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The Alphabet Highway is a program that leverages the latest Internet communications
technologies to create opportunities for literacy development. It is one component of the
larger, national literacy initiative. The
specific goal of the Alphabet Highway is to encourage the development of literacy skills in
young students by partnering them with high-school students who will act as their informal
writing mentors in an ongoing, online publishing venture.
Alphabet Highway provides participating students with both formal and informal
opportunities to develop communication skills within the
Alphabet Highway web site. In addition to the
mentoring component, Alphabet Highway is different from other web sites for kids in two
respects: it provides a directory to topic sites that is reviewed and annotated by kids for
kids, and more importantly, it provides opportunities for young Web surfers to use the
information they find in the creation of stories of their own and to publish those stories in
an electronic format.
The original Alphabet Highway prototype was designed and built by
the Institute of
Design under a larger project directed by Dick Venezky at the
University of Delaware. In the spring of 1996 the ID team shifted its focus
to a mentoring pilot study while the University of Delaware team continued to develop
a web site for kids to publish their work. ID's project evolved into the Writing Exchange, a set of downloadable tools for teachers to create their own email writing-mentoring program. The University of Delaware team's work has evolved into the Alphabet Super Highway, a web site that includes web exploration games and other features in addition to cyberzines for kids to publish their work.
Please send any questions or comments about Alphabet Highway to the Alphabet Highway
Construction Team at highway@eecis.udel.edu.
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Alphabet Highway
