Web Site of the Month--poets.org
By Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 4/1/2005
To honor this, the 10th annual celebration of National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets has relaunched its Web site, Poets.org. Already a favorite poetry resource among educators, Poets.org sports a fresh new look and a wealth of offerings. The 17 teacher-created curriculum units for middle and high school students have been completely reformatted to make the lessons easier to use, says Charles Flowers, the Academy's associate director. And the Online Poetry Classroom, previously a secondary site, has now been fully integrated into Poets.org. New to the site is the Poetry Book Club, which recommends works to share and more. "We're trying to break down resistance against poetry in reading clubs," explains Flowers. To that end, the Academy is producing reader's guides to 31 groundbreaking works of poetry. First up: a guide to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Thanks to improved technology standards, the Academy will restart its online discussion forums. "Conceivably, teachers and librarians could float ideas here and receive feedback," Flowers says. Also of interest to educators is the "My Notebooks" feature. Here, users can create a password-protected personal "notebook" in which they can store poems, audio clips, and poet bios.
