Focus Question: Identify strategies for using educational websites interactively
Chapter six is all about information management, which is essential to all teachers and students. This chapter also explains URL book-marking, social bookmarking, and information alerts and e‐newsletters as ways to organize information that teachers need to prepare lessons.
Online learning would be nothing without educational websites and apps. The best and most widely used of these apps are the ones that require students to participate in them interactively and where information is accessible and useful to students. And just like a great teacher, a sufficient educational website teaches and doesn't just display information. It should make students interact with the screen and not simply stare at it.
Educational websites and apps help students interact by having more than just articles and essays displayed. It could have simulations, demonstrations, searches to conduct, questions to respond to, data to analyze, or responses to post.
Giving students a chance to explore is also necessary of any credible educational website. Some websites allow computer users can chart their own course through the website, even following different paths each time they visit.
Engagement with the information is yet another necessary factor to any educational website we should let students use. Through the use of a compelling storyline, interesting characters, a perplexing mystery, or a controversial issue or idea, websites can engage the student or reader to inquire further.
Tech tool 6.3: Interactive Web and App Learning for Students
Students need interaction to stay hooked to a website or app and gather it's information. This tech tool provides and describes particular websites that students can use and like to use because they require interaction. One very intriguing website is called the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük! which is an engaging website from the Science Museum of Minnesota. It explores these fascinating archaeological and historical questions by recording the process and results of an actual archeological dig which excites students and keeps them interested. One of the interesting apps in this tech tool was Instant Poetry HD which is a magnetic poetry style app that lets young poets create poems from words chosen by the program. Poets can then put their newly written poem on top of a photo of their choosing
Summary and personal connection:
This chapter was all about online learning, mainly by the use of educational websites and apps that students can interact with. It also describes important technologies for managing digital content and information. This chapter examines online learning and the issues of virtual schools. And finally it compares educational sites and analyzes use of virtual journeys and their actual impact.
I loved using the computer in school way back when and there are eduational websites that I still remember using back in elementary school. I remember the interactive website about the Oregon Trail that I played back in 5th grade, where we learned about the times of the trail while having fun trying to gather supplies and make it alive. If we can find sites that kids like to use, such as the one I used, we can get them to interact more and learn more than they would from writing in a book.
(All information from textbook)
http://critical-thinkers.com/2011/02/new-series-ordinary-people-extraordinary-decisions-the-story-of-the-oregon-trail-game/
The use of interdisciplinary and complex games are very useful in the teaching/learning process. They are definitely much more than play as they can teach prioritizing, strategizing, and problem-solving ...and in the case of the Oregon Trail one can 'become part of history.' :)
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