Learning html

Week Seven

In the first lesson this week, we worked on their Kanji Name pages. In an earlier lesson, we'd created GIF images of their names in Japanese kanji on my Macintosh laptop. Before today's lesson, I e-mailed each student her name image. They used this lesson to start creating the pages and writing the text from their homework assignments into their Kanji Name page. (You can see the Kanji Names Project in this frame or you can see it outside of this frame

In the second lesson this week, we again tried a focus on downloading software. Some of them had the Shockwave plugin, but many didn't. I'd checked a few minutes before class, and I saw that the estimated download for Shockwave was a quick 8 minutes, so it seemed like a good chance to get Shockwave for everybody. (As it would happen, though, download time had increased to 25 minutes at the fastest location by the time we started.) We started by going to a popular site which utilizes a lot of Shockwave (www.amuro.com). Those who didn't have the plug in were directed in how to download it. Those who had it were allowed to play the games or listen to the music the site uses Shockwave for. (Some educators might want their students at machines with the plugin to switch to other machines for the extra practice in downloading. It's up to the individual. All of the students who had it in my class, though, got it with my assistance when they were looking at other sites in earlier classes.)

The third class was different. Another teacher's students (who don't have any Internet time) came into my class to be tutored by my students. Each of that teacher's students (13) sat with one of mine (13) infront of a computer. My students got the first lesson of this course on the screen, and helped the novice students to go through the lesson. After that, my students introduced the novices to search engines. I told my students to show the novices whichever search engine they were most familiar with.

My own students had been told about this much earlier. I'd told them that one of the best ways to learn something (or learn more about something) is to try teaching it to someone else. I'd told them quite explicitly that there were three reasons we were doing this tutorial sesson:

It was a chance for them to review the first lesson.
By reviewing the same material, any vocabulary they didn't pick up the first time would be clearer to them (such as scroll, click, etc.)
It was a great opportunity for them to see how much they've learned.
It was an opportunity for them to be in the "knower's" seat.
Some might find they enjoy teaching, and might see that as a career possiblity.
When teaching something to a novice, sometimes the novice asks questions that are not easy to answer. By explaining the answers to such questions, the person teaching increases their own understanding and knowledge.

It was wonderful to see how much they had learned, especially when they were showing search engine techniques. Many showed modified searches and phrase searches, etc.

In the fourth lesson, they finished up their Kanji Name pages. I then taught them how to send documents as attachments, following these steps:

Open a new e-mail message.
Click on the paper-clip icon (or the "attachment" word)
Click on "attach file"
Find the file on your disk and click it. Click OK.
You can see the name of the file in the "Attachments" box of the e-mail now. Address the e-mail, put a subject, and send it.