Sandra’s ICT Blog

Im generally not the best person to ask about the World Wide Web. Yeah i tend to use it  for research or general interest purposes though if someone were to ask me to define it they would probably get the answer umm! rather than as according to Lockard and Abrams “The www is a global netword comprised of millions of servers… Most users understand the Web as the resources- the documents, graphics, audio and video files- that are found on those servers”. Geez! lol.

But! after attending this week’s tutorial i feel a little more confident about my ideas and abilities. I know the difference between a home page and a URL  as well as the components to the URL (i feel like such a supergenius lol). I feel confident to start a conversation involving web jargon.. although i think that would be slightly lame… lol. I completed the Pandia tutorial but found it really confusing… the only part i understood was in relation to key words and searching which helped me loads with my portfolio item 2 searching techniques.

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the Web in relation to classroom teaching and learning? What are some of the specific ways in which you might use the Web in your own teaching? Nowadays i think it is common teaching technique to use the web in teaching. On my first practical the teacher that i was working with introduced me to a mathematics website with brain teasers and class activities that she used each morning to wake her students up and get them going before their maths lesson was to officially begin. This is definitely an example of a specific way i will implement the internet into teaching methods in the future. http://www.transum.org/Software/ (This is the website! hope you’ll find it interesting!). Though there are definite advantages and disadvantages to using the Web in relation to classroom teaching. In regards to disadvantages a teacher may become too dependent upon the internet for classroom teaching/activities which would prohibit the children developing themselves with hands on activities… and more importantly the internet is not always reliable and so therefore wouldnt be as effective as an approved book for information and such. Advantage wise using the internet for teaching activites develops the necessary searching skills for young children and presents one with information at their fingertips instantaneously.

Why is it important for both students and teachers to develop skills to enable them to critically evaluate the quality of information found on the Web? What criteria are important when evaluating web sites for educational purposes? It is important for both students and teachers to develop skills enabling them to evaluate quality information from the rubbish so that when students are older they will find web researching a much easier task, enabling them to complete their work more efficiently. For teachers in particular, they must be able to evaluate the quality of information on the net so that they can model correct internet ettiquette in regards to this topic and also so that they can delve through internet information, providing their students with correct and quality information that they can add to their knowledge base in regards to particular topics. The criteria that are important when evaluating web sites for educational purposes as according to the website The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It’s a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources, http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html, includes checking the authority of the webpage, delving into whether the site is accurate, reliable and error-free, deciphering whether the page is bias in its presentation of information, checking the date and currency of the page, and finally the general coverage of information on the page… its ‘intrinsic value’.

I am a WWW connoisseur!