Student Literature Sites (sampler)
Favorite Poem Project
Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, believes that poetry is a vocal art, an art meant to be read aloud. Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem, according to Pinsky, is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument. His web site, the Favorite Poem Project, allows students to see and hear the poets and their poems.
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll's influence remains far-reaching today. His writings and ideas have sparked countless creative efforts of all kinds in all fields of the arts and sciences, all over the world. This site includes a wide variety of resources that can be useful and instructive, not to mention entertaining.
Sonnet Central
Sonnet Central is an archive of English sonnets, commentary, and relevant web links and a forum for poets to share and discuss their own work. Sonnets are grouped by period.
Perseus Digital Library
The Perseus Project is an evolving digital library of resources for the study of the humanities. They are funded to perform research on developing tools to provide users with improved access to various types of materials. Current work considers ways of developing and refining tools for presentation of the materials in the Perseus web site. They index a wide range of literature, from ancient Greece to 19th-Century American.
Dreamtime stories on YouTube
Dreamtime Stories is a collections of folk tales from Australian aborigines, many never set to paper. The oral nature of these stories lend themselves better to new technologies which reach all around the world than print media.
Example Aboriginal Dreamtime story of Waatji Pulyeri (the Blue Wren)
Here's an example Dreamtime Story. Fun for younger students and a great introduction to storytelling for older students.
- YouTube URL
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sle62XV0BO0
Google Lit Trips
Google Lit Trips, is an educational technology project of GLT Global ED. The site is not part of Google, but integrated Google Earth into it's presentations.
Their goal is to provide support for implementation of the paradigm shifting pedagogies necessary to educators, so they may continue to meet the challenge of engaging student interest and learning, while remaining in compliance with current educational reform
EServer
The EServer is a digital humanities venture, founded in 1990 and based at Iowa State U, where writers, editors and scholars publish over 35,000 works free of charge.
AHA! POETRY
AHA! POETRY utilizes the Web for posting new verse, collecting hard-to-find books, contests, multilingual and multinational resources, contests and poet-to-poet collaboration -- that is, the familiar uses of the Web to enhance learning that were heretofore unavailable.
Shakespeare - Encyclopedia Britannica
The Encyclopedia Britannica has devoted a site to Shakespeare, including the remodeling of the Globe Theater and Elizabethan life. Different renowned actors read similar passages and it is interesting to compare their "interpretation". The site includes 500 articles and 200 images. Links to current opera, film and music as well as full texts of Shakespeare's work are included.
Wattpad
Wattpad is a writing community in which users are able to post articles, stories, fan fiction, and poems. Users are able to comment and like stories or join groups associated with the website. The site welcomes older (teen) students and has an international following.
What might be other activities for expanding students' understanding of literature on the Web?
Students of Buddy Burniske, while a teacher in Malaysia, read Nadine Gordimer's short stories over different decades and generated questions about South African history and politics as well as literature. They corresponded with students in the diverse population groups in South Africa and even this Nobel Laureate herself. (NB: The use of the Web in both schools in Iceland and Malaysia were reported in Telecommunications in Education News, vol 8, #1, published by ISTE.)
