Evaluating and Selecting Websites

Evaluating and selecting material is one of the teacher’s tasks because we are constantly looking for new material to be used with our students, each year searching for a book that is more updated and appropriate for our group, for information that might expand their knowledge and are more attractive, for new activities to make them practice, for new lectures, etc. And in order to do that we need to carefully look and study those materials and make sure that they will be accurate for the lesson that we’ll teach.

When using the web we need continue doing this job of evaluating and selecting, the only difference will be the kind of resource being studied, because now this material or resource will be from the WEB. So don’t think that because it is on the web it is totally reliable and that there is no need to carefully study and it will just take a few minutes to select anything from the web and give it to our students.

When teachers select a website they need to be aware if it is accurate for the lesson that will be taught, if the content (language, images) is appropriate for the students, if it is relevant, if it has any distracters, if it works some of the skills or components, if it is a reliable source, if it is easy to handle for students, etc. However, please do not be scared and do not think it this will bring you a bigger job, I am sure that with the use of the web classes will turn out to be more effective and nicer.

Integrating the Web

Our teaching can become more effective if we integrate it with the technology since it provides us  a wide variety of resources that we can use to improve our classes, make the lessons we are teaching more interesting, more accurate, and depending on the case simpler. But of course to be able to make this integration possible we need to be aware of certain aspects: the cost of the resources and licenses, the way students will access to the technology, the teacher’s skills on handling such technology, and the updating of the resource being used with students.

And never forget that the main thing that you should consider is to conscious of the lesson you are teaching because depending on that you will determine if it appropriate to integrate it with any learning technology, which one suits better and the way in which it will be used, and this indeed leads us to the planning part where we need to think and establish which are the activities that students will carry out along the lesson and how.

Use of technology in my class...

I think we all agree that the main reason that we need to use technology in our classroom is because as teacher we need to be updated with the use of new tools that our students handle and engage them more, it is a way to encourage them and to make the classes more attractive to them, and those resources might help us improve our classes in different ways.
In my class I am not sure yet how to use some of the technologies, since definitely the use of computer and internet is not an option in my school, what I can relay on is the use of office applications, DVD players and mobile phones. Since I am working with young learners I think I can create activities to be worked with power point and of course children love stories which might be seen on video :D. I think those are my two best options so far (I haven't really planned an activity yet, I need some time and work on it). However I have seen that my students use a lot their BB most of the time to get into facebook. I guess we could work with it by creating a group and working on a specific topic (probably only with the oldest students)