Monday, February 22, 2010
Next Steps
Now that we have finished reading both books, what are our next steps. What do you think are the critical elements that we need to teach our students about web literacy, and how will we go about teaching them?
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Chapter 6: Web Literacy for Educators
Expanding the Boundaries:
This chapter was very good & interesting. With education starting to go more & more to technology, there also comes a lot of negatives and "fire walls". Alan November does a great job of giving examples & sites to help teachers be able to use blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis. The best part is the examples from real teachers and how they use them.
The biggest thing to take away from this chapter is that blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis can be dangerous, but we teachers should provide excellent role models & thoughtful ethics for students to be able to use them in the classroom. We don't have control of what they do out of school, but need to set the examples for them to use and carry over.
Blogs: There was a teacher who was having his class blog about the book they were reading, Mississippi Trail, and the actual author got involved on the blog and ended up coming to their school. Several examples talk about the possibilities of global connections on assignments that students across the world could connect on. More students are excited about writing. They enjoy doing it, look forward to doing it, & continue with this on their own.
RSS: is the new way of "bookmarking" websites, but much better. Teacher's can subscribe to receive feeds from their favorite sources and they receive information the minute it hits the web. This in not very popular, but is gaining.
Podcasts: is audio or video. Lets students experience knowledge of lifelong leraners. There are lots of podcasts you can download through iTunes. The students become the leaders & learners.
Wikis: is a web based tool that allows groups to work on a piece at one time & add to it. Wikipedia has had bad press because anyone & everyone can add to it. There are community members who do monitor to check how valid every entry that is made. The example for this is a project that students all over the world can come together & tell stories of where they live.
Alan November says that these are some of the technologies that students are using & will be asked or required to use in the future. That teacher's need to step up and be the "positive" role models for our studnents.
This chapter was very good & interesting. With education starting to go more & more to technology, there also comes a lot of negatives and "fire walls". Alan November does a great job of giving examples & sites to help teachers be able to use blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis. The best part is the examples from real teachers and how they use them.
The biggest thing to take away from this chapter is that blogs, RSS, podcasts, & Wikis can be dangerous, but we teachers should provide excellent role models & thoughtful ethics for students to be able to use them in the classroom. We don't have control of what they do out of school, but need to set the examples for them to use and carry over.
Blogs: There was a teacher who was having his class blog about the book they were reading, Mississippi Trail, and the actual author got involved on the blog and ended up coming to their school. Several examples talk about the possibilities of global connections on assignments that students across the world could connect on. More students are excited about writing. They enjoy doing it, look forward to doing it, & continue with this on their own.
RSS: is the new way of "bookmarking" websites, but much better. Teacher's can subscribe to receive feeds from their favorite sources and they receive information the minute it hits the web. This in not very popular, but is gaining.
Podcasts: is audio or video. Lets students experience knowledge of lifelong leraners. There are lots of podcasts you can download through iTunes. The students become the leaders & learners.
Wikis: is a web based tool that allows groups to work on a piece at one time & add to it. Wikipedia has had bad press because anyone & everyone can add to it. There are community members who do monitor to check how valid every entry that is made. The example for this is a project that students all over the world can come together & tell stories of where they live.
Alan November says that these are some of the technologies that students are using & will be asked or required to use in the future. That teacher's need to step up and be the "positive" role models for our studnents.
Chapter 4 of Web Literacy for Educators
Chapter 4 in Web Literacy for Educators was about using forward and back links to help students decide if a website is legitimate. This is the last step in the REAL process. The forward link can be used to get to a link from your website to a page on someone else’s website. The backward link can be used to link from someone else’s website to your website.
The forward links are highlighted on the web page. If you click on them, the website that is linked to it will appear. The main questions students need to ask themselves with forward links are “What are the URLs of the forward link?” and “Do the domain names change?” Red flags would be if every single forward link contained the same domain name in the URL as the homepage. Also if the same person writes all of the referenced materials in the forward links. The latter was compared to an author who writes a book and all of the referenced sources with it. If this happened, then his or her work would not be of academic quality.
To check the back links you must follow these steps:
1. Go to http://www.altavista.com/.
2. In the search box type link:
3. Leaving no space after the colon, type the address of the website you are
you are researching. For example, to find the back links to our school website, you
would type link:http://www.buhlerschools.org/index.aspx?nid=57.
4. Click the Find button and you will find an assortment of sites that are linked
to us.
Questions students would want to ask are: “Who is linked to the website?” “Why are they linked?” and “What do other sites say about the material on the site?” A look to see who has linked to a site gives you an idea about the quality of the information. If there are few or no links then, probably the website is not from an academic or legal field.
The forward links are highlighted on the web page. If you click on them, the website that is linked to it will appear. The main questions students need to ask themselves with forward links are “What are the URLs of the forward link?” and “Do the domain names change?” Red flags would be if every single forward link contained the same domain name in the URL as the homepage. Also if the same person writes all of the referenced materials in the forward links. The latter was compared to an author who writes a book and all of the referenced sources with it. If this happened, then his or her work would not be of academic quality.
To check the back links you must follow these steps:
1. Go to http://www.altavista.com/.
2. In the search box type link:
3. Leaving no space after the colon, type the address of the website you are
you are researching. For example, to find the back links to our school website, you
would type link:http://www.buhlerschools.org/index.aspx?nid=57.
4. Click the Find button and you will find an assortment of sites that are linked
to us.
Questions students would want to ask are: “Who is linked to the website?” “Why are they linked?” and “What do other sites say about the material on the site?” A look to see who has linked to a site gives you an idea about the quality of the information. If there are few or no links then, probably the website is not from an academic or legal field.
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