Stephan Waba
Project outline
„Global
Classroom“
Schools on the Internet
25 pages
7409 words
for the proseminar
„Englische Fachdidaktik
II“
bei Mag. Barbara Mehlmauer-Larcher
M.A.
WS 1999/00
Wenn du diese Arbeit
verwendest, schick bitte ein email an sjw@gmx.net!
Contents
- Introduction
...................................................................................................................
2
- The future of education
..............................................................................................
3
2.1 Megatrends – a learning society
............................................................................
3
2.2 Open learning in virtual worlds
...........................................................................
4
- The internet
....................................................................................................................
6
3.1 A rush for gold or the great hangover?
................................................................
6
3.2 The autonomous learner and the internet
..........................................................
9
- The project “Global Classroom on the
Internet”
.............................................
12
4.1 The basics
................................................................................................................
13
4.2 The topic
.................................................................................................................
14
4.3 The creation
............................................................................................................
18
- Appendix
......................................................................................................................
20
5.1 Tasksheet 1
..............................................................................................................
20
5.2 Tasksheet 2
..............................................................................................................
21
5.3 Tasksheet 3
.............................................................................................................
22
- Bibliography
................................................................................................................
23
- Link collection
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24
7.1 Schools in the United Kingdom
........................................................................
24
7.2 Schools in Austria
................................................................................................
24
7.3 Homepage designing and HTML
......................................................................
24
7.4 Encyclopaedias and dictionaries
........................................................................
25
- Introduction
The project which is presented in this paper is
supposed to give pupils of different forms and levels an introduction to the
internet and to homepage-designing. The title „Global Classroom on the
Internet“ already suggests that this introduction especially concentrates
on the way education and school is presented on the internet. This is, however,
not the whole project but only a part of a much bigger planning, namely the
school project „Global Classroom“.
„Global Classroom“ is set in an Austrian
grammar school. Every year, two days in the last week of the term are dedicated
to a project dealing with a certain topic. The normal schedule is suspended and
pupils of all different forms join in a number of workgroups to work out a
specific aspect of the topic. In this project, one workgroup might concentrate
on school partnerships, another might work on correspondence courses and my
workgroup tries to find out, as already mentioned above, what role the internet
plays in the „Global Classroom“.
Pupils can choose from a variety of tasks according
to their interest. The final outcome of the workgroup „Global Classroom on
the Internet“ should be a first attempt to design a school homepage. It
is, of course, not possible to achieve that aim within two days. Nevertheless,
pupils can take a number of steps learning about the subject and in the end the
foundations of a school-homepage can be laid.
To reach that aim, pupils must not only inform
themselves about their own school and what should be included on the
school’s homepage, but also about how other schools present themselves on
the internet, how to build a homepage and last not least about the importance of
education on the internet. They should use as many sources and aids as possible
and can therefore very well experience the boundaries of this new medium. A
number of links suggested by the teacher are helpful for getting started but
later on it is up to the students which on-line aids they use.
In this paper, I first want to give some background
information on the development of education emphasising the role of the
internet, and then describe the actual project as detailed as possible. Drafts
of worksheets and handouts are intended to complete the paper.
- The future of
education
The main ideas of this section are taken from the
book Multi-Media-Campus: Die Zukunft der Bildung by Franz-Theo Gottwald
which outlines a new idea of how to teach and learn within an interactive and
multimedia campus set up on the internet. It offers interesting perspectives on
tomorrow’s education and the changes which have taken place so
far.
2.1 Megatrends – a learning
society
The world we are living in, changes rapidly. Most of
today’s employees work no longer in industry but in service industries
which offer information like the press, banking, telecommunications and all the
sectors based on computers. The trend moves away from simple manufacturing to
processing of information. People must learn to deal with this trend and not
only globalisation demands life-long learning.
Nowadays, one is everywhere asked to be flexible.
This means to be permanently able to do relearning, to deal with new
technologies and to be ready for new requests. Flexibility means also to be
capable of taking up new perspectives.
Within hundred years, the amount of freetime
available to employees has doubled. Around 1900 people had 2.000 hours per year,
at 2030 it will be as high as 5.200 hours. Most of that time will be used for
multimedia education. Sparetime will be less used for mere consumption of
leisure-time activities but will make up the potential for
self-realisation.
Like the leisure industry, also education lives on
the people’s growing urge for change. The variety in education can be
quite effectively used to make the learning process more interesting and to
increase the learners’ potential.
Not only variety, but also interaction determines the
future of education. Interactive communication is a highly flexible means of
education which does not aim on the mere imparting of knowledge but rather on
communication and the techniques of how to get information from various
sources.
The world’s knowledge has organised itself in a
gigantic “ocean of knowledge” which is constantly growing. Not even
in one’s own subject it is no longer possible to keep pace. To filter
relevant information out of this vast amount of knowledge, we need aids to
support us in valuation and evaluation of information. In the future, not detail
knowledge will be important but general knowledge about ourselves, our relation
to our environment and to our world. We need to adapt our way of how to cope
with information to our constantly changing world.
2.2 Open learning in virtual
worlds
Tomorrow’s learner is an open system. His
thinking, emotions, motivations and learning are integrated into the world
surrounding him. He is dependent on his cultural, social and ecological
environment. No longer cognitive elements within a learner can be regarded as
positive and emotional ones as negative. If we understand a learner as an open
system, this dilemma is neutralised.
Additionally, technology is no longer a dangerous
tool in the hands of people who aim to seize world domination but it is a
helpful aid which can respond to the learner in a particular way. The boundaries
between man and machines are covered up as machines are more and more modelled
on the human brain.
The more learning takes place in virtual
surroundings, the more people are ready to dissolve from the limitedness of
previous techniques for presentation and interaction. Much more than just the
visual sense is addressed by today’s learning software and this trend is
going to continue. Action-orientated mechanisms allow the arrangement of the
subject matter according to the educational objective. “Learning with all
senses” is the motto for the education of the future.
Two kinds of learning will be of a great importance
of tomorrow’s virtual learning environment. The first is the
“anticipatory learning” which means learning how to cope with
unexpected situations which possibly never happened before. Here, the emphasis
lies on modelling a person’s subject competence and his personal, leading
and sensual competence. The virtual classrooms of the future allow anticipation
by integrating the getting of experience in the learning situation. The second
kind of learning which will dominate the education of the future is the
“participatory learning” which emphasises social interaction.
Participation, to work on a problem together, is highly important to reconcile
groups of people who gained different techniques of
anticipation.
In the virtual classrooms of tomorrow, learners can
autonomously build up their own system of strategies, means and ways of how to
learn most effectively. The traditional dependence of the learner on the teacher
becomes less important as learning will be more and more self-controlled from
the inside than determined from outside. In multimedia classrooms the autonomy
of the learner is realised since it is possible for the individual to continue
learning of his own accord without support from the outside. Everybody learns
differently, so each learner will set up his own learning environment. Lifelong
learning can be easily organised since that learning environment is a highly
flexible matter which can be adjusted to ever new tasks and
jobs.
The most important thing to learn will be media
competence, that is to be able to learn with different kinds of media. Media
competence means to get as much suitable information as possible and then
utilise that information most effectively. Today, a great variety of
“edutainment programs”, which combine education and entertainment,
are available to learn media competence by doing. Tomorrow’s learner must
get to know how to consciously decide for that kind of information which is most
important for his learning process.
Especially the entertainment aspect will be of great
importance in the classroom of the future. Learning is going to be more and more
based on pictures. Already today’s edutainment programs are very
attractive because of the learning stimuli conveyed by pictures. For complex
learning processes pictorial learning is more suitable than the traditional
verbal imparting of information.
Also computer games can contribute to a greater
interest in multimedia learning. In most of these games the player can interfere
in the story by controlling one or more characters within a virtual reality. By
doing so, people get used to navigate within a virtual reality and get the
expectancy that tomorrow’s learning will be as easy as controlling a
figure in a game. This is a good basis for the anticipatory and the
participatory innovative learning of the 21st
century.
- The
internet
3.1 A rush for gold or the great
hangover?
Although the learning of tomorrow is very likely to
be as described above, it is all still up the air. What is needed most for this
new educational style are a medium that conveys up-to-date information and a
fast and effective means of communication.
The internet is a perfect medium for all these
demands. According to Meyers Lexikon in drei Bänden this world-wide
network, today mainly used for data exchange via telephone connections, started
in 1969 as the so-called “ARPAnet” which simplified the US
Army’s communication. It then was only used to convey scientific
information and became the internet we know today not before the 1990ies. Since
the standard WWW (world wide web) was introduced in 1993, also multimedia
applications and online services could be offered. Many people nowadays use the
internet for their work or in their freetime. Communication has become much
easier because of the e-mail (electronic mail) which allows the transfer of
electronic letters and data to any destination on the globe within
seconds.
Governments and governmental organisations all over
the world put a great effort into making people fit for the internet since this
is the medium of the future. Recently, a huge campaign was introduced in Austria
to relieve people from their fears concerning the anonymity of the internet
which opens the door to criminality, as many think. Especially a number of cases
of child pornography have strengthened the arguments of people who are against
the internet. The internet is a medium like any other, tainted with the same
dangers and defects as any other anonymous medium. It should therefore not be
condemned beforehand. In the campaigns, however, the internet is presented as
the archive of the world’s knowledge, as the ultimate store of all kinds
of information. Its democratic structure which makes it possible for every user
to contribute his thoughts allows a totally different view of our society and
makes it interesting also for education and open learning. The speed in which
information is provided and can be downloaded makes the internet absolutely
unrivalled.
This is all very true and yet it is not. The view of
the internet which is promoted by various people because of various intentions
is not always what the internet really is. It offers such fantastic
opportunities that very soon a commercialisation of the internet could be
noticed. This is fair enough as long as the intention is clear and as long as it
makes things easier for the consumer. Nowadays, all large companies have got
their own homepage which they use mainly as an up-to-date and cheap means of
advertising. Especially computer-related firms also offer service there. Users
can download the newest drivers for their hardware and easily update their
programmes. Virus scanners get the newest virus profiles on the internet and all
kinds of freeware and shareware is ready for download. This seems fantastic at
first. Users should, however, be careful and only trust companies which they
would trust in real life as well.
Some companies do not even have an own shop but carry
out their business via the internet. E-business (electronic business), a new
slogan which can be read everywhere nowadays, is a very practical thing. Items
can be ordered on-line, they are paid via credit card and it is only up to the
postal service when the products land in the customer’s post-box. Yet, not
all people trust the data protection of the internet and are afraid to give away
precarious data like their credit card number. Internet shops like the famous
bookstore http://www.amazon.com
can register large turnovers but not a very
high profit. Too few people buy on-line to make the shop, which offers books at
retail price but without postage, a profitable institution. Currently, it is in
the red.
Looking at homepages without a commercial background,
we can find a quite good reflection of our world and of society. Thanks to free
offers for homepages and webspace from advertising-financed webservice
providers, everybody can nowadays easily publish his views and opinions on the
internet. Surfing on the homepages of large homepage-providers like
http://www.geocities.com,
we can find a rich variety of personal homepages with an ever so different
content and orientation. This is positive on the one hand, since information can
be made available to the world quite fast and unbureaucratically. It is
negative, on the other hand, because there is no guarantee, not even a hint for
the quality of the offered information. This is not of relevance when we talk
about personal homepages presenting its author. It is, however, of great
significance, when we consider the educational value of the
internet.
When we go to a library to inform ourselves about a
certain topic, we can assume that the books we find there, are of rather high
quality. Especially in science and studies, the points of view of the different
scholars may differ enormously, but at least we can proceed on the assumption
that what finally was published is well-researched and well underpinned. This is
guaranteed to us by the readers and the publishers of the publishing house. On
the internet, everyone is his own publisher and nobody else than the author
himself decides what to make available for the public and what not. Speaking of
science and studies, information that has been insufficiently researched or that
has yet not been thought through to the end can be easily found on the internet.
Not only unknown or even anonymous authors or sources which are not well-known
but also traditional and well-known publishing houses offer insufficient
information that is sometimes not reliable. Their data is limited just to avoid
to compete the books they are publishing. Maybe this unreliable data even makes
up the majority of information offered on the internet. It is, therefore, quite
risky to fully rely on the internet when looking for important
data.
Yet, a trend which is of much greater use to
autonomous learners is up-and-coming. Traditional publishers of encyclopaedias
and dictionaries which were firstly produced in CD-ROM form, have now made their
information available to the public on the internet. Everyone can leaf through
the online-versions of high-quality encyclopaedias for free since these webpages
are finances through adverts which appear on the top of each page. Excellent
examples of this new trend can be found at
http://www.britannica.com
and
http://dictionary.com.
Even a web-version of the British National Corpus is available at
http://thetis.bl.uk.
It is quite easy to find information from well-known
publishers like the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Even if we do not know the exact
address of the webpage, the search engines which help users finding data related
to the topic they are working on, are very likely to mention it on top of the
list of suggestions. Search engines are absolutely necessary for any internet
user. Without them, it would not be possible to find any specific data on the
internet, which is organised in a decentralistic way. There are no central
address books, indexes or catalogues. Services like
http://yahoo.com
or so-called meta-crawlers like
http://www.webcrawler.com,
which combine several search engines, ask for the relevant term and give a list
of suggested homepages which are in some way connected to that term. The wider
we define the term to look for, the more suggestions we are likely to get. This
seems to be quite logical and easy but anybody who has ever logged on the
internet not just to surf from one homepage to another but to find specific
information, will agree that this is not the case. Mario Rieder wrote an
interesting article on this topic published in das materialien und ideen
heft. According to him, a systematic and planned action is the important
basis for successful research work. It is sometimes good to consult different
engines and to try it again and again, every time with a slightly different term
to look for. Yet, it is also up to a certain amount of luck and coincidence
combined with a bit of intuition, if we in the end really find what we are
looking for.
To conclude, the internet is a fast and efficient aid
in daily working because it makes communication so much easier and faster and
because up-to-date information can be very easily downloaded. Yet, this
information is not always so easy to find. Additionally, we should pay attention
to the quality of the given information and should only trust traditional and
well-known companies and publishers. In case of doubt, it is no mistake to
consult the printed versions of encyclopaedias or articles in libraries. The
internet is the future, there is no doubt about that. We ought to familiarise
ourselves with this new technology and should try to profit from it. There is no
reason to be afraid of it but whatever we do, this does not only concern the
internet, we should do it with open eyes.
3.2 The autonomous learner and the
internet
Autonomous learning means to acquire knowledge of
one’s own accord without support from the outside. Depending on the level
of autonomy, material may be provided and there may be tuition available from a
teacher but the learning process itself is fully up to the learner. The more
independent he is, the more decisions he has to make concerning the material and
his preferred learning styles. In autonomous learning, much effort is put into
doing practical exercises rather than into learning theoretical knowledge.
Anticipatory and participatory learning, two future trends which have been
discussed before, are also a matter of today’s autonomous
learning.
To be able to do autonomous learning successfully,
learners must define their role in the learning process and their capability as
learners, as Anita Wenden in her book Learner strategies for learner
autonomy suggests. Learners have to show willingness to take on
responsibility and have to have confidence in their ability as
learners.
Everybody learns differently. Some people do better
in visual learning, that is to view and to read things, others prefer auditory
learning, to listen to lectures and to discuss the topic. Some learners go for
tactile learning, learning by handling and touching, and others opt for
kinaesthetic learning, that is to do and experience things, are learning styles.
The more experienced a learner gets, the more likely he is to find his preferred
style and in which way he does best in absorbing, processing and retaining new
information and skills.
Learning materials published in any kind of the new
media like the CD-ROM or the internet is designed to satisfy all different kinds
of learners. Most of the programs are a balanced mix of audio-visual elements.
This is especially useful for language courses where not only the correct use of
the grammar can be trained in traditional text-based exercises but also the
right pronunciation in interactive tasks. A number of pictures and even little
films can contribute to learning a language in the most natural way possible.
While learning material published on CD-ROMs is
limited in its size, the internet makes up the largest archive of learning
material ever possible. Again, money and commercialisation is of significant
relevance here. Quite a number of companies offer web-based courses similar to
self-contained CD-ROM programmes. Learners just follow lection after lection and
pay for what they get. This is, however, not really autonomous learning because
the courses are built up like classrooms without a teacher. Autonomous learning
does not only do without the teacher but also without self-contained concepts.
Autonomous learning can take place following certain guidelines but it is far
more open and flexible than any systematically built-up course can
offer.
Autonomous learning on the internet means to look for
various sources of information, assess them and to combine and make use of them
according to one’s aim. This is not very easy, especially for
inexperienced users. They might be overwhelmed by the mass of information
available and are likely to believe everything that is published, similar to the
first days of television when everything that was broadcasted on TV was taken
for granted. To find one’s way around the internet is something which is
best learned by doing. Tutors can help learners by showing them a few examples
of well-made webpages which are full of relevant information and of poor sites
which promise more than they really contain. It can also be quite useful to work
out criteria according to which one can assess the quality of a homepage. Most
important, however, is to show learners how to deal with the different internet
search engines. It can be very frustrating to know that “somewhere out
there” the wanted information must be available but because the exact
address is unknown, it remains inaccessible to the user.
- The project “Global Classroom on
the Internet”
The setting has already been made clear in the introduction. We will now take a
closer look onto the project and try to set up some guidelines concerning the
timing but also the content. We will define clear aims and the possible steps to
reach them.
In the first part of this paper, the theoretical
background, we have mainly focused on the role of education on the internet and
the opportunities it offers for autonomous learners. The project, however, is
aimed at making a first contact with the internet possible for the target group
and, moreover, at advising pupils how to deal with information from the
internet. Most of the pupils nowadays have been to the internet at least once
and have a certain idea of it. The most visited homepages, however, are
entertaining ones related to games, to chatrooms (on-line discussions) and to
music, especially dealing with the new internet-standard for music, Mp3. If
homepages of that kind promise more than they contain that may be annoying for
the user but it does not constitute a big problem because nothing hinges on
whether the wanted data can be found or not. It is all for entertainment and
there are hundreds of similar pages available.
In our project, pupils should learn to look at the
internet in a more professional, in a more systematic way. Like already
described in 3.2 “The autonomous learner and the internet”, students
should experience themselves how to best look for information and how to find
out of what value this information is for them. The topic of the project which
limits it contentwise, is the presentation of schools on the internet. While
other groups of the school-project “Global Classroom” look at
different aspects of school relations and education in other countries, we
should be concerned with the way schools present themselves on the internet and
afterwards lay the foundations of our own homepage. Speaking of language
competence, this is broadened by analysing British homepages and by formulating
English texts for their own one.
In the centre of day one is getting in contact with
the internet and looking at various existing homepages. Criteria according to
which we can assess webpages should be found and an impression of the
opportunities and the limits of the internet should be gained. In the centre of
day two stands the creative aspect. Now, pupils are asked to inform themselves
about how to set up a homepage and try to do their own one.
In the beginning, when the knowledge of the
participating pupils concerning the internet has to be levelled, the project has
to be controlled by the teacher in a far greater extend than later on when the
students are in the creation process. It is, of course, easier to describe those
parts of the project which are in charge of the teacher than those which are
more autonomous. The imagination of the reader, however, should contribute to
getting a more lively picture of the project and its results.
4.1 The basics
Day one, 9.00 to ~11.00
To familiarise the students with the internet, we do
not yet let them form workgroups but talk to all of them in the beginning. They
all have a computer with internet access at their disposal. At first, the
teacher shortly informs the pupils about the history and the character of the
internet. Suggestions for this introduction can be found in the theoretical part
of this paper. It should be rather practical orientated and should cover the
basic techniques of navigation in the net.
Then all the students are given the address
http://www.yahoo.com,
an easy search engine. Now they are asked to think of any topic which is of
interest for them and to see how many homepages and how much information they
can find on the internet. The pupils have enough time to visit a number of
homepages to be able to come up with a list of the five best sites according to
their view. Some students may shortly present what they have found out and may
talk about the way they got to the information.
Experienced students will find relevant data quite
easy whereas beginners will definitely have some problems which they should
articulate in the course of the discussion. The teacher or other pupils can help
and clear basic problems quite easily. It is also possible to show how to use a
search engine most effectively on the basis of an example. It is neither
possible to give a more detailed description nor an exact time-span for this
part of the project since here, students should be made “fit” for
the internet so that they can carry out easy tasks on their own. Pupils learn
quite easy at that age, especially when it comes to new media, a topic which is
of interest for most of the young people. It depends on the knowledge and the
experience of the pupils how long this part lasts. Timelines, therefore, can
only be a rough structure in a project.
4.2 The topic
Day one, ~11.00 to ~12.00
When everyone is familiar with the basic structure of
the internet, the topic is introduced to the students. Their surfing is no
longer dedicated to find information on a self-chosen subject but on a specific
project-related one.
Tasksheet
1[1] is handed out
to the students and they are asked to fulfil its tasks. Again, experienced
students will do easier than beginners. You cannot expect them to understand and
to be able to navigate in the internet within an hour. Therefore pupils are
asked to help each other and also the teacher should wander around the computer
lab giving hints and answering questions.
When they have finished, it is time for a break after
three hours in front of a computer screen. Naturally, little breaks during the
working process are possible and desirable. Nevertheless, a longer break is
absolutely necessary for the pupils to let go of the topic.
Day one, ~12.30 to ~13.30
After the break, tasksheet 2 is handed out to the
students.
Firstly, they can find a number of suggested links to
the categories of homepages they were asked to find before. The given webpages
are good-quality ones and reliable. They should be used by the students as an
aid throughout the project. Yet, the pupils are of course invited to use any
additional aid they can find on the net. In case of doubt whether the found
webpages are of good quality or not, the teacher can help.
Secondly, there are a number of questions on
tasksheet 2. These questions should function as first guidelines for the pupils
of what they could pay attention to when looking at homepages. They are a good
preparation for setting up criteria to assess webpages, which is the day’s
aim. The students are now asked to find five webpages of Austrian schools and
five ones of British schools which they like or dislike. They should be able to
briefly present some pages to the class and say why they like them or not. For
this argumentation, the questions on tasksheet 2 can be very
helpful.
Day one, ~13.30 to ~14.30
Now it is time to discuss some well-made and also
some not so well-made webpages in class. Before it is the students’ turn,
the teacher briefly presents a few examples.
A very nice homepage of an Austrian school is the one
of the BG/BRG Kirchengasse in Graz
(http://www.kirchengasse.asn-graz.ac.at).
Here we can see that not only traditional elite schools like the Theresianum
produce good sites, but also other grammar schools like this. The homepage comes
up quite fast but nevertheless offers a very well made index-page from which all
the sections can be reached easily. A button on the upper-left corner, which can
be found on every page, makes it easy to get back to this index-page
immediately. The design of the whole homepage is unobtrusive and clear and it
leads through the whole webpage like a red thread. It very well reflects the
structure of the page and in a way also the school’s attitude –
clarity. As the date shows, the page is updated regularly, a feature which is
very important in the internet. Pretending, we were prospective parents who want
to inform themselves about the school, let us now proceed to the types of school
offered at the BG/BRG Kirchengasse. What we find on
http://www.kirchengasse.asn-graz.ac.at/schulformen.html
is not overloaded with unnecessary pictures but
gives very briefly all the needed information. Also the school’s guiding
principle is presented in that way on
http://www.kirchengasse.asn-graz.ac.at/leitbild.html.
Very useful links are the map showing how to best get to the school
(http://www.kirchengasse.asn-graz.ac.at/lage.html)
or the school’s webbased mailservice offering free email to students and
staff which can be checked all over the world
(http://www.kirchengasse.asn-graz.ac.at/mailman/mailman.cgi).
This is a fantastic site offering a lot of information and service in a pleasing
design.
Quite the contrary applies to the homepage of the ORG
der Schwestern vom Göttlichen Erlöser Eisenstadt
(http://www.bnet.co.at/theres/index.htm).
The problem here is that there is obviously nobody who is responsible for it.
The production of a homepage was the aim of a project in 1996 and since then
only once in 1997 it has been updated and changed. If a homepage is designed,
especially if it is the product of a project, it must be assured that there is a
group of people who take care of updating it regularly. Otherwise, the nature of
the internet, namely topicality, is ridiculed. It is a shame since this school
seems to be quite modern and future-orientated. To dedicate a project to the
internet and to producing a homepage in 1996 is rather remarkable. Offering
outdated information, however, is not the only problem of this school’s
webpage. Let us take a closer look on the index-page. Here, we neither find a
clear menu reflecting the structure of the page and leading us through, nor any
link to the school’s email-address. The design is boring, the elements are
badly arranged and it is no pleasure surfing this site. Pretending again to be
prospective parents, we proceed to the page of one of the school-types, the
Höhere Lehranstalt für wirtschaftliche Berufe
(http://www.bnet.co.at/theres/schulehl.htm).
The information is presented in a clear and brief way but it is again the boring
design which makes the user skip important parts. The same applies to the page
of the school’s achievements
(http://www.bnet.co.at/theres/erfolge.htm).
Outdated information is poorly presented – nobody in this school takes
advantage of the internet’s topicality and the opportunities for
presentation it offers. Not everybody can design a homepage in a professional
way and that is also not the priority aim of a school’s webpage. But
keeping it up to date is absolutely necessary.
Turning to British schools now, let us first take a
look at the webpage of the Westminster School
(http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/default.asp).
What is quite remarkable here is that every user is firstly asked to identify
himself so that only relevant information is presented to him. We identify
ourselves as a “visitor” to get a nice overview picture of the
school. On the page coming up now,
http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/index.asp,
we find a nice and clear menu giving us the opportunity to proceed to any part
of the homepage within seconds. A click on “information” gets us to
the school information section,
http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/index.asp.
Here, we can choose from a variety of offers. We can either inform ourselves
about the school’s prospectus and history
(http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/about/prospectus/index.htm)
or get a visual impression by looking at a collection of nice photographs of the
school
(http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/about/photos/index.htm).
A useful index
(http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/atoz.asp)
and the opportunity to search the school’s intranet
(http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/query/query.asp)
are without a doubt necessary in view of all the information provided and round
off this well-made and impressive homepage. We must not forget, though, that
elite schools like this one, which depend on the pupils’ school fees and
use the internet as one means of recruiting new pupils, pay professional
companies for designing and updating their site. Therefore, such a page can by
no means be compared to an Austrian one where the school system is completely
different and schools are not so dependent on selling themselves. Yet, to
believe that all homepages of British schools are like that would be wrong, as
the next example will show us.
A British example of a not so well-made homepage can
be found at
http://www.beck.lpool.sch.uk,
the Archbishop Beck High School in Liverpool. In principle, the deficits are not
so different from the ones that the homepage of the Theresianum Eisenstadt had.
The menu which should make up the centre of the page to guide the visitor is
here at the bottom of the site. No clear structure is recognisable and the
design is not very inviting. Proceeding, let us now take a look at the
prospectus
(http://www.beck.lpool.sch.uk/prosp.htm)
which constitutes an important part especially in the presentation of British
schools. Again, we find a lot of valuable information but it is not split into
smaller parts, logically ordered. Instead, it is piled up on a long page. Apart
from the fact that nobody who wants to inform himself briefly about this school
would read the whole page, it is all set up so boringly that most of the users
will soon be disappointed and leave the site. Also the photo-gallery
(http://www.beck.lpool.sch.uk/pictures.hmt),
normally an attractive feature of every homepage, is not a pleasure to look at.
The idea of publishing a map helping the visitor to get to the school is in
principle a good one. On this homepage, however, the graphics are of such a bad
quality that they are not much of a help
(http://www.beck.lpool.sch.uk/find.htm).
What remains is the textual description, not the most attractive
way.
Now it is the students’ turn to present a
number of examples. In the presentation and discussion the teacher should see to
it that special attention is paid to the following criteria: content, design,
user-friendliness and last not least, topicality. These are the most important
of a number of criteria according to which we can assess homepages. Discussing
the students’ examples on the basis of these will help the pupils
afterwards when they are asked to find criteria.
After that, it is again time for a break before the
last aim of that day.
Day one, ~15.00 to ~16.00
Now the students are asked to form groups consisting
of pupils of different levels. The beginners should be able to profit from the
experience of the elder pupils and the experienced ones, on the other hand,
should be given the opportunity to get to know the beginners’ point of
view. In discussions which should look rather promising, the groups are now
asked to work out as many criteria as they can according to which we can assess
homepages. After so much input all over the day they should be full of
impressions which they now have to formulate in a systematic way.
Day one, ~16.00 to 17.00
The last task of day one is a short discussion about
the criteria set up by the students before. Apart from the four main criteria
already mentioned above, namely content, design, user-friendliness and
topicality, possible additional criteria could be: conveyed attitudes and
values, definition of the target group, definition of aims, clarity in spite of
complex content, existence of contradictions, existence of non-kept promises,
degree of interactivity.
All these criteria can be shown on the basis of the
two good and the two not so good examples of school homepages presented
before.
4.3 The creation
Day two, 9.00 to ~11.00
Firstly, the pupils are by chance, e.g. by drawing a
lot, divided into several groups of four to five people each. Each pupil is
given tasksheet 3 and is asked to think about the questions on the handout in
the group to find out how a homepage of their own school could look like. The
given links on the tasksheet are supposed to inspire the students and to make
them aware of typical mistakes in homepage-designing.
Day two, ~11.00 to ~12.00
Each group is now asked to shortly present what they
came up with and in the following discussion a consensus about the
homepage’s basic structure should be achieved. The teacher is urgently
needed to keep control over this discussion to arrange the pupils’ ideas
in a way that they can be realised.
After the discussion, it is again time for a
lunch-break.
Day two, ~12.30 to ~13.00
According to the arrangement worked out before and
the pupils’ interests, different workgroups are now set up which are asked
to work on their topic. Possible issues could be: the school’s history, a
day in the school, the curriculum, clubs and extra-curricular activities, a
photo gallery, etc.
Day two, ~13.00 to ~16.00
The workgroups now have the opportunity to
autonomously work on their topics. The aim is to come up with a clear structure
of their part of the homepage and eventually ready-formulated texts or
ready-made visual elements. It does not matter if experienced students already
work out their ideas on the computer and not so experienced ones prefer to
sketch them on paper. The actual production of the homepage has to be done by
pupils of the informatics-group anyway. What counts is the editorial research
work and creativity and the ideas, which accumulate quite fast in a group. The
teacher is always there to give a helping hand.
Breaks can be took when the students need them. The
more autonomous the project gets, the more freedom does the timetable receive
anyhow.
Day two, ~16.00 to 17.00
The project now comes to an end and it is time for
all the participants to review what has been done and to present the results the
different workgroups have come up with. The material will be collected and
further on arranged and used to produce a website. This is best done by students
attending the informatics-course. Whether any pupils of this project take part
in the homepage-group or if they possibly do not need professional help at all,
all depends on the participants and their effort.
- Appendix
5.1 Tasksheet 1
In the first part of our project, we mainly
concentrate on the way schools present themselves on the internet. We will look
at different homepages, well-made and not so well-made ones, and try to set up
criteria according to which we can assess the value of the available
information.
Apart from the “primary texts”, the
homepages, the internet also offers a variety of “secondary texts”,
that is aids like link-collections, dictionaries and encyclopaedias which will
help you on your way through the internet. By using search engines, please put
the following aids at your disposal.
International search engines:
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.webcrawler.com
Austrian search engines:
http://www.webwizard.at
http://www.klammeraffe.at
- A list of all the British schools presented on the
internet
- A list of all the Austrian schools presented on the
internet
- An on-line dictionary German-English and
English-German
- An on-line dictionary English-English
- An on-line
encyclopaedia
5.2 Tasksheet 2
Here, you find suggested links to the aids which you
had to find in Tasksheet 1.
- A list of all the British schools presented on the
internet
http://www.angliacampus.com/schools/
- A list of all the Austrian schools presented on the
internet
http://www.bmuk.gv.at/fssin.htm
- An on-line dictionary German-English and
English-German
http://search.tu-clausthal.de/webtrans/
- An on-line dictionary
English-English
http://www.dictionary.com
- An on-line
encyclopaedia
http://www.britannica.com
Now, please find homepages of five British and five
Austrian schools which you like or dislike and find out why. The following five
questions should help you, but please comment on anything you
like.
- Are there common features in pages you like and in
those you dislike?
- How important is design and colour for
you?
- Is everything which is promised available in the page
or did you find so-called “dead links”, that is links which lead to
nowhere.
- How many instances of “Under construction”
did you find?
- Do the publishers of the homepage mention a date at
which the page was last updated? How recent is this
date?
5.3 Tasksheet 3
After having analysed a number of different homepages
and having set up criteria according to which one can assess webpages, you are
now asked to think about how a homepage of your own school could look
like.
Please discuss your ideas of the perfect homepage on
the basis of the following questions in the group and come up with a rough
concept and a list of those elements which you would like to have included in
the website.
Have a look at the webpages given at the bottom of
the page to get ideas and material and to get to know typical mistakes in
homepage-designing.
- Who should be the target group of your
homepage?
- What is your homepage for?
- Does your school offer anything special which is worth
mentioning or even makes it an outstanding institution?
- What elements that you saw in the example websites of
other schools (e.g. history, curriculum, photos, etc.) would you include in your
homepage?
- Is it good to contact the visitors of the website? How
far would the degree of interactivity go in your homepage?
- Would you like to have any special service offers
included in your webpage? If yes, which?
The easiest way of setting up a
homepage
http://www.www-kurs.de/homepage.htm
Webdesign – Alright?
http://www.karzauninkat.com/webdes1.htm
Golden rules for bad HTML
http://www.karzauninkat.com/goldhtml/goldhtml.htm
Tripod Homepage Service – a
HTML-course
http://www.tripod.de/kurs/chap0.html
- Bibliography
Doberer-Bey Antje, Mario Rieder, Renate Tanzberger,
Ruth Pleyer and Thomas Fritz, das materialien und ideen heft (Vienna,
1998).
Gottwald, Franz-Theo, Multi-Media-Campus: Die
Zukunft der Bildung (Düsseldorf, 1998).
Reid, J. H., Learning strategies in the ESL/EFL
Classroom (Boston, 1995).
Wenden, Anita, Learner strategies for learner
autonomy (Hertfordshire, 1991).
- Link
collection
(These links were last checked on December 27,
1999)
7.1 Schools in the United
Kingdom
British Schools on the
Internet
http://www.angliacampus.com/schools/
Westminster School Homepage
http://www.westminster.org.uk/intranet/default.asp
Archbishop Beck High School
http://www.beck.lpool.sch.uk/
7.2 Schools in Austria
Austrian Schools on the Internet
http://www.bmuk.gv.at/fssin.htm
BG/BRG Kirchengasse Graz
http://www.kirchengasse.asn-graz.ac.at/
ORG der Schwestern vom Göttlichen Erlöser
Eisenstadt
http://www.bnet.co.at/theres/index.htm
7.3 Homepage designing and
HTML
The easiest way of setting up a
homepage
http://www.www-kurs.de/homepage.htm
Webdesign – Alright?
http://www.karzauninkat.com/webdes1.htm
Golden rules for bad HTML
http://www.karzauninkat.com/goldhtml/goldhtml.htm
Tripod Homepage Service – a
HTML-course
http://www.tripod.de/kurs/chap0.html
7.4 Encyclopaedias and
dictionaries
http://www.britannica.com
Dictionary English-English
http://www.dictionary.com
Dictionary German-English
http://search.tu-clausthal.de/webtrans/
British National Corpus
http://thetis.bl.uk
[1] Please see the
appendix for all tasksheets and handouts.
