Properly constructed web pages can direct students to WWW sites which relate to the curriculum and are appropriate
for their age. We want student's trips to be fast, efficient, useful and satisfying.
There are several good ways to provide web pages . . .
1) Develop curriculum pages which list and annotate good resources. The production of these pages takes a considerable investment
of time. This time can be shared by the subject-area/classroom teacher and media specialist.
A good web assignment and curricular page provides many or all of the following elements:
- Selectivity--Helps users avoid info-garbage.
- Quality Control--Directs students to reliable and accurate sites.
- Organization--Provides well-thought out learning activities and lessons.
Visit Web Page Design Tenents for additional hints and suggestions on designing useful curricular pages.
2) Provide links on the school Web page to one or more of the excellent lists created by educators such as:
Kathy Schrock's Guide.
3) Look at commercially-developed curriculum sites from educational publishers (e.g.
Scholastic) or to governmental agencies and museums offering sites tailored to the needs of students.
The Smithsonian provides excellent lessons plans and resources to help students learn about using the kinds of primary source materials
available online.
4) Visit other schools' sites
National School Directory)
5) Learn sufficient
HTML skills so that you can develop lesson pages which include good resources and activities. Most WWW pages are written in HyperText
Markup Language (HTML). A markup language is a collection of tags placed around words or groups of words in a text document.
These tags tell the web browser (Firefox, Explorer, etc) when to start a new paragraph, add a graphic, or a link to a new
page. Your pages may be shared locally on an Intranet or published globally on a web server.
Poor organization means that
time available to enjoy the Net-can be too easily wasted away, wandering from site to
site. By identifying sites which are rich in content, curriculum-related and age appropriate, we greatly increase the usefulness
of our web pages.
Thanks to Bellingham, Wa schools for many of the ideas expressed here.
