ruthellb@aim.com
Transporting to Transliteracy ject with links and photographs to help guide the students. A Google video was shown to the students –” A Hurricane Katrina Tribute. “The students were assigned various neighborhoods to research using books and web sites. Their photos and research were saved to their computers. Students that had posted their notes on the wiki were allowed on the field trip. In order to further make the connection, students were also given a tally list of New Orleans architectural styles. On the field trip, students tallied the different styles of the houses, as well as their livability. The students used these findings to create brochures, which were published on our schools web page and later embedded into a wiki. Students were using all sorts of tools - digital photographs, web pages, and surveys
to create a unique product. They were beginning to practice Transliteracy. The field trip to New Orleans has become an annual tradition at our school, and each year the teachers and I strive to find a unique tool or medium to document the ongoing recovery of New Orleans. In 2008, they created videos ; in 2009 voice threads were done on neighborhoods, in 2010 they created museum boxes; and in 2011 they created a digital walking tour of the Make It Right neighborhood. With each trip, a wiki was built to guide the students as well as to showcase their work. Blogs were used not only to comment on their trips but also as a vehicle for book reviews. Online notes, such as wall wisher and lion it, were used as a check for understanding as well as a qualifier for the field trips. The students’ work on the field trips also became a basis for our school’s
work with local institutions, such as the Louisiana State Museum, Jean Lafitte Bara aria National Park, and the World War II Museum. With each institution, a product was created that involved real life experience, videoconferencing, blogging, print and digital research. While on a field trip to Jean Lafitte, students were sent out on the trails to document the flora and fauna. Upon their return, they searched for archival images and combined them with images from their trip to create an online notebook. With the Louisiana State Museum, they created podcasts for artifacts in the Presbytere and the Cabildo, as well as digital stories about their hurricane experiences. With the World War II Museum they acted as i-reporters to the Grand Opening of the museum’s’ expansion in 2009. They commented and posted videos on tumblr as they interviewed WWII veterans. This fall they posted reviews about historical novels on a dippity timeline, tweeted about the Louisiana Renaissance Festival, and they are currently creating video trailers about the festival. What’s next? Well, Operation Sail is coming to New Orleans in spring 2012 and Harris students will be there.