Using the Web for Teaching and Learning Mathematics (Week 8)

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome back to my fourth post. In this week, we were introduced to the World Wide Web and making the most of the internet resources and we gained some ideas about web-enhanced instruction, website design, web tools and academic website evaluation. Firstly, we learned that World Wide Web is actually a system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. There are several applications called Web browsers that make it easy to access the World Wide Web. The two of the most popular ones are Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. 

WWW Elements and their meanings

However, I did come across something interesting that is the World Wide Web is not the same with the Internet. As a student, I grew up believing that both were merely the same. This was something new that popped out and definitely a matter that I would seek to give importance to whilst explaining to my students in the future.

Educational Web Resources

In this section, we learnt about web resources that help from the educational sense. 

1. Online publications : Magazines, newspapers, and journals.
2. Professional organizations : Resources such as news, articles, links, calendars, audio, video, text.
3. Weblogs (Blogs) : Online spaces for posting individual’s personal commentary, unique forum to express ideas and consider viewpoints.
4. Wikis : Free and dynamic information anyone can edit.
5. Governmental sites : Local, state, and federal web sites offer many free valuable resources.
6. Educational portals : Targeted resources for educators, students, and parents.
7. Favorite links : Links to related sites.
8. Classroom management tools : Test generators, diagnostic tests, electronic grade books.
9. Academic tools and resources : Lesson plans, worksheet generators, encyclopedias.

Web-Enhanced Instruction (WEI)

1. Enhancing classroom communication. 
   💬 Help visual learners. 
   💬 Support and enhance communication. 
   💬 Used to deliver contents. 
   💬 Provides links to other resources.
   
   
2. Linking students to their world.
   💬 Student-to-student communication done using a web site. 
   💬 Global learning community through Key-pals, e-pals, or cyber-pals.
   💬 Help  communication skills and cultural awareness.
   
   
3. Building bridges to parents & community. 
   💬 Parents and teachers can work together to develop potential. 
   💬Teachers can upload classroom rules, schedule, and homework on a classroom page, parents can access them.
   
   
4. Classroom web sites. 
   💬 Teachers create their own classroom web sites. 
   💬 Give class information, links to other related websites.
   💬 Web authoring tools are available for teachers to create web sites.

Academic Website Evaluation

We also learnt about the ways to evaluate academic websites so as teachers, we will know whether the website used is appropriate for the level of understanding of students and also comprehend the proper usage of the websites used. The table below is of great importance as stressed by our lecturer, to be used as a guide whilst checking out websites for our classroom usage. 

 

That is all for this week. Thank you for reading this post and I hope to see some comments in the comments section for a better understanding between my readers and I. See you soon! 😃