Blogs

I have recently set up a blog for students to use in association with the unit of work on Japan they are completing. Their task is to decide which Japanese city their family should move to according to certain provided criteria. They are using the blog to write their thoughts about what they are learning in their research, particularly about cultural differences, and these comments are read an commented upon by students in other classes studying the same unit and they have taken to it like ducks to water. It's so exciting.
My next project is to set up a blog to which students can upload book reviews for others to read and another for teachers to share new information about lessons and teaching and learning in the 21st century. A type of online professional learning.
Who knows from there... A library wiki with book e-trailers, links to websites, embedded videos...

Website Evaluation

Both Herring (2011) and Schrock (2002) write about the importance of the efficiency of a website including the time it takes to load the site, whether this is the same at all times of the day or if there are a large number is users trying to access it simultaneously. The WWWCRCE (McLachlan, 2002) does not address these issues, nor does it ask the user to evaluate the navigation, graphics or the amount of text and while these technical criteria do not rank as importantly as educational or reliability criteria they should still be considered when making an overall assessment of a website for student use. The First Look section asks the user to consider how quickly the user could determine the basic content and the intended audience of the site. This would appear to be superfluous because if it wasn’t obvious to the TL they would not bother to further evaluate the website.

When evaluating a website for student use for educational purposes it is most important that criteria relating to this should be considered. Not all published criteria do this well and some do not do it at all. The TL should assess the credibility of a webpage to ascertain whether they are an educationally qualified authority. (McKinney, 2007)