This article traces the experience of university students in an upper division business course as they collectively authored an e-book as their course project. The professor designated the title of the book and the three themes that provided the structure of the book: service, leadership, and purpose. The 25 students at Pepperdine University in…

Web 2.0 technologies have created a trend of user-generated content by supporting media production, collaboration, communication, and dissemination. User-generated content is translated into student-generated content (SGC) in education. SGC engages learners in an authentic project that fosters students' autonomy, creativity, and real-world…

Elementary students in all grades at New Hampshire's Atkinson School participate in a writing program that encourages them to develop their own topics and make their own corrections and revisions, with help from fellow students and with guidance from teachers. (Author/PGD)

Describes how Wantagh Elementary School's reading lab became the School Publishing Company's Write-In Center where students can write stories and have them bound into books. Discusses the motivational benefits of a school publishing program. (SJL)

Describes the development of curricular materials for a Portuguese heritage language program in Ontario, Canada, involving the active participation of the students themselves, with the added benefit of increased motivation and the acquisition of computer skills. (Author/CB)

Two educators discuss the role literature plays in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. One emphasizes that literary texts are a source for classroom activities that can motivate learners. The other points out that the English writings of ESL students about their travels and friends published in newsletters and journals generate…

A project involving a local grant-funded anthology of university English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) student writing is reported. Benefits to the students are described, and it is concluded that students valued the pride of authorship more than their improved writing skills. (13 references) (LB)

Illustrates the use of projects to increase non-English speaking students' motivation for learning English. Appropriate projects may generate materials that teachers can use with other students. (CB)

Erick Gordon, founding director of the Student Press Initiative, illustrates collaborations with teachers and students that have motivated students to invest themselves in the process and product of writing, including research, oral history, revision, and an immersion in and commitment to community.

The practice of supplementing language textbooks with input from students is recommended as a way to increase learner understanding and motivation. Several general language learning activities adapted to contain an environmental theme are described. It is suggested that the environmental theme helps promote lifelong learning. (Contains 15…

The World Wide Web has frequently been incorporated into second/foreign language (L2 hereafter) course instruction during the past decade. However, many teaching methods essentially employed it as a reactive mode of L2 instruction. Many other methods have been designed to facilitate constructive L2 production. They are, however, limited in their…

In a high school writing workshop, students frequently would go through multiple essay drafts and conferences with the teacher and fellow students before realizing that their theses were incorrect. A teacher devised the "lexivision" to address this problem. Students used Venn diagrams, graphs, or flow charts to represent concepts in the…

Describes how gifted fifth-grade students wrote simulation game programs on a TRS-80 Model I computer for a remedial reading class. (AEA)

One California high school is motivating at-risk students by giving them the opportunity to produce school publications. (Author/TE)

Describes how the teacher of a Composition II class (a second-semester composition class with the emphasis in research writing and bibliography) had the students, through their research, generate the readings for themselves. Describes how class discussion, writing fluency and clarity, rhetorical strategies, and development of essays all displayed…