Week 3 - Engagment Activity 5

Website Reflection

What is a website? According to Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, a website is ‘a group of World Wide Web pages usually containing hyperlinks to each other and made available online by an individual, company, educational institution, government, or organization’. The PMI analysis table below was used to examine the use of integrating websites into the classroom.

Pluses	Minuses	Interests
·         Virtual Classroom ·         Are nowadays easy to create and maintain using sites such as Weebly. ·         Creates an informal, interactive learning environment. ·         Student centred approach. ·         Assists multi-level learners ·         Only you can edit/add to it ·         Can be accessed outside the classrooms and for distance leaner’s – global learning ·         Can be used to enhance all teaching areas	·         It is more individualised learning. Lacks ability for collaborative learning. ·         Teachers cannot control content. ·         In individualist cultures some people are less inclined to share knowledge. ·         Some learners dislike the scope that is given to them in creating a website. ·         Students would need access to the internet at home to engage (socio-economic constraints)	·         Gives people opportunities to engage in ICTs ·         Opportunities to create and share information with others around the world

  

Vvygotsky identifies how students construct new knowledge by drawing on their prior experiences and knowledge (1978). Thus, in new learning situations, students bring with them their existing implicit theories and this influences the way they construct knowledge (Sutherland et al., 2004, p.415). As a teacher I must therefore keep this in mind when I create scaffolding for students to further their learning. A website integrated into the classroom can provide a range of ways of enhancing student learning if used as a ‘scaffolding’. In an English classroom, I could ask students to create a revision website on the novel they are reading for that semester. Students would therefore be synthesising the teaching from the classroom, as well as their own individual research (Sutherland et al, 2004, p.421). This would overall enhance student’s understanding of the text and create engaging and interactive ways of self directed learning.  

For junior home economics, students could be asked to create a fake restaurant website, with menus, prices, photographs and health information. Another option is for students to create a website that culminates all the recipes that students have made over the semester. Students could publish the recipe (ingredients and method) as well as photographs of the dish that they made. They could also have a section that discusses ‘tips’ and ‘common errors’. A requirement would also be that they have information on healthy eating and links to other websites about eating healthy. In this way students would be linking to not only where they got their information from, but students would also do wider reading and research and then link these pages to their website. Clearly these functions will enhance student learning and interaction.  

I could also create a website that gives students access to their weekly activities and readings, similar to the moodle sites for this course. In this way students would have easy access to their readings (hyperlinks) and also it minimises the possibility of students losing information in handouts.

Incorporating ICTs such as websites into the classroom will allow students to further their creation of knowledge in an interactive and engaging way.

References 

Sutherland, R., Armstrong, V., Barnes, S., Brawn, R., Breeze, N., Gall, M., … Johnw, P.  (2004). Transforming teaching and learning: embedding ICT into everyday classroom practices. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 20, 413–425.

 

Vvgotsky L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.