Authentic Projects

I am urging my Writing about Literature in the Digital Age students to think through possible final projects for our course. They are not writing traditional research papers, and even though they are doing their writing principally through their individual blogs, I have challenged them to come up with a project that is collaborative in nature, and that qualifies as authentic. The new media that we are using make it possible for us to connect not only to one another within the class, but to others beyond our classroom walls, and to the needs and interests of people and organizations that outlast our very temporary class.

What could such socially-mediated, digitally rich, writing-intensive, research-driven projects be? For whom could we make something of lasting value? Or for what group or organization? Let's use our collective intelligence to find the right subject and devise the right format for making a genuine contribution. To me, this is in step with ideals of service learning, life-long learning, and self-directed learning. We have the resources to make a difference and can organize ourselves to do so.

We've talked through a few ideas already, both in terms of content and in terms of format. Yesterday I had my students participate in a collaborative exercise in which all 17 of us simultaneously edited the same Google document, brainstorming mostly about the subject I proposed: "Evolving Format of the Book" (Here is a copy of the current state of the document -- I didn't want to link to the live copy since it will likely keep changing). It was a lot of fun, as students have mentioned in their posts (Ariel, "Taking Brainstorming to a Whole New Level"; Carlie, "Attention Teachers").

So, what about that proposed subject matter? And what would be the best format? The following are a few ideas in the works.