Jason Ranker argues that struggling students need "opportunities to use print and produce meanings in diverse and multifaceted ways." His case study of two fifth-grade girls who used digital video production to better understand aspects of the civil rights movement reveals ways in which multimodal literacy practices "can create new possibilities…

Describes a student-prepared multi-media show. (DD)

Presents a condensed method for involving students in the kind of theatrical problem-solving that transforms a script to a play. Describes how to incorporate a "human slide show" into the class. Notes that students must read plays not just to understand events, but to make artistic choices about how to stage the action so that an…

Presents the author's experiences as a kind of case study of what it looks and sounds like when "doing" Shakespeare is in the foreground of instruction and "play" is the thing that makes that happen. Discusses guidelines and suggestions for putting a play together. (SG)

A step-by-step plan for creating a digital story grounded in sound theory and research about how adolescents expand their literacy is presented. Students were found to be selective about effects while putting the story first, choosing those that drove the story farther as opposed to those that mimicked what might be seen in films or television.

Students should become involved in the production of messages to be transmitted by both non-electronic and electronic media. (DD)

Describes the following features of the Cutler Playwrights Festival: (1) the contest, which involves publicity and choosing a play; (2) the workshop, in which the play's content, expert, release time, size, and follow-up are decided; and (3) the production, which determines the cast and crew and the final performance. (JD)

An account of the author's experiment with student film making. His conclusion: The visual language has proven itself to be real and exciting in the English classroom. (Author/JB)

A report from the Educational Resources Information Center at the National Council of Teachers of English; ERIC abstracts of pertinent documents are included. (RD)

Presents a procedure for involving small groups of students in the creation and production of videotaped short stories. (DD)

Explains how a teacher teaches to some of her students via television, how it has developed as a medium in a particular school, some of its distinct advantages, and some of the concerns with it. Gives a detailed picture of how the hardware affects the classroom situation. (TB)

Presents a day-by-day account of a beginning filmmaking course for a seventh-grade class. (MM)

Explains how ineffective journalism and speech classes were replaced by student-produced and -performed closed-circuit television newscasts. (SW)

Media advocates too often obscure the extent to which media production is dependent on print. (JH)

Outlines the advantages of using microcomputers in producing high school newspapers--word processors permit the generation of columnar newspaper copy and encourage student revision--and suggests three necessary characteristics in computer hardware--a large memory, good software, and reliable technical assistance for handling problems. (MM)