EdPsy 387 Project Proposal (by Norma Scagnoli) March 11,1999
Title of the Project: The Classroom in the InternetMy proposal is to make active web sites of the Classrooms and put them in the Internet.
Introduction
Objectives
How can this site be useful?
What topics should be included in the Class Web site and why?
What things should not be included in the Class web pages?
How can teachers make and maintain web pages?
Where I would start developing my project and why?
How do I plan to develop my project?
Getting feedback
Introduction
How can teachers effectively capitalize the social nature of learning?
Is the Internet the answer to this question?The educational community has never experienced such a cheap and easy accessible method for collaborative learning. The Internet has become the least expensive method for communicating and distributing information. Many research studies have investigated the effects of integrating the Internet into the curriculum, it has been demonstrated how can telecommunications enhance students’ understanding and respect for cultural differences, provide students with authentic learning experiences, improve and increase the quality of students’ writing.. (Barron and Ivers, 1997)
Since the Internet has made its way into the classroom, the classroom has to make its way to the global educational community by means of the Internet.
Many schools have already done this and some have formed groups of collaboration and communication, while others are there like still pictures, providing some formal information just to fulfill the requirements of the school district office.
Objectives
- Develop web pages for school grades in King school with the teacher's and the students' ideas.
- Use the Internet as a means of communication and collaboration between the class and the student's families, the class and other classes in the country and other classes all over the world.
- Enhance collaborative learning between schools all over the world
How can this site be useful?
- It can be a good source for displaying students’ work which I think may result in enhancing students’ motivation and improve the quality of their projects.
- It will provide information about the class and the programs to the students’ families, and to other schools from all over the world.
- It will enable the class to share resources with other classes with similar interests.
- It will be a mean of exchange and display information among schools, making use of the collaboration potential of the Internet.
What topics should be included in the Class Web site and why?
I think that a Class Web page should include:
· an index or home page: with a welcome message, the introduction to the class, a picture of the classroom and class members, and a very brief description of what the user will find in that site, and some help on the navigation tools.
· a schedule and/ or calendar of events: so that students, their families, and others have an updated information about the schedule and the upcoming events, as well as PTA announcements or cafeteria menus.
· a teacher's page: with some information about the teacher, such as her name, her photograph (if she wants) and a message to her students, parents or other educators, and some other information that the teacher may consider relevant for a web site.
· a students’ page: which may include photographs of the students, and/or messages they want to write, or things they want to publish, these things can be updated every term, or every month.
· a page for class projects: I think this is the most relevant since it will be a display of students activities during the year. It can include the description of the most important projects, photographs, sound or video of the development and conclusion of the project, and this will let others know what's going on and how the kids work on different matters.
· a list of links: which would be a list of URLs of sites that the teacher considers useful to visit for different reasons, these may include resources for class, sources of information, sites for practicing skills and collaboration.
· a guest book: which will be the site where the visitors to the pages will leave their impression on the development of the projects, the programs, suggestions, or whatever they want to write to provide feedback to the classwork.
· an e-mail address: which may be the teacher's or the director's
What things should not be included in the Class web pages?
· Full names of the students: I think that just first name is OK, and the photographs will be included only if their parents have given consent.
· Personal information of members of the class.
· Long speeches or topics that will only be read by few people, who could easily be reached by sending a flyer.
· Sounds, “bells and whistles”, twinkling stars, flashing lights, or great amounts of animation for no apparent reason.
· Outdates or unworkable links.
How can teachers make and maintain web pages?
Creating and maintaining web pages is time consuming, and requires certain skills. I think that this is mostly what prevents teachers from having their class web page, so I would develop a template to simplify the creation of this web site, and I would encourage them to learn how to update this pages, so they use them as a source of information from one year to the following. I will develop a tutorial on the use of Netscape Composer to create web pages from scratch, and I will introduce this to teachers in a workshop on March 27th and April 3rd.
Where I would start developing my project and why.
I have chosen Martin Luther King Jr., Elementary School for two reasons. First because I am familiar with the school and some teachers since my daughters go to school there. Second because that school has students from all over the world, and that makes the school a very particular one. This internationality emphasizes the reason for making the classes being part of the global community of the Internet. Being on the web means that the families and schools of the students from all over the world who are currently attending King school , will be able to know and share what they are doing at school here, thousands of miles away from home. As the school maintains foreign language classes for more than 10 languages, this site will permit foreign language schools share their experience, and will enable teachers participate in interesting programs all over the world.
How do I plan to develop my project?
My first step was to present my project to the director of the school and to the teachers. Once they agreed on that, I created templates for two class-web-sites,( Room 19 and Room 21). These templates were introduced to the teachers and then modified according to their suggestions and needs. After that first meeting, the teachers and I have started working together in the development of the class site. They provide the factual information, I put that on the web and then we share comments and modify the site according to their needs.
My next step is to start a short workshop for King school teachers so that they learn how to create and maintain that web site, and make this project the starting point for having their classrooms in the Internet.
March,1999 by Norma Scagnoli-scagnoli@uiuc.edu