The students were told that the page was a homepage, and that this homepage was their lesson. (The distinction between "homepage" and "page" will be dealt with later.) They were told to read the content and follow the instructions.
Fifteen minutes later, they were all busy with the activity. A couple of them had written out the questions before looking for the answers, but most just used their "back" buttons. They all had the hang of it quite soon. It was great to see them actively surfing their way through web pages. If I hadn't known it was their first time, I'd have thought they were quite experienced.
As expected, some finished earlier than others. I directed those who finished early to the Japan Ring link at the bottom of the Famous Personages in Japan page (which was the site they were navigating for the activity), and let them surf freely from there. A few found Japanese pages, so I showed those individuals how to change Options to Japanese encoding (even though it wasn't to be covered until the next lesson). When students were experiencing difficulties, they were shown how to fix those difficulties. For example, one student had inadvertantly cut the transmission of a page halfway through. She was shown the Reload button. Others accessed slow-loading pages, so I showed them how to know that a page is coming in (by looking at the shooting stars behind the N logo).
In the second class, we first looked at typing in a URL. After that, all of the students were directed to Japan Ring, in order to show them how to change the document encoding from Western to Japanese (auto-detect). After that, they were allowed to surf around on their own, following one link after another.
A few students discovered frames-based pages, and had no problems understanding what to do. They all had a good time. When the chime sounded at the end of the lesson, noone budged to leave. They didn't want to leave.
(c) Bill
Pellowe
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billp@gol.com