Reflections on Week 2

Right, so during week two, we studied two modules, Evaluating and selecting websites and Integrating the Web.

URLs

When evaluating and integrating websites into our lessons, there are so many things we need to take into account before proceeding to do so. First of all, we got to identify what a URL is made of by analysing every single aspect of it such as, its protocol, host computer name, top level domain, directory name and file name. It’s very important to take a closer look to the URLs because the files we use to find there might be changed or moved onto another file name or directory name.

Top-level Domains (TLD)

It’s also quite important to know how to identify Top-level Domains (TLDs) as they indicate whether it is a commercial website (.com), a post-secondary education establishment in the UK (ac.uk) or in North, Central and South America (.edu) or a non-profit organization (.org), and that says a lot when you want to find resources or appropriate websites for your lessons. Commercial sites might give you a demo of what they got but then if you want see more of it or if you want to download something from that site, they will ask you to pay for it.

One thing that I’ll never forget about is Tuvalu (an island nation in the Pacific Ocean). Its TLD is .tv and they make money by selling it to companies that want to be associated with television. Interesting, huh?

Evaluating websites

We were also given an evaluation criterion and several websites to evaluate. At first, I got a bit lost and confused with it, but then when I was not that stressed; I started to read it and to explore the sites given. In the end, I got to the conclusion that there are so many things we need to know before deciding to use any websites in lessons. We need to know if it is necessary to use it and if so, find the best one according to the evaluation criteria. 

Integrating Websites

When doing the Integrating the Web module, I got to be honest and say that I wasn’t giving my very best, but with everybody’s help it made me think carefully before integrating LTs into my lessons. We got to find the appropriate activities to work with the skills we are planning to develop or improve in our students.

And that was it for this week; stay tuned for more... lol ;-)

By the way, I do NOT own any rights over the images provided in here ;-)

LTC Week 1

Week 1, to me, was a bit of a shock but great though. There were many things I knew how to do online, but I was kind of lost and slow while doing others. I was familiar to Wiziq but I hadn't used it properly. Since then I've been reading more about Wiziq and Moodle and ways they can be used for ELT and ELL purposes and for teaching in general.


I have also tried to work with blogs before but I wasn't quite into them until now. I have had some experience working with Wikis though. I have realized about the amount of resources there are over the Internet and how we can use them to benefit our lessons and engage our students.


Personally, I think I should spend more time experimenting with Blogger and sharing with my colleagues what I've done and how to do it.


This is a page I found on FB, it's called Box of Tricks. It features loads of websites and promotes the effective use of ICT in education. Have fun!