I had my first meeting with Sharon Smith today over at Frick Middle School in Oakland today. It went well, and we got a good amount of stuff done. The next visit will take a good bit of preparation, as she’s looking to get my thoughts on what middle schoolers and their teachers should learn about the Internet and ICT. That’s a tough question to answer. For example, I think evaluating websites and content is an important skill to have. However, how do I articulate how evaluation should be done? I’ve been doing it for so long that I don’t even think about it any more!
October 6, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I don’t know if this is appropriate for middle-schoolers, but one of my classes looked at this bogus MLK website: martinlutherking.org.
Obviously they got a hold of the domain name before his heirs could do anything. But one of my graduate classes used it to show how misleading websites can be and how to apply critical thinking when online.
If you’re looking to teach web usability standards, and how to see if a website is amateur or well-designed, you could Google “bad websites” or “good websites” and find some examples to show the class.
October 10, 2007 at 5:43 pm
The misleading websites activity is an interesting idea I might work into my own service learning.