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PRINCIPLES OF TECHNOLOGY USE IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGSPart 7

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1-KNOW YOUR STUDENTS

It is important to understand the students

and what technology they use and are

familiar with.  Teachers can use surveys and

assessments types to gauge the students

on their understanding. Technology and the

English language can’t be taught at the same

time. 

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2-CHOOSING MATERIALS

Choosing the right materials is also very important.  There are stages in choosing technology for ELLs that go along with what they are ready for and introduce the right subject at the right time.  It is important for the teacher to recognize where the students are at in the process. When choosing technological material the teacher should consider the students interests and how they already use technology in order to capture their interest.

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3-STUDENTS WORKING WITH TECHNOLOGY

Students working with technology is one of the

biggest challenges of technology integration in the

classroom.  Technology enhanced classrooms have

been found to promote discovery of learning,

learner autonomy, and learner centeredness. 

The teacher can promote learner autonomy through

the infusion of ITs and allow the students to work

collaboratively in pairs or small groups. 

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5-CHALLENGES OF TECHNOLOGY USE IN CLASSROOMS Listed below are four of the major issues

classroom teachers identify when they discuss the challenges of infusing technology into their teaching:

1. Availability of Technology Hardware2. Availability of Technical Assistance3. Software Applications4. Time to Integrate Technology into Teaching

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The most common challenges of technology use in the classrooms are:

1. the technical Difficulties (burnt-out bulb in projector or screen freeze in the middle of a presentation),

2. the server being down, and3. broken links on research pages. 4. It is also important for the teachers to

understand that they are no longer going to be the center of the classroom.  The students are able to work independently with the teacher being there to monitor.

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8) DESIGNING A WEBSITE USING A SIMPLE WEB DESIGN SOFTWARE

Doing a web project with an ESL class is not something to be undertaken lightly. Web projects require sustained hard work from both students and teachers if they are to be brought to a successful conclusion. It is important, therefore, that teachers are convinced of the pedagogical value of such an undertaking. A good starting point for any decision to do a web project is a consideration of how it would fit within existing ESL teaching practice at your school and whether the necessary time can be spared to complete the project properly. A web project could be done as something additional to the usual practice of working through an ESL course book such as The New Cambridge English Course. Alternatively, the project may fit seamlessly into the existing curriculum model and teaching philosophy of the ESL department.

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MOTIVATIONS FOR DESIGNING WEB PROJECTS

1-Positive attitude of learners

A large majority of students really enjoy using

computers, and are motivated to work much

harder to complete their work. And of course

they are at the same time learning computing

skills that are becoming ever more important in

the outside world.

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2-LEARNER-CENTRED ACTIVITIES

Another motivational factor is the amount of

learner autonomy that web projects permit.

Students can be allowed varying degrees of

freedom in their choice of topic title and content,

as well as in the design of their web pages. They

can be involved in planning the stages of project

completion, assessing the content and

presentation of their fellow students’ pages and

evaluating the success of the project as a whole.

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3-CO-OPERATIVE GROUPS

Web projects lend themselves very well to co-operative groupings. Different students can be set to research different aspects of a topic, which they then have to put together into a coherent whole. Very often some students will have computer skills and knowledge that others in the group do not have. In these cases those students can be set to teach their colleagues; and in many cases, they can teach the teacher. This kind of authentic sharing of skills and knowledge is very empowering to students, and a good preparation for many work situations when students leave school.

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4-AUTHENTICITY

It is equally clear that one of the most important reasons for the growth in the use of the Internet in ELT has been the easy availability of a huge amount of authentic material. The world wide web is a natural resource for students researching for a web project. At the same time the teacher has the opportunity - in an authentic context - to teach the essential skills of finding and evaluating information in digital form. In addition, students usually take more care with their writing, both its content and the mechanics, when they know that there is an authentic audience.

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Web projects have been called Real work for

real people in the real world. That someone

on the other side of the world can read their

writing and possibly send them a response

often motivates students to create work of a

standard far beyond what they usually

produce.

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5-PERMANENCE

In most cases students work disappears into their

binders when it has been returned by the teacher,

and is never seen again. Work posted on the web

has a greater permanence and for this reason

alone may be taken more seriously by the student.

Web pages can be readily added to an electronic

portfolio of a student’s work. Apart from this, work

posted on the web can serve as a model and

inspiration to students doing future projects.

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WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO COMPLETE WEB PROJECTS?

The following list shows the most important stages leading to the completion of the web project, once the main theme has been decided and the specific sub-topics have been allocated to individual students or groups.

Plan and research the topic Compose, revise and edit drafts Introduce HTML and the basic tags Decide on page formatting Convert the final draft to HTML format Incorporate visual material in the pages Check in a browser that everything works Publish on the web Assess individual students' work and evaluate the success

of the project as a whole

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NOTES AND TIPS

1- KEEP TABS ON PROGRESS It is useful to have a fairly firm deadline in mind by

which time the project is to be completed. Working back from the final deadline, you can decide how much time to allow to the various stages of the project. Many students benefit from having a checklist in their binder or on prominent display in the classroom. They can then mark each stage as it is completed. It is useful to spend a few minutes at the beginning of each lesson finding out what the students intend to work on in that lesson.

Be prepared for the deadlines to be pushed back. It is almost certain you will need more time than you planned for your first project!

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2-SAVE WORK IN ONE PLACE

It is strongly recommended that all the students’ web pages, including graphics files, are stored in a single folder or directory. This makes file management much easier to control. It also makes a lot of sense to tell the students which file names they should use for their work, rather than let them call the files any name they choose. Completing a small wall chart with the name of the students file and its contents makes it easier for you to keep a check on progress and for other students to put in cross links from their own pages.

All files should have the suffix .htm or .html or they cannot be read by the browser. In general it is better to use a name of 8 letters or less; e.g.  ozone1.htmor airpoll3.htm.

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3-USE RELATIVE (INTERNAL) LINKS

Students will want to put links in their page to a separate

page in the same project suite. For example, a link from

their project page to their personal page; or from their

project page to the project homepage. Wherever the link

leads to, there is a choice between using an absolute

reference and a relative reference. An absolute

reference contains the complete path to (or location of)

the file being linked to; for example:

<Ahref=http://esl.fis.edu/eslweb/parents/easy/future.htm>.

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A relative link to the same file would look

like this: 

<A href=future.htm>

As you can see the relative link is much

shorter and has the further advantage that it

will still work even if the project files are moved

to a different location. However, all the project

files must be saved in one and the same

directory (folder).  You will spare yourself a lot

of problems if you follow this advice.

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WHAT PROBLEMS MAY ARISE AND HOW CAN I DEAL WITH THEM?

First: Students finishing at different times A very common problem with any long-term

project is that students will work at different paces and some may be finished (or think they are) before others have even got going. One way to preclude a too great variation in the speed at which students progress through the various stages is to have fairly rigid deadlines. For example, students could be told that they have only three lessons in which to research their topic, or that the first draft must be done by a certain date. Any student in danger of not meeting these deadlines can be set to complete the work at home.

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In the case of web projects, however, there is a certain advantage in some students finishing before others since there are many tasks they can perform to help in the overall completion of the project. Here are some suggestions on what they can do:work on the homepage of the project and

put in all the necessary links to the various project pages

scan in photos or prepare visual material for other students

take responsibility for the overall project design and ensure that the necessary tags are included in the completed pages

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Another excellent way to occupy early-bird students is to have  them make a personal page.

Students with no computer skills Some students may have had no prior experience in using

the computer. The concepts of cutting and pasting, opening and saving files may be totally unfamiliar to them. They may never have surfed the net and may be unfamiliar with the keyboard. If the class contains many such students, I recommend putting off doing a web project with the group until the students have acquired some fundamental skills. Web projects are demanding enough without having to learn basic file management and text manipulation techniques, let alone keyboard skills, at the same time. If there are only one or two such students in the class, they will probably learn quickly enough from their more computer-literate peers. Alternatively, they could be set tasks that involve book research and hand-writing of notes ready for computer entry.

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LACK OF KNOWLEDGE BY TEACHER

Clearly, if you the teacher have only rudimentary computer skills and no knowledge at all of HTML, then doing a web project with your class is going to be problematic. However, there is no need to give up the idea entirely. If you are really keen to give your students the chance to work on such a project, you could do the following: see if a student has knowledge and have him or her teach you and

the others team up with a knowledgeable colleague and do the project

together enlist the help of the support staff to teach the necessary

computing skills The long-term answer to such a problem, if you have the

time and the interest, is to learn a little of the required skills. There is no question that it is much more comfortable to do a web project with your students if you yourself have some rudimentary knowledge.

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DISCIPLINE Web projects require that the teacher spends a good

deal of time working with individual students or groups. There is therefore great potential for the other students to be off task and possibly even disruptive (although as noted above, students are usually very keen to work with computers and will not wish to lose this privilege). It helps if the teacher has already done a fair amount of non-web project work with the class - and so the students are familiar with procedures and expectations. For this  reason it is not recommended that the teacher starts the year doing a web project with a new class. It may also be thought undesirable to attempt such a project at all with a particular group of students, although it could be that the greater individual freedom is an additional motivating factor for some otherwise disaffected students.

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COPYRIGHT ISSUES

Researching on the web offers easy opportunities,

through cutting and pasting, to use other people's

work and ideas. It is equally easy to use other

people's graphics. It is important to sensitize

students to issues of copyright and plagiarism, and

to tell them you will not accept any pages that

infringe in these areas. In general a discussion of

this topic plus knowledge on the student's part that

you will read carefully through all pages will be

sufficient to preclude any major problems.

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INCLUSION OF INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT There is a danger that students may include

inappropriate or even offensive content. It would certainly reflect very poorly on a school that allowed offensive material to be published on its web site.

This can be precluded if you make it clear to students that their personal pages will be checked carefully before uploading onto the web site. It is then necessary to actually carry out this check on each and every link.

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UNDESIRABLE TARGETING OF PROJECT STUDENTS

Unfortunately there exists a certain small

percentage of web users who surf around

looking for minors to target with offers of

offensive materials or practices. One way to

preclude having your students approached in

this way is to advise them not to have a link on

their site to their private e-mail address. If you

want to be really careful, you can have them

include only their first name or a nickname.