Week 2: Selecting Websites and Integrating them to the Lesson Plan

The second week we started to work extensively on the web. I personally reaffirmed the importance of the internet nowadays almost in every context, and definitively education is not the exemption. On module 3 we started to revise the definition and structure of URLs, to understand their classification by country and by kind of business / organization. This got me to refine better my searches in the web to save time when researching or looking for material for the classes. What is more, we were given a super guide to evaluate websites in a objective and systematical way. It was based on five main criteria: accuracy and acceptance, authority and coverage, audience and relevance, educational focus and ease to use. I personally felt the best achievement of using this system was to sharp my senses when looking for information in the web and be more critical when navigating in the web.

Module 4 allowed us to reinforce the principle that pedagogy leads technology. Despite having thousands and thousands of different materials and resources in the web, I understood that as teachers we need to be always focused in our lesson aims and objectives firstly, and only then evaluating websites to get ideas and activities that perfectly match with our aims. Another important learning was that as usual Teachers need to keep spending quality time planing their lessons before starting to research for materials in the web, and ultimately they need to ensure their Students are able to work perfectly with these materials. Monitoring Students performance and outcomes with the web activities in class is still a must for the Teacher. No one website guarantee success of the class by itself, so Teacher still plays a main role in guiding the activities and ensuring they are making the Students learning what they should, according to the plan.