Internet course, lessons 12, 13

Lesson 12, 13

Two one-hour lessons in a row.

Summary:

Downloading plugins
...while waiting for the plug-in to download
Problems with the plug in
Lesson 13: In Japanese

Today I wanted them to get some experience downloading plug-ins. We went to the CNN site, and they were directed to a story with a QuickTime video. As none of the computers have the QuickTime plug-in, we were able to initiate the download process.

I demonstrated the steps on my own computer on the overhead projector. The estimated download time varied among each computer, but averaged an hour or so. They were told to use the minimize button to get the download out of the way.

While waiting for the download, students who had mail read and responded to it. Many of them were responding to the invitations from yesterday's activity, and some had additional mail. Those who had no mail to do, or who finished early, were given a book in Japanese which summarized quite a number of web sites (both English and Japanese ones) to pass around.

We had problems with the plug-in, though. For some reason, several of the downloads (including my own) halted prematurely. Also, at least one student canceled the download in the middle by mistake. In the end, only two out of the 14 attempted downloads actually succeeded. I installed the plug-in for them, because at that point it was the middle of the next lesson.

Lesson 13
There are 4 Internet lessons scheduled for me to teach per week, and 2 scheduled for a Japanese teacher, Mr. Kariya. These first 12 lessons, however, have been consolidated between us, and he's been on hand during most of the lessons to help answer students' questions (usually in English, on a case-by-case basis). We've done this simply because it was the initial introduction to the Internet. This 13th lesson, however, was his. I was on hand to assist him if needed.

He did the review we'd planned on having earlier (but which was delayed because students had been involved with e-mail). He went through some pages of the textbook (which is written in Japanese), leading the students through a workshop review. New material covered included:

right clicking to open a page in a new browser window
pages with .com names can be accessed quickly with just the name (i.e., type just "disney", no quotes, in the location window to access http://www.disney.com)

This review served two purposes in our overall plan. First, if any students were getting overwhelmed with instruction primarily in English, they would have a bit of a break to catch up. Second, it taught students how to use their book. They could see what was available in the book, and (more importantly) they could see how to relate the book to the screen. Let me explain: their software is in English, but their book shows the Japanese version. In the Japanese verison, menus are in Japanese, but each menu entry includes a single letter in parenthesis which corresponds to the English version. Here's an example: in the English verions, the "view" menu head is written "View"; in the Japanese version, the Japanese menu head for this is followed by (V). It was pointed out to the students that they didn't have to look for translations between their book and their software, but rather, all they had to do was search for the underlined letter.