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= Welcome to Frankenstein 2.0 =

A Web 2.0 Novel Study
===Frankenstein is a novel that I have used in my eighth grade Literature and Language Arts classes for several years. The novel presents many universal themes, i.e. responsibility, the quest for fame (pride and glory), friendship, prejudice, and the question of the ethics of science and technology. While discussing these essential questions, students also learn many literary constructs: narrative, protagonist versus antagonist, character development, voice, symbolism, imagery, setting, historical background, the genre of the Gothic/Romantic and allusions.===

===The unit was set to scaffold instruction: note taking in dedicated composition notebooks and the paperback text, the writing of a formal research paper, multiple choice quizzes and end-of-the-unit presentations. Students usually used PowerPoint or poster boards to present their projects. Last year, I introduced the use of a blog to ask extended discussion questions that arose during class time, or if time did not allow for the discussion as well as providing novel-relevant videos and current newspaper articles on scientific research and trends. I also created “teams” of students to work together throughout the study on various assignments that included the final presentation.===

===After reading Lesley Farmer’s //Teen Girls and Technology,// she reinforced my belief of collaborative work, although my “teams” consisted of both boys and girls (ages 13 and 14). This unit will also try to include the New Media Literary skill sets defined as "Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new skill set almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom" (Jenkins 2006). In this curriculum design, I want to create my groups to consist of only boys or girls to compare the results of the novel study using collaboration and Web 2.0 tools.===

===This novel study, Frankenstein 2.0, is a direct result of a report I wrote for an Equity, Ethics and Social Justice class (with a focus on technology in the classroom) at Teachers College Columbia University in July 2010. Since I teach in a homogeneous, Caucasian, middle class, suburban parochial school (teaching Literature and Language Arts to grades 6,7, and 8), with all of my students having computers at home with internet, the inequity of technology access only resided in their gender. Therefore, my attention focussed on the learning inequities of gender. Using Lesley Farmer’s //Teen Girls and Technology//, and researching current trends in social networking and computer use by teen girls, I created my own survey of past and present teen student girls to gain a better understanding of what they were doing on the computer and if/how they were using Web 2.0 technologies. The unsurprising result was a majority used the Web 2.0 social-networking tool, //Facebook//. For more information on this study go to the Teen Girls and Technology page on this wiki.===

===According to Farmer and reinforced by my informal survey, girls learn in groups, learn through discussion, use social networking, enjoy decorating with graphics and use much of their computer/Internet times to share photos, video and music files. How can teachers (specifically I) incorporate this into the classroom. Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century" (2006) claims "students in literature classes are asked to take a familiar fairy tale, myth, or legend and identify how this story has been retold across different media, different historical periods, and different national contexts. Students search for recurring elements as well as signs of the changes that occur as the story are retold in a new context."=== ===The constraints and concerns of using a public social network such as Facebook seemed a bit delicate as well as non-secure. I decided to create a private social network using Ning, called Frankbook. Each student is to assume the role of one of the characters in the novel. I, the teacher, will assume the role of the author, Mary Shelley, to clear up any confusion as to what might really be going on in the novel. The characters (students) will create profile pages, update statuses depending on what is taking place during assigned readings, comment on other character profiles (in the voice of the character). Characters will set their page to reflect the characters’ mood, personality and perspective.===

===But Frankbook does not provide the only tools necessary for a robust unit on a timeless classic with a variety of themes. Farmer discusses the following ways to capture teen girls interest and “ways of knowing” ( Farmer 2008):===


 * === Create an intranet that permits a safe telecommunication “universe”. Girls can feel safer and freer to take calculated risks. ===
 * === Use threaded discussions…to diagnose prior learning as well as analyze learning. Threaded discussion can even be used as a form of study-group help. ===
 * === Use e-mail and on-line chat to create collaborative documents such as reports and presentations…a “common” whiteboard enables everyone to look at the same document simultaneously and mark on it. ===
 * === Use wikis to build community-based knowledge. It is a private space that is password protected to edit. ===
 * === Include interactive features in educational and agency websites, such as interactive polls and comment “boxes”. ===