Advanced Placement English Literature and Language

My course is a combination of Advanced Placement Literature and Advanced Placement Language. The Sakai element is a hybrid, where the students meet me in class 5 times a week, where they study my College Board approved curriculum. My students turn to Sakai for all course documents and materials; they participate in forums, chats, and wikis, and they take tests and complete their assignments in Sakai. The wikis and presentations are particularly exciting because students from across our 150 square-mile district work together on-line preparing presentations on intensive literary analysis, and then they come to class and give those presentations. As for using technology to enhance the educational process, Sakai has afforded us the chance for these kids to collaborate, to use the internet together to prepare literary analysis. They collectively create multi-media presentations, though separated by an hour's drive, and they then present them to the class as a whole using our Smartboard, once we are face to face again. Our librarian has created resource links in our resources tool for their use on literary criticism. This has been invaluable for both their project work and their personal research papers, which represent the final exam, or 25% of their averages for the year. The quantity of search engines, databases, and critical review available to these kids outstrips anything I had available to me in college -- or even my first round through graduate school. They can access it from their bedrooms, or wherever they find themselves doing work. I have links to the College Board for them to practice for the AP exams, particularly the material that guides the reader as to how the exams are scored.Without the students realizing it, Sakai has allowed me to triple the amount of time the students spend in AP English class.