Graduating from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

As part of the ITS program at George Mason University, I designed a telecollaborative learning project called "Letters of War".  The project is written for use with Web 1.0 tools - email and HTML web pages.

There are many primary source documents available for just about any role in many of the wars in the last two centuries.  In this project, Teachers can have their class play the roles of families at home connected to someone away at war - a child, a spouse, a mother, a father.  The war-side role will be played by subject matter experts – e.g. re-enactors, professors, museum curators, etc.  Students will play the home-side roles.  Roles will be paired together through the project so that opposing roles correspond throughout the war or battle.   The level of research and tracking throughout the war may differ depending on the grade level and detail required by the curriculum.  Students will discover what each role experienced, such as, what part they played in the war efforts, what they experienced throughout the war or battle, what daily life was like, what they felt, the equipment used, the strategies of war, specifics about a particular battle, maybe even what happened when they got home from war.

Once registered in the project, Students will navigate to the website and then to the info page about the role they will playing.  There they will find a picture of the person, the basics about that individual – their name, where they’re from, how they’re related to the person they will be corresponding with, etc.  As they correspond with their individual, they will find out much more about the role they are corresponding with as well as the role they are currently impersonating.  Students will need to find out as much about the military person with whom they are corresponding, without directly asking questions like an interview.  They will then assemble that information into a narrative that will turn into a short biography about the military person that will be posted to the site, complete with pictures and written from the point of view of the individual the students impersonated.

For example, a student assumes the role of Mary Todd Lincoln.  This student will converse with a professional playing the role of Abraham Lincoln.  When the biography is written by the student, it will be about Abraham Lincoln from the point of view of Mary Todd Lincoln.

All communication is done through the project website in an email like fashion so it can be monitored.  Once the biography is written, it is submitted to be posted on a standard web page.  Web 2.0 tools could make this that much more exciting.  Students could still do the correspondence, but perhaps do it through blog entries, then build their biography on a Wiki page as they experience the correspondence.  Depending on the people being impersonated and the re-enactors willingness to do this, they could create audio files that students could listen to.  If this project were to expand to more modern wars, video could even be incorporated where appropriate. Vietnam would be perfect for a video project because it was the first war fought in the living rooms of the American people via television.

Letters of War through Web 1.0 was great, but Letters of War through Web 2.0 could be SO much better.