Integrating the Internet into the Classroom Week 2 Day 3-5

Integrating the Internet into the Classroom
Facilitator: Michael Krauss, Lewis & Clark College

Daily Assignments Week 2
|Day 1|Day 2|Day 3|Day 4|Day 5|

WEEK 2
Evaluating On-Line Materials

DAY 3
Useful Criteria for Evaluation

TASK 1: Read Alan November's "The Web--Teaching Zack to Think. NOTE: Zack link doesn't work? Try this one. Write down your general impressions as well as specific comments/questions you have as you browse. (NOTE: Though this article is dated and some links are bad, it represents the issue of Web evaluation better than any other I've seen).

TASK 2: Widener University has developed customized evaluation checklists for specific categories of websites, the idea being that sites which serve different purposes must be evaluated using different criteria. Categories include: Business/Marketing, Reference/Informational , News, Advocacy, and Personal Page. Due to their level of complexity and sophistication, I think the checklists are most useful for teachers or high school age or older students. ESL/EFL students would have to possess an advanced level of English proficiency to benefit from them.

TASK 3: For teaching students to evaluate Web sites on their own, I recommend using a simplified evaluation checklist that a colleague and I created. You can download it, open it in a word processor, and revise it to suit your needs). Here is another excellent evaluation form, which is in a grid configuration with checkboxes.
Recently, when teaching a course to ESL students called "Controversial Issues," we covered the topic of drug legalization. Your task is to do what my students did. Using the simplified checklist above (print it out if you like) or the evaluation grid with checkboxes, evaluate one or both of these two sites: 1) Public Agenda Online (using the pull down menu under "Issue Guides," select "Illegal Drugs"). 2) The Truth About Marijuana

After using one of the checklists to evaluate one or both of these two sites, post your results/comments to the Discussion Page: topic = Web site evaluation.

TASK 4: Buddy Group Check! - Check in by email with your buddies. Share what you have found out about your topic of interest. Remember, in Week 3 you will report to the class on what you have been discussing in your Buddy Group and any conclusions you have drawn.

Additional Information/Resources:

See Alan November's WebCast: Fearless Learners Courageous Teachers. According to November, the focus should not be on teaching technology, but on facilitating communication and critical thinking *using* technology.

How Trustworthy Are Internet Resources? This lesson asks students to look at a variety of websites, choose the Widener checklists which would be most appropriate, rate the sites (1-5) for trustworthiness, and submit explanations for their answers. Review this activity and make comments in your notebook from both the student and teacher's point of view. Would this activity be useful appropriate for your students?

Here is a resource containing hoax sites that can be used to discuss Web evaluation. It might be very useful to use with your classes if you have mature students with fairly high language skills: Hoax? Scholarly Research? Personal Opinion? You Decide! by the UCLA College Library.

The ICYouSee Guide to Critical Thinking About What You See on the Web (Ithaca College Library) contains six suggestions for evaluating web resources and online activities to test your knowledge of the materials. This up-to-date site also contains an excellent set of links to other resources on evaluation.

Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources - The most comprehensive resource I've seen. Includes Internet Resources, Print Resources, Example Web Sites, Useful Listservs, and Useful Books. It's published by Virginia Tech University Libraries. The Web sites section includes some pretty amazing "phony" sites. How about The First Male Pregnancy - made possible by the GenoChoice!

Return to top.

WEEK 2
Activities for Integrating On-Line Content Material

DAY 4-5
Creating a Web-based Activity and Posting It to the Internet

This is a two day assignment. Get as far as you can, then return to complete your project the following day.

TASK 1: Following the "Filamentality" links, create and post to the Web a Hotlist, Scrapbook, Treasure Hunt, or Sampler on a content topic of your choice. (Hotlist is the simplest and quickest! Try a Treasure Hunt or Sampler if you have the time and are adventurous!)

Read the Introduction to Filamentality. Look at some sample web-based activities created by former participants in this class: Hotlist (Archaeological Field Work), Treasure Hunt (The American Religious Tradition), Sampler (Fractions) and Tuskegee Tragedy

Would you like to print out a Flow Chart for the Filamentality process to keep by your side as your work? If so, click here. You will go to a page called, "Trainer's Guide." Look for a link to "Flow Chart" and click it. A file will download to your computer. Save it. Then, open a word processing program of your choice. Open the document and print it out.

If you want to take a short tour first to see how the Filamentality process works, click here. You will see the Filamentality text boxes already filled in with hypothetical information on "Choosing a Career." Just click your way through the tour and you'll see the Web page which would be produced with the information which has been entered. You will not enter any information of your own during this tour. This should take 5-10 minutes to go through.

Are you ready to use Filamentality to build a Web page? When you are ready to start, click here. You'll have your own Web page to use with your students when you finish!

NOTE: Here is some good advice from a past participant that will save you time and possible disappointment when completing the Filamentality task. Thanks to Tom Johnson, UAE!

For workload reasons I propose 3 stages for beginners and 2 for more experienced users.
1] Write possible topic areas and questions on a piece of paper to focus your search, i.e. to avoid spending too much time searching the net for topics.

2] Don't start Filamentality yet. Go directly to a search engine to find good sites. Copy and paste the URLs of chosen sites into a Word document or bookmark them.

3] Now open Filamentality; if you're a beginner have a look around first to familiarise yourself with the program. Paste your chosen links and write the questions you prepared and complete your Treasure Hunt, Subject Sampler etc. More advanced users can merge stages 2] and 3].

We learnt the hard way that trying to find websites, formulate targeted questions and learning to navigate around an unfamiliar program is just too much to do at once. These instructions obviously apply more to Treasure Hunt, Subject Sampler and WebQuest than to Hotlist or Scrapbook.

Easy to edit: Don't be afraid that your Filamentality page won't be perfect. Go ahead and enter information and create your page. It is *very* easy to edit your page. You just Return to Existing Page, enter your username and password and you can change anything you like.

NOTE: In order to get students to interact meaningfully, extension activities are often the key. Example: My students complete a Prejudice Sampler before beginning a course on Diversity and Civil Rights. The Sampler is great to hook the students and make them face the facts that prejudice exists in all cultures of the world. However, most students complete the Sampler as an individual task. However, the next day, I ask students to work in groups to rank the acts of prejudice they have observed in the Sampler, based on a set of criteria. Filling out the Ranking Prejudice graphic organizer (Word document will download) is what really turns the Sampler into an interactive, communicative activity. However, it is the Sampler itself that provides the stimulus that initially motivates the students. Tom March recognizes the need for follow-up activities with his "big question" at the end of the Treasure Hunt and the "real world" activity that is the culmination of a WebQuest.

TASK 2: Post the URL for the Web page you created to the Filamentality topic on the Discussion Page. Provide all the information requested in the Discussion Page assignment.
NOTE: You may be saying, "But I don't want to reinvent the wheel!" And you're right. You can search the Filamentality server itself to see what others have done. For example, if you're a science teacher and you want to see what Hotlists have been created on the Periodic Table, go to http://www.kn.pacbell.com/kne_search.html
Enter "periodic table"(no quotes needed) after choosing "Filamentality" from the pull-down menu. Amazing how much as already been created that you can use! So, you can invent a wheel yourself, exactly as you want it, but know that others have come before you and have created much you can use!

NOTE: Filamentality pages are hosted for one year (unless you modify the page). After that time, the pages will be removed and no reminders are sent prior to expiration. However, it is very easy to extend the time limit for your pages. See Filamentality Posting Policy for details.

TASK 3: (Optional) While you are at the Discussion Page, go to the " Progress Report" topic. This is your chance to comment on what you have done/would like to do in the final week of the course.

Additional Information/Resources:
Here are additional sites which provide server space and tools to create a variety of web-based documents.

NOTE: Filamentality is a great tool, but it is showing its age a little! Some want additional features. One of the originators of Filamentality, Tom March, now has a "pay" version ($25/year) called Web and Flow. He describes it as "Filamentality on steroids or after a load of lattés." Check it out. There is a 30 day free trial so what do you have to lose?!

PBWiki - The PB stands for Peanut Butter. Why? Because you can make a full featured Web site (including the "wiki" capability to create materials collaboratively) as quickly as you can make a peanut butter sandwich. I heartily recommend this resource as the quickest, easiest way to have your own Web site without the need for any special software or server space. PBWiki hosts all your pages for you. Here is a sample class page of mine created with PBWiki. How powerful is PBWiki? Have a look at the Web site used in the TESOL 2007 Electronic Village Online workshop, "Blogging for Beginners." Not only will you see all the features of PBWiki, but you can learn a lot about blogging! Note: Two of the facilitators for this great workshop began using technology by taking this online course in the late 90's!

www4teachers has a great tools section.

TrackStar - Allows you to easily create annotated online lessons that guide students through sites that you choose. Or you can search for, access (and revise) other teachers' "tracks."

Web Poster Wizard - This tool quickly makes a worksheet, lesson, or class Web page, and you don't need to know HTML! (Compare it with Filamentality--which do you prefer?)

Quiz Star - A new tool which allows you to create quizzes on-line. Choose multiple choice, short answer, or True/False. You can attach multimedia files to quizzes. You can write quizzes in a number of different languages. 60 day free trial is available. One year costs $35.88.

Rubistar - Want to make checklists (also called rubrics) to help evaluate student projects? This site allows you to create rubrics quickly and easily online, then print them out if you like. These are also available in Spanish.

Would you prefer to use tools which assist you in creating web pages which reside on your own server?

Web editors are the tools that make creating your own Web pages almost as easy as creating a document in a word processing program. There are toolbar buttons to help you create the formatting, tables, Web links, everything you associate with Web pages on the Internet. When you finish a page, you must upload it to a Web server. If you don't have access to server space via your school or your Internet service provider, you can sign up for one of the many free services you'll find on the Web (search Google for "free web server space").

A great free Web editor (and browser and email client) is Mozilla, which runs on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. You can check out the system requirements for using Mozilla.

Here is a tutorial for making a Web page using the Mozilla Composer Web editor. Download Mozilla and try the Web editor out!

GoBCL.com - Convert almost any popular file format into .html (Web file) or .pdf (Acrobat file). Just send your file up to the GoBCL server and it comes back to you converted. It's like magic!

Hot Potatoes (by Martin Holmes) - is a freeware program for Mac or PC platforms, which makes creating web-based quizzes in six different formats a breeze. (I've used Hot Potatoes a lot and it's a really user friendly program!)

Here is a list of educational tools and Web 2.0 tools by Kathy Schrock. Some resources appear elsewhere on this page, but there are new ones too!

Return to top.

Go to Daily Assignments - Week 3

Return to Workshop Home Page.

Return to Workshop Discussion Page.

Return to Syllabus-at-a-Glance.

Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 2/22/08

WEEK 2	Evaluating On-Line Materials
DAY 3	Useful Criteria for Evaluation
	TASK 1: Read Alan November's "The Web--Teaching Zack to Think. NOTE: Zack link doesn't work? Try this one. Write down your general impressions as well as specific comments/questions you have as you browse. (NOTE: Though this article is dated and some links are bad, it represents the issue of Web evaluation better than any other I've seen). TASK 2: Widener University has developed customized evaluation checklists for specific categories of websites, the idea being that sites which serve different purposes must be evaluated using different criteria. Categories include: Business/Marketing, Reference/Informational , News, Advocacy, and Personal Page. Due to their level of complexity and sophistication, I think the checklists are most useful for teachers or high school age or older students. ESL/EFL students would have to possess an advanced level of English proficiency to benefit from them. TASK 3: For teaching students to evaluate Web sites on their own, I recommend using a simplified evaluation checklist that a colleague and I created. You can download it, open it in a word processor, and revise it to suit your needs). Here is another excellent evaluation form, which is in a grid configuration with checkboxes. Recently, when teaching a course to ESL students called "Controversial Issues," we covered the topic of drug legalization. Your task is to do what my students did. Using the simplified checklist above (print it out if you like) or the evaluation grid with checkboxes, evaluate one or both of these two sites: 1) Public Agenda Online (using the pull down menu under "Issue Guides," select "Illegal Drugs"). 2) The Truth About Marijuana After using one of the checklists to evaluate one or both of these two sites, post your results/comments to the Discussion Page: topic = Web site evaluation. TASK 4: Buddy Group Check! - Check in by email with your buddies. Share what you have found out about your topic of interest. Remember, in Week 3 you will report to the class on what you have been discussing in your Buddy Group and any conclusions you have drawn.
	Additional Information/Resources: See Alan November's WebCast: Fearless Learners Courageous Teachers. According to November, the focus should not be on teaching technology, but on facilitating communication and critical thinking using technology. How Trustworthy Are Internet Resources? This lesson asks students to look at a variety of websites, choose the Widener checklists which would be most appropriate, rate the sites (1-5) for trustworthiness, and submit explanations for their answers. Review this activity and make comments in your notebook from both the student and teacher's point of view. Would this activity be useful appropriate for your students? Here is a resource containing hoax sites that can be used to discuss Web evaluation. It might be very useful to use with your classes if you have mature students with fairly high language skills: Hoax? Scholarly Research? Personal Opinion? You Decide! by the UCLA College Library. The ICYouSee Guide to Critical Thinking About What You See on the Web (Ithaca College Library) contains six suggestions for evaluating web resources and online activities to test your knowledge of the materials. This up-to-date site also contains an excellent set of links to other resources on evaluation. Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources - The most comprehensive resource I've seen. Includes Internet Resources, Print Resources, Example Web Sites, Useful Listservs, and Useful Books. It's published by Virginia Tech University Libraries. The Web sites section includes some pretty amazing "phony" sites. How about The First Male Pregnancy - made possible by the GenoChoice!

WEEK 2	Activities for Integrating On-Line Content Material
DAY 4-5	Creating a Web-based Activity and Posting It to the Internet
	This is a two day assignment. Get as far as you can, then return to complete your project the following day. TASK 1: Following the "Filamentality" links, create and post to the Web a Hotlist, Scrapbook, Treasure Hunt, or Sampler on a content topic of your choice. (Hotlist is the simplest and quickest! Try a Treasure Hunt or Sampler if you have the time and are adventurous!) Read the Introduction to Filamentality. Look at some sample web-based activities created by former participants in this class: Hotlist (Archaeological Field Work), Treasure Hunt (The American Religious Tradition), Sampler (Fractions) and Tuskegee Tragedy Would you like to print out a Flow Chart for the Filamentality process to keep by your side as your work? If so, click here. You will go to a page called, "Trainer's Guide." Look for a link to "Flow Chart" and click it. A file will download to your computer. Save it. Then, open a word processing program of your choice. Open the document and print it out. If you want to take a short tour first to see how the Filamentality process works, click here. You will see the Filamentality text boxes already filled in with hypothetical information on "Choosing a Career." Just click your way through the tour and you'll see the Web page which would be produced with the information which has been entered. You will not enter any information of your own during this tour. This should take 5-10 minutes to go through. Are you ready to use Filamentality to build a Web page? When you are ready to start, click here. You'll have your own Web page to use with your students when you finish! NOTE: Here is some good advice from a past participant that will save you time and possible disappointment when completing the Filamentality task. Thanks to Tom Johnson, UAE! For workload reasons I propose 3 stages for beginners and 2 for more experienced users. 1] Write possible topic areas and questions on a piece of paper to focus your search, i.e. to avoid spending too much time searching the net for topics. 2] Don't start Filamentality yet. Go directly to a search engine to find good sites. Copy and paste the URLs of chosen sites into a Word document or bookmark them. 3] Now open Filamentality; if you're a beginner have a look around first to familiarise yourself with the program. Paste your chosen links and write the questions you prepared and complete your Treasure Hunt, Subject Sampler etc. More advanced users can merge stages 2] and 3]. We learnt the hard way that trying to find websites, formulate targeted questions and learning to navigate around an unfamiliar program is just too much to do at once. These instructions obviously apply more to Treasure Hunt, Subject Sampler and WebQuest than to Hotlist or Scrapbook. Easy to edit: Don't be afraid that your Filamentality page won't be perfect. Go ahead and enter information and create your page. It is very easy to edit your page. You just Return to Existing Page, enter your username and password and you can change anything you like. NOTE: In order to get students to interact meaningfully, extension activities are often the key. Example: My students complete a Prejudice Sampler before beginning a course on Diversity and Civil Rights. The Sampler is great to hook the students and make them face the facts that prejudice exists in all cultures of the world. However, most students complete the Sampler as an individual task. However, the next day, I ask students to work in groups to rank the acts of prejudice they have observed in the Sampler, based on a set of criteria. Filling out the Ranking Prejudice graphic organizer (Word document will download) is what really turns the Sampler into an interactive, communicative activity. However, it is the Sampler itself that provides the stimulus that initially motivates the students. Tom March recognizes the need for follow-up activities with his "big question" at the end of the Treasure Hunt and the "real world" activity that is the culmination of a WebQuest. TASK 2: Post the URL for the Web page you created to the Filamentality topic on the Discussion Page. Provide all the information requested in the Discussion Page assignment. NOTE: You may be saying, "But I don't want to reinvent the wheel!" And you're right. You can search the Filamentality server itself to see what others have done. For example, if you're a science teacher and you want to see what Hotlists have been created on the Periodic Table, go to http://www.kn.pacbell.com/kne_search.html Enter "periodic table"(no quotes needed) after choosing "Filamentality" from the pull-down menu. Amazing how much as already been created that you can use! So, you can invent a wheel yourself, exactly as you want it, but know that others have come before you and have created much you can use! NOTE: Filamentality pages are hosted for one year (unless you modify the page). After that time, the pages will be removed and no reminders are sent prior to expiration. However, it is very easy to extend the time limit for your pages. See Filamentality Posting Policy for details. TASK 3: (Optional) While you are at the Discussion Page, go to the " Progress Report" topic. This is your chance to comment on what you have done/would like to do in the final week of the course.
	Additional Information/Resources: Here are additional sites which provide server space and tools to create a variety of web-based documents. NOTE: Filamentality is a great tool, but it is showing its age a little! Some want additional features. One of the originators of Filamentality, Tom March, now has a "pay" version ($25/year) called Web and Flow. He describes it as "Filamentality on steroids or after a load of lattés." Check it out. There is a 30 day free trial so what do you have to lose?! PBWiki - The PB stands for Peanut Butter. Why? Because you can make a full featured Web site (including the "wiki" capability to create materials collaboratively) as quickly as you can make a peanut butter sandwich. I heartily recommend this resource as the quickest, easiest way to have your own Web site without the need for any special software or server space. PBWiki hosts all your pages for you. Here is a sample class page of mine created with PBWiki. How powerful is PBWiki? Have a look at the Web site used in the TESOL 2007 Electronic Village Online workshop, "Blogging for Beginners." Not only will you see all the features of PBWiki, but you can learn a lot about blogging! Note: Two of the facilitators for this great workshop began using technology by taking this online course in the late 90's! www4teachers has a great tools section. TrackStar - Allows you to easily create annotated online lessons that guide students through sites that you choose. Or you can search for, access (and revise) other teachers' "tracks." Web Poster Wizard - This tool quickly makes a worksheet, lesson, or class Web page, and you don't need to know HTML! (Compare it with Filamentality--which do you prefer?) Quiz Star - A new tool which allows you to create quizzes on-line. Choose multiple choice, short answer, or True/False. You can attach multimedia files to quizzes. You can write quizzes in a number of different languages. 60 day free trial is available. One year costs $35.88. Rubistar - Want to make checklists (also called rubrics) to help evaluate student projects? This site allows you to create rubrics quickly and easily online, then print them out if you like. These are also available in Spanish. Would you prefer to use tools which assist you in creating web pages which reside on your own server? Web editors are the tools that make creating your own Web pages almost as easy as creating a document in a word processing program. There are toolbar buttons to help you create the formatting, tables, Web links, everything you associate with Web pages on the Internet. When you finish a page, you must upload it to a Web server. If you don't have access to server space via your school or your Internet service provider, you can sign up for one of the many free services you'll find on the Web (search Google for "free web server space"). A great free Web editor (and browser and email client) is Mozilla, which runs on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. You can check out the system requirements for using Mozilla. Here is a tutorial for making a Web page using the Mozilla Composer Web editor. Download Mozilla and try the Web editor out! GoBCL.com - Convert almost any popular file format into .html (Web file) or .pdf (Acrobat file). Just send your file up to the GoBCL server and it comes back to you converted. It's like magic! Hot Potatoes (by Martin Holmes) - is a freeware program for Mac or PC platforms, which makes creating web-based quizzes in six different formats a breeze. (I've used Hot Potatoes a lot and it's a really user friendly program!) Here is a list of educational tools and Web 2.0 tools by Kathy Schrock. Some resources appear elsewhere on this page, but there are new ones too!