Monday, July 22nd

Today, each group presented their websites. One feedback we received was that the pictures should be bigger, to make the overall feel of the site less text heavy and more inviting. I agree with this advice, especially since the target audience is students in grade three.

Although we explained that this website is meant as a tool for students and their parents/guardians, it can also be used as a resource for teachers to plan units and lessons. Moreover, our website can be used as something similar to a Webquest, where students can access a selection of age appropriate teacher-selected resources from a single website. This way, students are able to conduct research to find information to deepen their understanding about a topic. This approach is more practical than simply telling students to "Google" a topic online, since this can easily lead to frustration from not being able to find relevant information in child-friendly language. Moreover, the various links of games and videos allow motivated students to jump to other websites and further explore the topic. Thus, I can see that creating simple websites like the one we created can be a useful tool in classrooms. It's also nice that the content can be updated by the teacher to make sure it is current if it were to be reused in the future.