Week 3 Reflection on Websites

This week I have created a website. It was actually a lot easier than I expected! A link to my site can be found here.

I believe that websites can be used effectively in schools. A website is static in that only the creator of the site can make changes to the site. This is in some ways an advantage over other tools such as Wikis. Websites allow you to put up a whole heap of information without the risk of someone changing it. Some examples of functions of a website include:

• A teacher could put up an entire unit of work on a site which students can then access
• Links to other online resources
• For an assessment task you could get students to create a website instead of writing an essay or other form of assessment
• It is easy to embed images and videos etc.
• Easy to organise information across several pages

The following PMI analyses the main positives and negatives of websites

Positive	Minus	Interesting
·         Nobody else is able to edit your page ·         Easy to navigate and organise information effectively ·         Ability to link to other online resources ·         Ability to embed video, audio, images. ·         Possible to create an online unit of work which students could access	·         Could be time consuming ·         Not as interactive as other ICT's such as Wikis or blogs ·         Not as much feedback from students ·         Anybody can access your page	·         Students could develop their own websites for projects etc.

Websites provide a great opportunity for our learners to express themselves. In the future, I can see students developing websites for assessment rather than more traditional styles of assessment such as essays and reports. In this day and age of technology, I think that websites are much more relevant for our learners. This course is definitely helping me to develop such skills which I can hopefully implement in the future!