(Note: I've unlinked all the instructions on this page since it's just a demo. Look at the slideshow overview for the multimedia example.)
Module Four: More Internet Research
Sometimes you want students to learn the Internet skills of searching on their own. You create activities like Filamentality when the content is most important; but the research skills they can learn are also important. Read these ideas on how to structure Internet research when students are researching their own topics on their own. You may also want to require some type of "notecards" for what they find on the Internet. Which of those options could work in your situation?
Now that you've learned various ways to structure student research on the Internet, we're ready to start transitioning into making web pages. Hopefully you have finished your Filamentality project from Module Three. Now you may want to add some graphics or special text or edit the layout and format. So we'll save the page that you created with Filamentality. Find a disk that you'll use for your web pages, and save it to that disk.
After you get your Filamentality file saved, now you can begin to tweak with it using a Web authoring tool. In this class we're going to use a Web authoring software package called Netscape Composer. The main reason we're using it is because it is free and simple to use. (If you would like to have a conversation about other options, email me from the Mail icon at the top of the page).
Hopefully you already have Netscape Composer installed on your computer. If you're in Netscape right now, click on Communicator at the top of the screen and see if there is an option for Netscape Composer on your screen. If not, you'll need to install it from the Classroom's Alive CD you received on the first day.
Once you have Netscape Composer available, follow these instructions in Netscape:
- Choose File, Open (Page in Composer)
- Find the file you just saved from Filamentality. Open it.
- Now write some new text. Try making it bold or italics. We'll learn much more about this in the next module. Play with the text a little. (I bolded text for a reason. Instructions are coming in the next module on how to add graphics and all that fun stuff! So play with just the text for now.)
- Then choose File, Save. In the next module we'll learn much more about web pages and actually publish this file on the Internet!
Optional Further Reading
- Collecting Information on the Internet
- Keeping track of information on the Internet using a database
- Questioning Strategies
- Essential Questions
Excerpt from Internet in the Curriculum, by Janine Lim, used with permission.