 11:52am

Hi Lisa,

I think you are asking great questions. I don't know any answers; I just keep experimenting and moving forth. For me, the question of how "high quality" student work needs to be to be posted (or shared in a variety of forms) is one not often asked. People assume the answer is known. It seems to be one of those "nondiscussables" in the school setting. (Word from Barth's Learning by Heart) People think that if you put something up, it should be "good," but have no idea how relative the meaning of the word can be. In this age of standards, there's such a movement towards narrow, compartmentalized expectations. There's often no whole-child perspective. So what do we do when a child does something GREAT, great for her--and others may wonder why we even shared it at all?

It points to education of the community, about accepting all of each other's contributions, and celebrating developmental transformations. We could have a full-time job in just community education, never mind nurturing each individual's growth!

Anyhow, thanks for asking. We really need to be thinking about this. Maybe someone else will have some more useful answers. My answer is that it's completely variable and sensed out in each project, with each child, in each from of presentation.

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on July 30, 2007 at 2:45pm

Hi Lisa, I think I would tend to go with an idea that christine posted - ie alongside a written blog have the students exhibit work created with tools that suit their abilities best and show their strengths. For some this might be adding a podcast, for others illustration, or a photo montage, video, comics, animation.

I've also been wondering about student editing, having peers check each other's work before "handing it in" to the teacher. Google docs would be excellent for this, the finished product could be added to the blog straight from within google docs.

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