Wordle in EDU 401

Evaluating Websites

Evaluating Websites

The website we decided to evaluate was bogglesworldesl.com. An enjoyable and informative website that offers ESL teachers a plethora of material for use in the classroom during lessons.
We evaluated the website based on the following criteria: purpose, authority, objectivity, appropriateness, relevance, currency, responsibility, clarity, accessibility.
Purpose: the website is a .com website meaning that it is either a commercial or personal website. In this case, it seems to be a mixture of a both.
Authority: The creators of the website are a group of ESL teachers located in Asia and North America. The group includes Chris Gunn (web and materials design), Stephen Gordon and Cam Lirette (editors and content creation) and Thomas Lovelle (writer and content direction). It appears to be an authentic website with no hidden agenda.
Objectivity: the website is objective and there doesn't seem to be any kind of bias.
Relevance/Appropriateness: The website is appropriate for its goal. It contains ESL teaching materials that are appropriate and good for a variety of levels and ages, most especially K7 teachers. The website and materials are well written and include lessons plans that can make a teacher's life much easier.
Currency: The website's content seems to be current. From what we saw, there didn't seem to be anything outdated. Although, this was hard to confirm since there doesn't appear to be a date for when the website was last updated. A very important point is that the website contains no dead links which can be very irritating and detrimental to a website.
Responsibility: The authors are upfront and honest about their website and what they hope to accomplish. While it is a primarily free website, they aren't adverse to donations and such. They can be contacted via the email gunnchris@bogglesworldesl.com. There doesn't seem to be a section on the website for references or credit but it's possibly because they created all the material or content. Although, this is doubtful.
Clarity: The website is very clear and somewhat colorful and visually appealing. Finding information is easy. On the other hand, a slight drawback is that the text is somewhat cluttered. There are graphics that add to the visual appeal of the website rather than detract from it. As far as we could see, there is only 1 advertisement on the website and it quite small and doesn't interfere with the website in any way. The pages and links are well organized and there didn't seem to be any spelling, grammatical or word-usage mistakes.
Accessibility: The website is open, free to use, and can be accessed by all. The site loads very quickly and has no problems as far as we could see. It is clear and easy to navigate from page to page and from link to link. There are no dead links or dead pages. As far as a text-only version goes, there doesn't seem to be an option to view the website in that form, although, this can be remedied by using Google's cached feature and choosing the "text-only" option

The role of webquests in learning a foreign/second language

I think that webquests are helpful for the students ,because first of all, the students will search for speific information that the teacher wants, they will be actively engaged in the task with each-other, specially if they worked in groups(more than two) as I believe, and also they will try to solve a problem that is related to their daily lifes or discovr a new thing while they work on the webquest. Another helpful thing is that, the students will have to think and discuss with each-other a lot to write reasonable things in their webquests, this will help them in devolping their critical thinking. Also the teacher can help her students by putting links that will be beneficial for them when they create their webquests. A very important thing about webquests is that, the students will see how they will be graded in the evaluation part which will encourage them to work harder. And finally, if I became a teacher, I think that I will ask my students to create a webquest for the reasons that I mentioned earlier.  

First of all, the teacher needs to make sure that her/his students know how to use blogs, wikis, and delicious, and then she will explian the benefits of using them that are related to education. The teacher will tell them that for example, blogs are good and beneficial for you to improve their writing skills, and then the teacher can check their spelling and grammatical mistakes. And for wikis, the teacher can use specific educational websites for imporving the students' reading skills, and how they would reflect on reading something in their blogs or delicious. And also they can use the information and save it for the future. The students can also use their accounts in delicious to share information with other students and correct them or suggest better answers for any question.

The possiblity of Reaching Bax's normalisation in our national context. why is it possible? when is it possible/ achieved?

Stephen Bax suggested in his article that CALL (Computer Assisted language learning) has three types which are restricted, open and integrated.

According to Bax "Normalisation is the stage when technology is invisible, hardly even recognised as a technology. In Saudi Arabia, most teachers do not use technology during teaching in classrooms, so we need many years to train teachers and students to use technology freely and normally, but in order to do so, we need to educate people about the limits of the technology used and what to expect out of it.

It is true that I hate technology , because I'm not that good at using it, but I think that using technology in some aspects of our lives is very important and useful especially these dayes.

Hello everyone:)), I'm so glad that I finaly have my own blog for the first time