From: !hiltonny002 (Carrie Brower)
Subject: Putting it all together!!
Dear Circle Mates,
Everyone has sent a wonderful assortment of project contributions
to our shared folder. That tells me that our journal is going to be
just terrific!
Since some of you are involved in your first Learning
Circle, I'd like to describe what my students and I will be doing with
all the material we've received over the network. Hopefully this information
will help answer some of the questions you may have about the editing
and publishing phase of our work together.
1. First my students and I will review the printouts for
our project on Famous Local People. After we've decided how many pages
we want to have in this section of the journal, we will reread each
project entry and decide which ones we want to include. We want to have
at least one contribution from each class in our Learning Circle as
the geographic diversity makes for more interesting reading. If we are
missing something from your school, I will let you know soon. If you
can get something to us quickly we may still have time to include it.
2. My students will edit the selected selections for grammar,
punctuation or spelling. If they need to shorten or combine articles,
we'll try to send a copy back to the authors so they can have a final
look. (This may be hard to do, but we plan to try!!!) We will also double
check to make sure that we have student and school names for everything.
We want to give everyone credit for all their great work!
3. Then we will print the final copy. In the past I just
used the print option directly from the communication program (with
a new ribbon). Then we just cut and paste. This year I have been learning
how to use the Macintosh so you will see if my learning pays off!
4. Finally we add illustrations to each page. Sometimes
I have used a computer graphics program to do this, and other times
I just asked my students to be the project illustrators themselves.
Often they create the perfect picture to fit a given text, and their
art work allows them to take further ownership of their project section.
I will send each of you a title page and a list of our
Learning Circle members with the names of the projects they are sponsoring
along with our project section. When we have received all of your sections,
my students will eagerly assemble our copy of our Learning Circle's
"Journal of Places and Perspectives." From past experience, I can tell
you it is a most exciting time! Good luck and please feel free to ask
me any questions about the process. If I can't answer them, I will find
someone who can!
Carrie Brower
Village Elementary School
Hilton, New York