Enabling Adult Literacy students to create their own web pages on the WWW
Vivian Evans vivevans@hwy.com.au| MC2 is a very useful and fun way to enable literacy students to put their work up on the World Wide Web.
The MC2 template is very straight forward and simple to use. It can be edited on an ongoing basis, does not come with any cost and does not require downloading any programs. It is all housed on this Victorian website http://mc2.vicnet.net.au – you can see a link at the very bottom of this web page. It does have limitations such as limited page layout options; you can only select one font for the whole page and text layout is preset for each section. For example below in the section titled ‘Linking Ideas’ where I wanted to connect with an image the program does not allow for line spaces between text as it does in this section. However with some creativity and exploration many of these limitations may be overcome. I have taught and assisted a variety of students to put together their own web page(s), with very positive results. Student get a real buzz seeing their work on the internet and can then email their web address to family, fellow students and friends. Web pages can be as complex or as simple as you like. They are an alternative to present work such as research projects, stories about themselves or topics they are interested in. There are many writing genres you can present online as you will see by the links below to websites made by some of my students. You will see a variety of stimulus and results that these students have created. My email address is written above – feel free to contact me if you have any discussion related to this topic. So why not join MC2 and try it out to create some more fun for your students in your classes. Yours in Learning Vivian Evans |
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Linking ideas - a strategy for generating writing and linking sentences.
Working in pairs or groups. Choose one of the following topics for your group to write about.
Parents
Snakes
Music
Drugs
Computers
1. Each person writes a simple one-idea-sentence on that topic
2. Collect all the sentences on the board or on a piece of paper
3. As a group or as individuals write one or two paragraphs to include all the ideas collected. You will need to add linking words (group can brainstorm some linking words e.g. and, however, for example etc ), rearrange the order and leave out some words to make the paragraphs flow smoothly.
4. Students can type up and edit using a Word program on the computer.
5. When ready with final draft they can then copy and paste onto their MC2 website, find some images using Google or other image search engines to embelish their work.
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Google is a useful search engine for images. Once on the site select the 'Images' option so you are looking for pictures only. It is handy to set up a folder for your student on the desktop or other easy found location on the computer. Title the folder such as 'Viv's website'.When you find the images you like save them to that folder so they are easy to find when you are making your web page.
My Daughter's website on Guinea pigs My daughter Gemma (aged 9) uses MC2 to record activities for her Girl Guide badges. When ready she emails to her Guide leader to check her results and give feedback. This link goes to the 3rd page she has designed... As you will see she has set up a more complex site with feedback, links, a counter etc (though this may change as she revisits and updates her page(s)). She chooses to edit via the website rather than write a draft. So she is often updating her webpage.
Computer games review - a student's site Ben is mad on computer games and had not been attending class well...hanging out at the local CTC. I suggested that he did a review of computer games and here is the result...He found this activity really motivating and once shown the basics left me for dead! I just helped with the editing to be more reader friendly asking lots of questions to make it clearer for the novice that I am :-)
Letter's to the Editor - a student's website Pat came into my class one day cranky about advertising alcohol on the tv. She felt that if smoking advertising is banned then alcohol advertising should be banned too. So I developed a series of lessons on writing letters of opinion - using a great teaching resource 'Writing Matters' by Brown & Hood. Pat also researched the internet for discussions re alcohol advertising and used Google to find a suitable image to decorate her page. She utilised all these to put together her letter of opinion - see the link to her results
Malcolm really likes to write about himself so over a series of lessons we wrote and edited a story using Word. He brought in photos of himself which we scanned and then he wrote and we edited captions for each photo. We then copied and pasted the text and uploaded the scanned photos to the site. Malcolm has Down Syndrome and is very proud of his website.
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This Webpage has been created using the my connected community (mc2) Webpage generator. my connected community (mc2) is funded by the Victorian Government and coordinated by VICNET |