Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies

What it means to read and write has changed, making this an exhilarating and daunting time to be an English teacher. As teachers, Robert Rozema and Allen Webb understand this and offer a vision of how to teach with emerging tools in ways that amplify student learning. - Sara B. Kajder Author of The Tech-Savvy English Classroom Read the technology book that's about the content, not the computer. Literature and the Web is a thoughtful, nuts-and-bolts guide for any English teacher looking for effective tools to boost readers' engagement and improve their responses to literature. Adolescents love being online: browsing, blogging, socializing. Robert Rozema and Allen Webb show you how to tap into students' understanding and enthusiasm for the Net to find deeper meaning in literary texts. Rozema and Webb's proven strategies harness the power of the Web to:

• guide students into the world of the story
• develop their close reading ability
• scaffold their understanding of a text's social, cultural, and historical contexts
• provide them with authentic opportunities to respond to the text.

From novels to short stories to poetry. From mythology to Milton to Orwell. Literature and the Web has ideas that will help crack open texts for any reader. Each of its chapters presents a different online strategy for guiding students through widely taught texts and even includes ways to use Web-based ideas in an offline setting. And Rozema and Webb provide blueprints for dozens of lessons, activities, and projects that are detailed enough to use tomorrow yet flexible enough for any context. Literature and the Web isn't just another book on shiny new technologies. Read it and give your students tools they'll enjoy as they build a greater love of literature.