Collaboratory Project Draws Young Readers to Internet Book Club

EVANSTON, Ill. --- An online book club named after, and inspired by, a popular author of children’s books is welcoming students throughout Illinois to share their reading favorites with one another.

The Collaboratory Project, in partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education, is inviting all Illinois K-12 students and teachers to participate in the 2006 Rebecca Caudill Internet Book Club. The Collaboratory Project is a division of Northwestern University Information Technology (IT).

To participate in the Internet Book Club, students must first register and send their votes to the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader’s Book Award Program at www.rcyrba.org. The award is named in honor of author Rebecca Caudill who lived and wrote in Urbana, Illinois, for nearly 50 years.

As part of the project, students and teachers will take a survey about what types of books they like to read and why they pick them. They will submit Web links related to Rebecca Caudill books and authors to the Cybrary (a “cyber library”), and will use the Cybrary to help select which books they want to read. Students can submit book reviews to the Internet Book Club and use an online discussion area to talk about the books with their fellow reviewers. They will then vote on their favorite Rebecca Caudill nominee and analyze the results.

More information about the Rebecca Caudill Internet Book Club is available on the Collaboratory Project Web site, collaboratory.nunet.net. Questions can be directed to Roxana Hadad at r-hadad@northwestern.edu or 847-491-2061.

The Collaboratory Project is a Northwestern University initiative funded by State of Illinois, federal and foundation grants that provides project consulting, training and support to educators throughout Illinois who are interested in using the Collaboratory to improve student learning and achievement.

The Collaboratory is an easy-to-use, Web-based collaborative learning environment that teachers use to develop project-based activities in a framework for engaged learning that are aligned with Illinois Learning Standards.

The need for kidney transplantation doesn't match our capacity.

Lorenzo Gallon of Feinberg is among those to say doctors should consider trying to reuse more organs to ease a shortage