Dinu Pietraru

How to create an educational school webpage

Content Area: ESL Advanced/Transitional

The following unit is based on the experience the author has had with creating a school webpage. You can visit this page at http://fklane.org

 

Introduction

We believe that modern technology and the use of the Internet in schools are helpful in the process of learning. The Internet has the unique ability to combine image, sound, and text, and offering unexpected connections among elements that are so remote. Students find the use of different media exciting and motivational. Internet is the fashion, and this has to benefit the educational process.

Internet is based on free enterprise, unrestricted wealth and overflow of possibilities. Students are to enjoy the core of the Internet, which is decentralized, abundant, misused, and confusing. I think that students should be allowed to experiment, even to deviate from the original project. Critical thinking is to be used when students encounter difficulties in reconciling contradictory pieces of information, or when they have to establish the usefulness of certain sources.

 

Program Outline or Overview

The purpose of this unit is to create a truly interactive and educationally sound school webpage. A tour of school webpages that are posted on the Internet can be a very frustrating experience for the educator looking for practices to adapt. School sites are most of the time teacher-designed and administrative-oriented, offering not more than an Internet brochure of the school. Students are present at the most in showcase pages, where their best work is posted, as they are in bulletin boards around the school. If the Internet is used in schools to foster critical thinking and empower students and teachers, then the school webpage should offer a glimpse of that important process.

 

A. Target Student Age/Level. Rather than targeting a specific grade or level, the unit is addressing the school community as a whole. In fact, this project works only when having the entire school participating and actively engaged.

This unit was developed for an English as a Second Language population of students with at least 3 years of schooling in the United States.

 

B. Major Goals.

·  To develop superior reading and writing skills

·  To publish students' work

·  To empower the students through participation in the Internet world community

·  To enhance a sense of school community and interdisciplinary teaching (across-the-curriculum) using the virtual space of the Internet.

·  To develop critical thinking skills

·  To help students pass the graduation exams (English Regents Exam)

·  To motivate students to go to college.

 

C. Timelines. This is a daily activity that needs to be monitored constantly.

 

D. Types of Assessments Used

Assessment will be both

·        Creation of an effective class website, as measured by volume (number of pages created), content (quality of materials presented), hits (number of visitors), and reactions (visitors' comments).

·        Creation of a web-based Regents Clearinghouse, where students will gather assignments to be used for Regents Exam preparation.

·        Number and percentage of students passing the Regents Exam

·        Number and Percentage of participating students going to college.

·        Exit interviews with student participants

 

E. Standards Addressed.

English Language Standards High School 9-12

 

Lesson Plans.

 

Major Elements of the Project.

• The use of subject area as a real-life learning experience. In my case, I used literature with my English Language Learners. Literature will connect to students' experience and expectations.
• The use of an open classroom, where students and the teacher will mutually craft the main directions of the curriculum.
• The use of multimedia technology formats (text, sound, and image) that will engage the multiple intelligences of the students and teachers.
• Group and cooperative learning will be the format where most of the discussions will take place.

 

Advance Preparation

In order to prepare this class, the instructor needs knowledge of the student body. Since this project involves interaction, small groups, and project based learning, the teacher will carefully collect information on each of the participants: academic skills, hobbies, extracurricular activities, and special talents. This "inside information" is important to assess the students' preferences in choosing an assignment.

The introduction of the webpage to the students in also important. The students will use the school's webpage in a way that they do not normally use the Internet at home:

The webpage is:

• The classroom where most of educational activities will take place.
• The starting point of the reaching out process. Publishing on the Internet will become a frequent experience.
• The medium where multiple talents and experiences are encouraged to produce.
• An activity jointly controlled by students and teachers.

Before the first class starts, students are to be given a contract that spells out the rules of using internet (ban on hate and pornographic pages, do not send personal information over the internet, alert the teacher when you suspect foul play, ask the teacher permission before downloading materials and programs from the internet, teachers should review all materials that are going to be posted on the internet by the students, parents should give permission before students can publish anything on the internet, etc). For an example of rules of working and networking, go to http://fklane.org/labrules.htm

Teachers should be ahead of students in searching many of the possible links that students might hit when searching to complete the assignment. Knowledge of the internet-based content is necessary as much as textbooks need to be read by the teacher before any meaningful instruction begins.

The Board of Education guidelines require that all students publishing materials on the Internet be asked to fill out a consent form signed by your parent. One that I used can be found at: http://fklane.org/permission.htm. Do not forget to include the fact that students' names will remain anonymous and that no profit will be drawn from any Internet publishing.

 

Materials Required

What is required of the school to provide is a computer lab with Internet connection. It is not necessary that students meet in the computer lab every day. One of two days a week is enough. It is also helpful that the web team has access to a scanner and a digital camera.

 

Activities

The teacher will "create the need" that each worthy project is to be posted on the Internet for self assessment, peer review, and for creating a empowering portfolio that will reach out. For instance, the school webpage is declared "open" for students to populate it, modify it, and turn it into their own dimension. The students organized themselves in members of the web team.

The teacher will invite students to work in groups work on common projects. Such projects will reflect school life. The web team is in fact the editorial board of a publication that is appears online- the school webpage. Every student has something that she likes in school. For example, when I asked my students to say what their favorite class is, some of them said "lunch". Then I suggested that group of students to write a report about their favorite activity. It worked out very well: the students interviewed the cafeteria staff and participating students.

This is a list of proposed activities that reflect school life:

• History of school 
• Message from the Principal
• Departments (English, Social Studies, ESL, etc) or Houses
• School Activities (clubs, trips, assemblies, guests, PTA)
• Senior Class (interviews, portraits, surveys)
• Photo Gallery
• Interviews with Seniors
• Literary Pages (True Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Poetry, Theater)
• Art Pages (photos, artwork, etc)
• Life after High School (interviews and editorials on students who graduated from Lane)
• Our Teachers (interviews and portraits)
• Surveys among teachers, students, and community members
• Links of Interest (Colleges, scholarships and financial aid, job opportunities, articles about teen problems, our school web site, etc).

The web teams will choose the subject they want and will have a limited time to come up with the draft of the first written assignment. Example: some students will interview teachers or students, others will write about their favorite club or class. Their drafts will be published on the school webpage using discussion forums. There are several advantages of using this format: students can see each other's work and peer editing is encouraged; the information is stored conveniently for prompt retrieval and printing. See examples of discussion forums at: http://fklane.org/discussion%20forums%20page.htm

The next step is writing and chalk and talk. Students will edit, expand, and improve their essays, surveys, or interviews. They will use the peer review process to complete the difficult job of finishing the task. The teacher will be on the side, revising every draft. It is imperative that a form of the writing process be taught to each group of students, according to their needs and goals. A paper portfolio will nicely document the progress from the first draft to the last for each of the students. 

After the products have been completed on paper and all revisions included, the students will prepare each document in an HTML format. In other words, they will save the documents as a web page (HTML), an easy operation to do with Microsoft Word. If there are several documents that need to be linked together, the students will apply the knowledge learned in my classes about how to create a link in a webpage.

I will then allow the students to post their work on the Internet on the school server. The webpage is password protected, so I will edit permissions so that the students will be able to upload work on a certain directory. I will tell them, for example, that the document on lunchroom can be published at the address: http://fklane.org/lunchroom. I have to create this page before hand.

After the documents are uploaded (published on the school server), I will ask the students and the community at large to post comments about the materials published. There are several nice gadgets to be used to get input from visitors: guest book, surveys, discussion forums, email messages, rating counters. What I want to do is to create an online community of students and adults that will make the former take pride in their work and motivate them to write even better.

Whether we like it or not, the Internet is more than text. Pictures, sounds, animated graphics, and even short movies have become an integral part of the Internet, and a webpage without these elements is like a black and white movie on the Impressionist painting.

Teachers and students using an interactive school webpage will have to put aside some time to introduce multimedia messages in the substance of the page. Therefore, there should be a team of photographers that will cover school events and will bring digital pictures to every project done by the class. Other groups of students will be trained in the use of scanners. To scan original artwork done by students and to record sounds, songs, or short interviews of fellow students. The third group of students will perfect their skills in the new domain of digital video editing and streaming. They will use top-notch technology to edit and publish short videos about student activities on the Internet.