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Chapter 8 |
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On the Web! Activities |
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“I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person, now I was free” were the words spoken by Harriet Tubman when she escaped from slavery. These same words gave Patty Taverna and Terry Hongell the inspiration to have their second graders at Pocantico Hills School in Sleepy Hollow, New York, develop a website “that integrated social studies, language arts, and technology” at http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/tubman/tubman.html (2000, March 20, pp. 43-45).
The steps these two innovative teachers followed began with the students researching Harriet Tubman by studying historical biographies, talking about what they thought Tubman was like, making field trips to the Planetarium at the Hudson River Museum in nearby Yonkers to see how slaves used astronomy to help them find their way north, and attending a Theaterworks presentation, “Freedom Train.” The children chose 10 of the most important events in Tubman’s life and, in the computer lab working in pairs, created a timeline using KidPix. The computer teacher helped them create a web page for each event on the timeline. Next, they designed a crossword puzzle for the website using the Puzzlemaker website at
http://www.puzzlemaker.com . For the background of their website, they chose a quilt “because the stationmaster used quilts to let the slaves know the station was safe” and bare feet from Word’s Clip Art “as navigational tools because many slaves escaped barefooted.” For teachers, links and activities were done by Hongell. Receiving permission from NASA, they incorporated NASA’s information on the Drinking Gourd.
When the website was completed, the children had an opportunity to navigate their site in the computer room. After a few changes were made, the site worked well; and a journal explaining to teachers the process used to create the website was added. One of the children, a fourth grader and under the teachers’ supervision, expanded the site to include a map of Tubman’s route to freedom. Others compiled a list of topical books for young children on the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman. They have had 100,000 visitors to the site and hundreds of emails.
While every teacher or class may not end up with an elaborate a site as the Tubman site, the efforts of these 2nd graders show that anyone can make a website.Activity:
Using the links below or others you find, select one class site you were impressed with. Evaluate what makes the site effective and prepare to discuss the elements of an effective classroom website with your peers.
Want to know more? Check out these sites:
http://www.eduhoundclassroomsontheweb.com/
http://www.educationwebpage.com/educationwebpage/classroom_websites.htm#examples
http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/K_12/Schools/
http://www.educationcoffeehouse.com/K12/classwebs.htm
http://www.sbac.edu/~shell/hawthorne/ourtown.html
http://www.redmond.k12.or.us/mccall/renz/
Sources:
Taverna, P., & Hongell, T. (2000, March 20). Meet Harriet Tubman: The story of a Website. Learning and Leading with Technology, 27, 43-45, 62.
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