I suppose I have always thought of websites enhancing learning through the students navigating and discovering specific sites on the world wide web or as students being the 'finders' of information. Unitl now I hadn't thought of how websites could be of use if the students were being the 'creators' of their own sites or presenters of information.
In my prac classroom at the moment, year 4 are about to start writing reports on a chosen Australian native animal. Creating my own website has made me realise that this would be an exciting , creative and informative way of getting the students to report on their chosen animal. Similar to a report each page could represent a different aspect of their animals life such as its habitat, adaptations and food. Students could then learn from their peers websites and unlike a written report, add on or change information even after their work has been marked. It would be an ongoing learning tool. In addition, websites also have to ability to be interactive such as the webquests we built in SOSE last year.
In terms of having the students search for information from given websites or even search for appropriate websites, is a learning tool initself. It takes skill and knowlegde to be able to effectively search the web for specific websites. Thankfully and at the same time unfortunately, Education Queensland has security systems in place that protect students from inappropriate material. The down side of this in the classroom is that often perfectly educationally sound websites are often blocked and this can become frustrating for both teachers and students. Despite the frustrations, the World Wide Web is becoming an integral part of our culture so it is important that our students know how to be critically literate users of it and I think as future teachers we have a responsibility to show them how.
I thought I'd a quick PMI on use of websites in the classroom:
Plus
- Can be used as researching tool for students
- Students can be the creators of information
- Can be used by teachers as a way of managing their classrooms i.e. communicating with parents, news letters, homework tasks and assignment information etc.
- Can be a way for students to present information as well as access and gain information
Minus
- Inappropriate content needs to filtered.
- Security settings in the home must be set
- Can be difficult to find what you are looking for
Interesting
- According to Internet World Stats (2010), 1,966,514,816 people in the world use the World Wide Web. Yet how many teachers use it in the classroom?
A deeper reflection
ReplyDeleteThe more I refelct on students building their own websites, the more I am seeing the enormous benefits and how this task could support their learning of a particular topic. I had mentioned in my last post that students could be the creators of information and while this is partly true, what this higher order thinking task is actually asking the students to do is analyse and evaluate information that they have already found and using creativity and perhaps even collaboration, synthesise information in order to develop their website. Not only is this information being made more meaningful to the students and therefore more likely to be retained but students would be required to think about some of the key english essential learnings such as: The purpose of writing and designing and making language choices depending on the audience. Students would also be thinking about the use of fonts, colours, images, layout, links, usability and audio.
So for my year 4 class, a written report on a chosen animal is a great idea, but I think creating a website on their chosen animal is an even better one!
Hi Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI agree! I think that websites for the classroom have endless possibilities for students to create deeper understandings around a selected topic.
Another great way to incorporate websites into the classroom is to use educational games for rotation activities. My current prac teacher allow students to utilize selected online games for one of four maths rotation activities. However due to the Education Queensland security systems students are not always able to access the games they would like to play. By creating a web-page with selected educational games categorized into subject areas students can access information online in a safe and effective manner.
When investigating Weebly Websites I created the web-page described above with educational games for students. You can view this web-page at: http://interactivelearningactivities.weebly.com/index.html
Hopefully you will find this site useful.
Anna