Web Primers
Your school has just been wired for internet access, there is a brand
new computer sitting in your classroom and you are one of the technoterrified.
Where do you start?
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If you are new to the internet, you will want to start with a basic web
introduction, such as the one written by WebTeacher.
Here you will find a "quick and dirty" fast-start Web
Primer, as well as a full-blown Web
Tutorial. A great place to begin.
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You will find another set of excellent tutorials at the TeachersWeb
Web Training site. This set of interactive tutorials will help
you use the internet effectively in an academic setting.
Learning New Software
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If your computer skills are newly acquired or in the process of being acquired,
you will surely want to take a look at this set of tutorials designed for
teachers. A nice feature of each tutorial is the "Cool for School"
section at the end which provides tips on how to use that particular software
package in a school setting. These online tutorials also have a print
version for the script-bound! Check out:
Creating Your First Web Page
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Building your first home page? The Teachers.Net
Website Handbook will help you get started. In six easy chapters
(Introduction, The Tools of the Trade, Setting up the Desktop, Text Editors
and Viewing Source Code, Web Page Components, and Uploading your Web Page)
you will be able to develop a basic web page that is suitable for the academic
environment.
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I would, of course, be remiss if I failed to mention my own set of eight
tutorials
on building a basic web page using Netscape Composer. Do it the easy
way!!
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There is much to be said for spinning your own web, but some teachers have
neither the time nor the inclination to learn even the most basic concepts
of web page design. There is help for these folks, too!! You
can build your website online with no knowledge of HTML using CLASSROOM.tripod.com.
At this site, you will be led through a series of forms which when completed
will automatically generate a web page for you. It will produce a
very basic website without a lot of bells and whistles, but functional
nonetheless.
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Another site for spinning your own web is an online community found at
anexa.com.
This site provides a much richer environment than CLASSROOM since it includes
the ability to create live chat rooms, discussion forums, an events calendar,
announcements, ticker tape, etc., but suffers from the same uniformity
(ie, all websites tend to look pretty much alike) as the first. However,
if you're pushed for time and need a fast, easy way to spin a web, this
one's a winner.
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A third option is found at blackboard.com,
a site that offers everything the above two sites offer, plus even more
goodies. Again, no knowledge of html code is required to produce
a coordinated online course website. The list of options here includes:
Asynchronous
Communication (threaded discussions)
Synchronous
Communication (real-time chat and whiteboard)
Assessment Tools
and Gradebook
Collaborative
Work Groups
Content Creation
(e.g. syllabus and course description pages)
Database
Reporting and CourseSite Statistics
Messaging
System
Online File
Exchange (between instructor and student)
Online Tutorial
User Tracking
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One of my personal favorites is Nicenet's Internet
Classroom Assistant, "a sophisticated communication tool that brings
powerful World-Wide-Web based conferencing, personal messaging, document
sharing, scheduling and link/resource sharing to a variety of learning
environments.... Nicenet provides the ICA free of charge with no
advertising." A wonderful tool for busy teachers.
Online Activities Even Beginners Can Use!
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Schoolnotes.com allows teachers
to have a bulletin board for posting announcements, assignments,
etc. This is a great communication tool for keeping both students
and parents informed of what you are doing in class and alerting them to
upcoming assignments (Quiz this Thursday!!). A simple, easy to use
interface makes this a great place for beginners to start. An additional
feature of Schoolnotes is the ability to create flashcards
for vocabulary study.
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Eboard.com allows teachers to
post announcements, assignments, photos, etc. without having to go to all
the trouble of actually creating a web page. Eboard creates the page
for you. The format is that of a bulletin board with notes posted
to it. Easy and simple way to communicate with your students and
their parents!
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Forums@Bruin.net
will allow you to create an online discussion forum with no pain.
Try it out!
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EBook
Builder 4 - Create a book from your HTML and text document
files. The book will also include images in .bmp, .gif, or .jpg formats.
The Ebook itself can be read like a normal book with a left and a right
page and page navigation buttons to flip thru the book. Creating an Ebook
just takes a couple of minutes: click and drag files and give the create
command; Ebook Scripts and support for sound (wav, mid and mp3) files;
print pages from your Ebook. This software creates a freestanding, compressed
executable (.exe) file. Quick and easy!! Your students will
love writing their own books with this freeware program.
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A great place to begin adding pzazz to your newly acquired web knowledge
is a web site called Filamentality.
To quote their own blurb: "Filamentality is a fill-in-the-blank interactive
Web site that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Web, gathering
good Internet sites, and turning Web resources into activities appropriate
for learners. So it helps you combine the Filaments of the Web with a learner's
mentality (get it?). Support is built in through Mentality Tips, so you'll
be guided right along the way and end up with a Web-based activity you
can share with others even if you don't know anything
about HTML, Web servers, or all that www-dot stuff." This is my kind
of web site - quick and dirty!
One page of this website describes the five
formats you can use with Filamentality. The first is a Hotlist,
a list of websites you can build for creating appropriate activities.
Using websites you have pre-selected, students may wish to create a Multimedia
Scrapbook.
Or, if you wish to begin using the web for information discovery, you may
want to send your students on a Treasure
Hunt. For a more focused version of the treasure hunt, you may
wish to use a Subject
Sampler instead. "Rather than uncover hard knowledge (as they
do in a Treasure Hunt), students are asked about their perspectives on
topics, comparisons to experiences they have had, interpretations of artworks
or data, etc." Finally, for a truly integrated approach, you may
want to try a Web
Quest with your students. "Basically, a WebQuest presents student
groups with a challenging task, scenario, or problem to solve. It's best
to choose aspects of a topic that are under dispute or that at least offer
a couple different perspectives. Current events, controversial social and
environmental topics work well."
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Create online games and quizzes with Quia.
This website allows you to create five types of games: matching,
concentration, flashcards, wordsearch, and hangman. Not
only can you create your own activities, you can also access activities
created by other teachers. The site for French
includes 203 activities, some of which are textbook specific (A bord,
Allez viens, Avzntage, Bienvenue, Bravo, Camarades, C'est ça, Connaissances,
Dis-moi, Discovering French (rouge, bleu, blanc), French in Action, Encore
Tricolore, On y va, Nous les Jeunes, Princeton Review SAT French, and
Viens
Voir. The German
site contains over 60 grammar and vocabulary activities, some for textbooks
such as Deutsch Aktuell.Geschaftsdeutsch (by Gudrun Clay), Gute Reise
1, Gute Reise 3, Komm Mit! 1, and Komm Mit! 3. With over
180 activities for culture, grammar and vocabulary, the Spanish
site also covers specific textbooks such as A Bordo, Adelante,| Arcos
y Alamedas, Bienvenidos, Bravo(1 and 2), Nuevos Amigos, Paso a Paso (1,
2, 3, and B), Spanish for Mastery 3, Ven Conmigo (1, 2, and 3), Vision
y Voz, and Voces y Vistas. The online quizzes are
based on JavaScript, but no knowledge of JavaScript is required.
As with most online web sites for creating activities, teachers must register
in order to be able to use the service. However, there is no charge
-- it is free. Be sure to write down your login routine!!
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You can create more games with Game-O-Matic.
This website allows you to create Concentration, Drag and Drop Matching
and Timed Matching games. Fun and easy!
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How about some puzzles? Every language teacher would like
to be able to do crossword puzzles for vocabulary building or cultural
content learning. Several websites will help you build your puzzles
automatically. Try, for example, Puzzlemaker.com
which will allow you to create all sorts of puzzle games such as:
Mazed Things (unique hand-drawn mazes), Computer
Generated Mazes (choose from a variety of shapes, set the size, and
let the computer generate a unique maze ready for you to paste into your
newsletter), Word
Search (type in a list of words and the computer will hide them in
a grid of letters), Word
Search with a Hidden Message (after all of the words are found the
letters that are not used reveal a hidden message!), Criss-Cross
Puzzle (your list of words will be linked together, numbered and formatted,
ready for you to print and hand out). Number Blocks (creates a block of
numbers that will challenge arithmetic and algebra skills. Each row, column
and diagonal add up to a total but some numbers are missing), Math
Square (math formulas are linked together to form a square), Double
Puzzle (enter a set of words or phrases to be scrambled. Then enter
a final phrase that the solver will be able to put together from the letters
in the clue words. The final phrase can be scrambled or numbered), Cryptograms
(enter a phrase and the computer will assign a number to each letter),
Letter
Tiles (enter a phrase and the computer will break it into tiles with
letters on them. The solver unscrambles the tiles to rebuild the phrase,
Fallen
Phrase (enter a phrase and the computer will place the letters in a
grid. Each letter appears in the same column, but below where it should
be. The solver must put the letters back in the grid and rebuild the phrase).
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Another site for constructing crossword puzzles is Online
Crosswords. This site contains three javascripts that you
can download to create your own puzzles. It also contains an archive
of puzzles created by others, including a section for foreign language
puzzles. The site also has links to Word Search puzzlemakers
and Word Slide puzzlemakers.
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If you really like crossword puzzles for your classes, you might
want to look into purchasing Crossword
Construction Kit (for Windows 95, 98 and NT). For $19.95, you
can download it from the internet or order it online to be delivered to
you on floppies.
Teachers' Aides
This page was created by Pat
Pecoy
for MFL
195
Last updated February 1, 2000