Week 4 Reflective Post

This week has been a tough week for me, after finding out last week I broke my wrist, I was informed just recently that I would have to have an operation!! So on Wednesday the 26^th of March, I had a screw inserted into the scaphoid of my left hand!! Yes Uni work has been a bit hard to keep up with, and writing to my blog’s has proven a great difficulty (when under the influence of severe pain killers!).. So please bare with me if you struggle to grasp somewhat of an understanding to my entries.. J

After reading the Study Guide for Week 3, I found it was simply a progression and expansion of knowledge I had acquired from the Week 2 Study Guide. As each study guide addresses such areas, as the Internet and World Wide Web, I feel my knowledge in this area has advanced. As in Mr. Lee’s weekly posts to Blackboard, he Questioned: “What is the difference between these two terms?” these terms referring to The Internet and the World Wide Web. I believe I can finally answer that. The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) are terms that to most people mean about the same thing. While they are related, their definitions are different. The Internet is at its most basic definition an electronic communications network. It is the structure on which the World Wide Web is based. I think of the Internet as a ‘bus’ and the Web as the people within the Bus are grumpy passengers, screaming babies, and people talking too loud (actually, that’s a pretty good representation of a lot of the Web!). The World Wide Web is a part of the Internet designed to allow easier navigation through the use of graphical user boundaries and hypertext links between different addresses.. So I have gathered from the Study Guides and my own research.

The website (Internet for Education – http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial?sid=1746177&op=preview&manifestid=179&itemid=) was actually one of the first, to be honest, in which I found myself not only completely concentrated but fascinated with. I consider this a very useful implication to my learning for my future professional practice as a teacher, and one in which I will refer to in my future studies. After reading the “Success Stories” section, I found it particularly interesting. It covered all features Job Hunting on the Internet, Finding information about learning theories on the Internet, Providing for gifted and talented students, Checking for evidence of good practice, Improving the School Library, Finding a range of resources for a teaching topic and so forth. However what attracted me most in particular, was the Finding a range of resources for a teaching topic, Finding information about learning theories on the Internet, and being able to find jobs on the internet! In ‘Finding a range of resources for a teaching topic’, The Institute of Education library: audio-visual resources, Curriculumonline and The Teachers’ TV website, all which provides information and links to a huge range of resources, and copyright free material for the interactive whiteboard for teachers.

The Study Guide Week 3 provided an understanding of the many uses of the WWW in the classroom environment and how “Education has also acknowledged the opportunities the Web holds for teaching and learning in the twenty first century and the ability of the Web to transform the “traditional” classroom into a virtual classroom where students can engage with an ever-increasing base of knowledge, resources and people” (As stated in the second paragraph of the Study Guide Week 3). In turn, as a student teacher, I believe this will aid in my future teaching practices, as to which I can successfully implement in the classroom. However, I believe it is important to understand and ‘Know the Jargon’ of the Internet to administer this learning tool effectively and correctly. This involves all aspects such as Web Pages, Websites, Home page and URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Learning the Jargon is vital in this process, and can help in gaining a greater understanding of WWW, and once this is established, can serve as an advantage in the classroom. The Guide also provided; Free Online Dictionary of Computing and Webopedia, which are popular guides to learning computer and Internet vocabulary. Not only will this assist children in learning searching techniques and all relevant concepts of the Internet, but other literacy and fundamental aspects of learning also. Furthermore, the Study Guide covers areas of Understanding URLs. This was very appealing to me, as I found it particularly fascinating that URLs often show a country code. ‘au’ indicates that this site is in Australia, ‘ca’ which indicates Canada, and ‘uk’ which indicates the United Kingdom. Every country has its own code! NOTE: Interesting fact; America doesn’t have one because the Internet started in America, hence there was no need for a country code!! Moreover, ‘.edu’ indicates that the site is an educational institution, ‘.com’ represents a commercial site, and ‘.gov’ indicates it is a government site! Typing in an Address, and key concepts such as ‘core address’ and “location strips”, Browsing the Web, the Essential Browser Skills and Using Search Engines, such as Google (which I use frequently, and was amazed at how quick the search takes as noted in the Study Guide, they set themselves a 0.5 second maximum search time on their servers). Ask.com which is apparently great for narrowing searches or expanding searches, and AltaVista which searches not only websites, but for audio files (MP3’s etc), and video files (Flash and so forth), are all useful learning faculties for the classroom, and most of these sites use clever ways of prioritizing sites to obtain the best results for students! The Study Guide also touched on Search Techniques such as Using keywords, refining search results and using the Advanced Search Options that are available in most search engines. These will generally improve the accuracy of the search and result in again, a more accurate array of knowledge to the students. However, Evaluating Web Resources is vital in this process, as one must be able to determine whether these results are credible or not, as the steep amount of information on the internet can be perplexing for younger children.  Moreover, I found the ‘Search Engines for Children’ amazing! As many of the major search engines also have search engines which are filtered and safe for students. Using a children’s search engine ensures that the level and content is appropriate for the age of the students. On the Blackboard site (”External Links”) I found http://www.quick.org.uk/ ‘The Quick Guide to Checking Quality Information’ serves as a criteria to assist in evaluating web sites for educational purposes. Resources like this can be found at www.sensei.com.au. AND I am sure to definitely utilize this service when teaching, as I believe it is important for both students and teachers to develop skills to enable them to decisively evaluate the value of information found on the Web. Other resources provided in the Study Guide include ‘Activities in the Classroom’;‘Funbrain’(www.funbrain.com) which provides activities for K-12, ‘How Stuff Works’(http://www.howstuffworks.com/index.htm), an easy-to-use website compiled of  hundreds of explanations of how things work, and lastly online quizzes, games, flash cards created by teachers around the world, the ‘Quia’(http://www.quia.com/web) website I found to be my favorite. These are just a few advantages of the Web in relation to classroom teaching and learning and methods that may be manipulated in my own teaching techniques.