Reflection

Reflection on my website

There have been many changes in using the technology in Korean education over the last few years. When I was young, the course about computer I had at primary aimed to teach how to use computer itself, rather than how we could use to enhance our studying. However, nowadays a computer has been using for our teaching and studying and the class using a computer also has shown a lot of benefits in spite of some concerns (as I stated in my rational). Therefore, I tried to obtain advantages and get rid of disadvantages and weakness from my website.

The website I designed is for intermediate level and it might correspond to Korean high school students. The students in this class, “Having Fun with English on the Internet”, are not supposed to use Korean website, except for one Korean-English dictionary website (http://endic.naver.com/endic.nhn?).

My main purpose is to give them motivation to read a variety of readings written in English and also, to improve their reading skills, such as skimming and scanning. In this light, I tried to make activities and tasks in it clear and fun filled.
In order to check out my website, I asked some international friends to explore my websites. In this part, I am going to give my own opinion about their constructive comments.


(1) Topic:

Topic was chosen considering students interesting. In fact, to Korean high school students, traveling is almost impossible until they finish their National University entrance exam. Thus, they have a big desire to trip to other countries. I guess this topic is able to attract student’s interest.
However, one of my friends asked me, how come there is no Iran? his country!, although the title is “Traveling in Asia”. From his comment, I realized the importance of choosing title, especially; website is open to people all over the world. Also, it can make students have wrong knowledge that only the countries shown in my website belong to Asian countries.


(2) Design & Structure

Overall colors in my website makes viewers feel comfortable, compared to overall colors used in WebQuest. I could have an idea that lighter colors on the main screen of website might be better for viewer to read through the screen for a long time. Also, one more thing, in terms of text font for screen, not being fancy and no tailing, such as verdana, would be easy for viewer to read, in contrast to readings published into a paper. One of my friends asked me a question “is there a special reason to put Forum and Journals before ‘process & activities’ and ‘knowledge hunt’. I supposed that it would be helpful to teachers and students before exploring these two, ‘process & activities’ and ‘knowledge hunt’. According to her, the forums and journals for teachers need to be put front in order to inform teachers of some guideline which can be all necessary procedure however, for students, it could lead students to other activities rather than my website activities. If so, the extra activities introduced in Form and Journals could be main process and mine could be extra. I think it would be better to leave forum and journals for teacher in original place instead, to move forum and journals for students back after Knowledge hunt.
It is said that the flag and the button for activities are well designed, which makes students feel like clicking the activities more. Overall, with regard to navigation, it is not difficult and is linked to proper and interesting links.


(3) Activities

I put much effort on each activity to give scaffolding to students’ learning, so I guess activities are challenging but not impossible as long as students read carefully. In fact, my friend told me some difficulty in solving the puzzle, however I think his difficulty is from not reading carefully, rather than difficulty in understanding the meaning by the questions. Also, each answer for questions in activities can be found while they are exploring the introduced websites.

However, I am seriously concerned about the function, “Find” in the edit menu. While they are answering to the questions, they can use the function behind a teacher. This makes them cheat easily with the function. Of course, a teacher should warn them not to use the function, but who knows where they use it or not. Thus, this seems to be a last big assignment for me.

** I was so happy with this unit and I’ve learned many things about a variety of software and pedagogical rational to build websites for EFL/ESL students. Truly thanks for Debra and Susan who contribute to my WebQuest and website.