When you teach English I semester after semester to a sea of skeptical freshmen, as I do, things can begin to get a bit routine, if not a little stale sometimes. So when Monique Fuchs came to help me set up my course website for the first time in the fall of 2004, I had (I think) a brilliant idea: why not have all of my freshmen develop their own websites and on-line writing portfolios? With the help of TD, the project led me to teach freshman English in a whole new way.

Writing portfolios are not my brilliant idea. English professors all over the country require them as a way to help students appreciate the process and progress of their own writing. Putting them on-line is something different. As my students developed their websites, personalizing them and making links to each new paper, they began to feel a sense of pride in both the sites and the content and quality of their written ideas. This isn?t something I?d accomplished successfully with paper portfolios in the past, mainly because students had a difficult time imagining that their audience extended beyond just me.

Online portfolios were the answer to the problem of audience. Their work was now public, to me, to each other, maybe even to their advisors or to administrators. In my second go-around this past fall, students often asked for extensions because they didn?t want to post a paper until it was revised further. Many students even admitted to showing their sites to their parents, proud of what they?d accomplished in an English class.

While technical glitches did crop up, I found that with only a few tutoring sessions with Monique on website development and a handout from TD, I was prepared to teach my students how to develop their own sites. And, thankfully, many of the students know far more about web development than I, so I can always recruit them for on-the-spot tutorials when I need them. Overall, incorporating technology into my course in this way has helped me to connect with students in a creative and collaborative way.