Project Overview
In the Research, Write, Communicte project, students develop fundamental skills needed to use technology in support of research, creativity, and communication. Students research controversial issues and learn how to take positions and make convincing arguments. You help students develop enduring understandings of how to maintain effective working relationships with technology and other people. You also facilitate students to become more effective researchers, writers, and communicators by learning how to give precise instructions to computers and collaborate with their peers. As students increase their skills, they may be empowered to take responsibility for their own learning and pursue their own talents and interests with confidence and resilience.

Project Questions

• What makes an argument interesting and convincing?
• What is the relationship between the research process and the writing process?
• Why is the World Wide Web a powerful medium of communication?
• Why are complex tasks like publishing a Web site usually performed by teams?

Persuasive Writing >
How can you help students write persuasively? In this module, you facilitate as students explore how authors use the persuasive style of writing to make convincing arguments for particular positions on important issues. You help students learn how to appeal to the feelings, beliefs, and thoughts of an audience. Make sure students understand how to use the persuasive style to convince an audience to believe an idea or take an action on controversial issues. Finally, you allow students to choose controversial issues and conduct research for their own persuasive essays. 

Persuasive Essay >
Do your students approach writing as a craft that can be practiced and mastered? In this module, you engage students in using technology tools to construct well-organized and well-written persuasive essays. You help students learn how to organize information and outline convincing arguments. You guide students as they learn to write introductory paragraphs that get readers interested in their issues, body paragraphs that make convincing arguments, and concluding paragraphs that summarize their arguments. Finally, you help students understand how to use feedback from their peers to make their essays more interesting and convincing. 

Web Page >
Are you ready to help your digital-age students become active producers of information on the World Wide Web? In this module, you help students take their arguments to a global audience by creating Web pages based on students’ persuasive essays. You engage students in becoming fully technology literate by learning how to create Web pages using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and a simple text editor. Specifically, students learn how to use HTML to add links, images, audio, and video to their Web pages. Students also begin to understand how computers strictly follow instructions written in languages such as HTML. 

Web Site >
Are your students efficient and productive when collaborating with their peers? In this module, you facilitate as students develop effective collaboration skills while they work in teams to plan, produce, and publish Web sites that attract larger audiences to their persuasive essays. You help students understand that Web sites can provide value for readers because Web sites can offer more information than single Web pages. You guide students as they build communication and collaboration skills. Students learn that teams of people who have different talents and interests can work together to produce Web sites that are works of art, literature, science, and technology.