Video:How to Integrate Website Building Into the Classroom

Transcript:How to Integrate Website Building Into the Classroom

Hello, I’m Milo De Prieto for About.com and today we are talking about some tips for integrating websites into the classroom.

Come Up with Clear Goals for Using the Internet in the Classroom and Stick to Them

Internet literacy is essential and there are ways of incorporating it into your lessons without it taking valuable time from the actual subjects. The overall goal for any technology is the actual learning. So ask yourself how can this activity explicitly create academic learning time, or more specifically how can it tangibly achieve your actual learning objective? Technology allows for students to actively manipulate the content and can smooth the learning process when the goal of learning is kept front and center at all times. A good rule of thumb is that the person doing the work is the person doing the learning. Another way of saying that is that what you are working with is what you are leaning about. So to incorporate this, or any technology into your lesson plan, first think what it is you want the students to walk away with so as to make sure that is where the action of the lesson goes.

Take Advantage of Free Online Webpage Templates

To streamline acquisition and get right into the use and benefits of websites, make use of one of the many free online services. A quick google search and an idea of what features you want to make use of will give you a myriad of possibilities. To help you choose a design template and service, think about what you want to achieve with the site. A blog, for instance, would be a running account of what is happening, and can be updated by yourself or the students. There is usually one news feed and no actual sections. The only other information in this typical format is a blurb about the creators, and possibly a comments section. More fleshed out templates for websites can be divided into sections, allowing for more readily accessible information on a variety of topics at once.

Ideas for Your Classroom's Website Content

Depending on how you want to use the website, the following ideas can be in a simpler blog format, or a more complex template as needed:

• Classroom Website: One excellent idea is to create a classroom web-page or blog that showcases students’ work, upcoming events, extension exercises for extra credit or homework, readings, and links to relevant educational material. While serving a social function, the goal should be towards the learning achievement of the students and the upcoming goals.
• Learning Journal: Students can keep a running record of their learning online. It’s always a great idea to have a learning journal where students record guesses, achievements, vocabulary, and draft as well as finished work. Students can post questions about upcoming activities, talking about what they might want to learn or are curious about. Without spending much time on the layout or look, a student can quickly post or record work on an online journal. The idea is for the journal to be a raw record of the learning process, not just the publisher ready stuff. The site can be private to the student and teacher or can be shared with the whole class and parents. Some services offer selective sharing.
• Student Created Resource: As a continuing or recurring classroom project students can create encyclopedic like resources on a particular subject they are learning about. For instance, if you are spending a few weeks on a subject, you can have as a goal at the end of the session to publish a wikipedia-like entry with as much multimedia and varied ways of interacting with the information as possible. There can be short essays, links to further research, quizzes, and relevant videos can be posted or embedded. The entire site becomes not only an artifact of the classes achievement with each student contributing, it also becomes a resource for other learners.

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