ETAI - Summer 2005

Micki Zaritsky
Beit HaHinuch Rabin, Tel Mond
(ask me for my email....)

I found THE BEST website. Now what do I do?

Finding a website for your students is hard enough, but what should you do with THE site once you found it. I will present some tips on how to find THE perfect site and how to create an online task. We will then discuss YOUR favorite EFL sites!

Introduction

1.  How do I find the PERFECT website? (search engines)

2.  How do I know when I found the PERFECT website? (evaluation)

3.  I found THE BEST website. Now what do I do? (CBPT)

4.  Examples

6.  Our favorite websites

Integrating the computer into our English classes is not easy. First, we have to get access to the computer room (a scheduling nightmare), then make sure the computers work (about 50% if we're lucky) and deal with computer teachers, technicians and whoever else you need to go through to get the keys and the code for the alarm.

Finally,
SUCCESS! You have a computer room. You have a class. You think you're ready, but
WAIT! What should you do now? Give your class a project? Let them play WallaGames? Maybe have them write emails? Or create weblogs? Tough decisions.

My recommendation for today's talk is a:

COMPUTER BASED PERFORMANCE TASK
(CBPT)

What is a Performance Task?
What is a Computer Based Performance Task?

A computer based performance task can take one or two lessons
(in contrast to a project or webquest which take more time).
They can be done individually or in pairs.

So what is a CBPT? and how can we create one?

Here are the main steps:

1. Choose a topic (it could be related to your coursebook)
2. Find THE PERFECT website. (YOU will choose the site, not the students)
3. Create a CBPT for your students. (template)
4. Create a checklist/assessment rubric

Sounds impossible???
Well at first it is a bit difficult, but believe me, with time it gets easier.

So LET'S get started!!

I assume that everyone is familiar with www.google.com,
so we'll start with that.

image of google screen

Google  = The World-Wide Web search engine that indexes the greatest number of web pages and provides a free service that searches this index in less than a second.
 (from the Free Online dictionary of computing http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html)

Google began as a research project in early 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford
 (from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google)

Today, google searches 8,058,044,651 web pages (www.google.com)

Google is fast and easy to use BUT.....
How are we supposed to deal with 43,100,000 websites that we get as a result of our search???

My answer - Advanced Google.

image of advanced google screen

Let's look at some of the feature:

all the words, (and +))
exact phrase ""
without the words (not -)

Language
Format
Occurrences
Domain

Now let's see an example

I want to look for a website about "food around the world"

Basic search (food around the world) -    43,100,000
Advanced Search - exact phrase - 25,100
                                 all in title        -  520

For more information about advanced Google searching:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/refinesearch.html

Yahooligans! is a browsable, searchable directory of Internet sites for kids.
Each site has been carefully checked by an experienced educator to ensure the content and links are appropriate for kids aged 7-12

Website - www.yahooligans.com

image of yahooligans

Basic search (food around the world) -   11 categories
                                                          148 websites

image of yahooligans search

Evaluating websites is a tricky business.
There are the usual "standards":

1. Authority - Is there an author? Is the page signed?
2. Accuracy - reliable and error-free information
3. Objectivity - minimum of bias
4. Currency - how current is the page?
5. Coverage - What topics are covered?

(from New Mexico State University Library http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html)

There are lots of ready made evaluation sheets:

Image of Website Evaluation

Kathy Shrock Guide for Educators
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/eval.html

(Google has 24,800 sites for "evaluating websites")

But most important is YOUR evaluation:
1.  The level of English
2.  The level of the content
3.  It's relevance to your needs
4.  Do you LIKE the site
5.  ?????
6,  ?????

Here again are the main steps of creating a CBPT

1. Choose a topic (it could be related to your coursebook)
2. Find THE PERFECT website. (YOU will choose the site, not the students)
3. Create a CBPT for your students. (see template below)
4. Create a checklist/assessment rubric

A computer based performance task (CBPT) consists of 4 parts:

1. An introduction to your students
2. The task requirements (step-by-step)
3. The link (URL) to your website/s
4. A checklist for your students.

Image of CBPT Template

10th Grade - imdb

11th Grade - Evaluating Websites

9th Grade  -  Writing a Biography

7th Grade  -  Body Language (thanks to Meirav)

6th Grade  -  Food Pyramid (thanks to Yelena and Yavgenia)

Weblogs (aka BLOGS) are probably the easiest way to set up a website for your students. They require no programming to make (seriously!!).

They have an added advantage of being able to add comment pages and other cool features.

All of the siteshave information about blogs
Click here to read one of them (from blogger.com)

Image of weblog

(Schoolblog has just recently changed their policy and will only allow blogs from a k12 email address.....sorry)