Chapter VI

Focus Question: How might educational websites provide interactive and engaging learning experiences for students?

Interactivity in itself implies that not only the website itself will communicate with students but that the opposite is also possible: that students can interact back with the website. For an educational website to be engaging, teachers must ask no further than how can I make my classroom engaging? For the same techniques can also be applied online. Relevance is quite an obvious answer. If the information is kept up-to-date and relevant to the students life, they'll be able to grasp it better. The idea is not to barrage and belittle students with tons of information, but to present it as simple concepts with references to things they can wholly understand. The best teachers I had in high school were the ones that were the simplest.

Tech Tool: Interactive Online Field Trip: The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc

This tech tool focuses on an interactive website that allows students to take a virtual tour of one of the earliest cave paintings ever found. This was one of the few times I've come across the concept of "virtual field-trips" and I have to say that I'm definitely an advocate. This site is a great example of an experience that could only be possible via the internet. Of course, I realize there is no replacement for actually being there and experiencing something like that in person -- this is probably the closest most of us will ever get.

Reaction:

The chapter goes over the concept of social bookmarking which I've experienced somewhat in class already. Delicious is an example of a social bookmarking site that we've implemented in class. Trends on the internet these days seem to be going the way of social everything. Now we have social bookmarks, social documents, social videos, even entire hard-drives that can be stored entirely online. It's quite a voluminous concept to imagine that we're nearly impervious when  it comes to storing information nowadays. With information stored entirely online, what could possibly delete it? Short of a complete website wipe (which is improbable seeing as they have backups) it seems impossible.

Next, webquests are discussed which I touched on briefly in the tech tool section. The idea is relatively new but I advocate it completely. However, I can only hope that schools never replace real live field trips with virtual ones in the name of saving money. Nothing could ever replicate actually being there.

Videoconferencing is another concept I was introduced to. I've never actually used it in the classroom but the concept seems intriguing. The idea that I could have my students have a live chat with students from another country is awe-inspiring.