Digital Newsletters to a Classroom Near You

Newsletters are a common feature in many schools. Many of the teachers at my campus send one home each week with the students. Having the opportunity to create an original newsletter for just my class and publish it electronically was a new experience for me. For the past year or so, I have been hearing more and more about companies "going green" and not sending out paper copies of anything from monthly billing statements to company newsletters. I think it is only appropriate for educators to keep up with this trend, if for no other reason than to show other professionals that what their kids are learning in school can and will translate into their future role in society.
In creating my own newsletter, I explored the variety of templates already available on my version of Microsoft Office, as well as a couple of templates sent to me from friends. I found a template in Word that met my needs and began typing away. The template was very easy to manipulate and actually a lot of fun to play around with. I had to keep in mind the audience and purpose of my newsletter. (Lamb, 2005). I knew that I wanted to involve my students in the production of such a work as a means of spotlighting the work they do and allowing them to practice their writing skills in evaluating the work of our class and themselves. I had previously created newsletters in Word, but not with nearly as much appeal because I was totally oblivious to the CRAP (contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity) that goes into published work.
I put a lot of thought into the creation of my class newsletter, wanting it to be more than just a class assignment. In planning, I set aside a portion for my students to write about our "Student of the Week", a place for nice things to be said about others to build their self-image. I also wanted to include a student reveiw of the week - a summary of what was learned in class from the perspective of the students. The items I had direct control over were fairly easy to get into the newsletter. I did have to spend some time thinking about the different topics to write about and what the parents would deem relevant to them. Even more time went into the evaluation of the newsletter before publishing it. Criteria such as "format, content, and layout" were gone over to make sure that the end product was "clear and easy to use". (Lamb, 2005).
I definitely see this being incorporated more into my classroom. One of my goals for after the Christmas break is to have students create their own newsletter that they can take home and show their parents what they are learning in their own words. This is a great way to use the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy at the digital level - creating and publishing a personal newsletter would fall under the "creating" level on the taxonomy. (Churches, 2008).

Churches, Andrew. (2008). Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally. Retreived from http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670

Lamb, Annette. (2005). Planning Newsletters. Retreived from http://eduscapes.com/sessions/publishing/planning.htm

Lamb, Annette. (2005). Evaluating Newsletters. Retreived from http://eduscapes.com/sessions/publishing/evaluating.htm

Animation Fun

This week I got to learn another great tool - Stykz. This free download is a great start into basic animation. I can imagine many uses for this in my classroom, such as adding animation to my digital newsletter I send out. I can also show this to my students so they can create their own to demonstrate the different things we are learning in class. For my first attempt, I just stuck with the stick man, but in the future I would like to explore making different objects to animate. Enjoy!