Welcome to the Web pages for the Fall 1998 Education 440 Web
sessions. During these two sessions, we'll spend some time
talking about the uses to which you might put Web resources in
your teaching. We'll also look at the kinds of resources which
are available to English teachers, focusing specifically on Web
materials which might help you to plan your unit around Nella
Larsen's Passing or Jerry Spinelli's Wringer.
The sessions will be led by your regular methods faculty and Jon Margerum-Leys,
a fourth year Ph.D. student in educational technology and
literacy.
Both sessions will take place at the North Campus Media Union in the third floor Mac training rooms, rooms 1A and 1B. To get to the Media Union from central campus, take a campus bus from the Natural History Museum. Click here to see a bus schedule. North Commuter, Bursley Baits, or Northwood buses will take you to the North Campus Commons. From there, walk due east on Bonisteel Boulevard. The Media Union is the large, modern looking building on your left, just east of the North Campus Commons. Walk in the first door you come to, which will have three flags in front of it. Walk through the building to the opposite (north) side, and proceed up the stairs to the library. From the library, walk up to the third floor. The room we're in is ahead of you on your right as you walk into the third floor. You should allow about thirty minutes to get to the Media Union from the Natural History Museum, including the bus ride and the walk.
To get the most from our sessions, approach them as being about teaching and learning first and technology second. It's very easy to get caught up in the complexity and coolness of the Web, but it's more important to think about how you might teach and what kids might learn using the Web. Two sessions is not much time to unpack the host of issues which are tangled up in teaching and technology. Hopefully, though, you'll have time to consider some of the fundamental questions, get your feet wet, and think about which directions you might want to go in next.
Throughout these pages, you'll see three navigation icons. Here's what they do:
Returns you to this page. Takes you to a more central page in the section you're currently viewing. Takes you to the top of the page you're currently viewing.
During this session, we'll talk first about your unit planning assignment. That discussion will set up the day's Web activity. We'll use the unit planning assignment as an example unit. The Web portion of the class will be divided in three sessions: A general discussion of how the Web might be used by English/language arts students, an exploration of resources which might be of value in planning your unit, and a reflection on the day's work.
There are two sets of Web pages which will support your work for this first session. The first is a set of models for Web use; it is designed to get you thinking about the various activities which might be supported by Web resources. The second is a collection of materials which might pertain directly to your unit planning activity.
View the handout from this session.If you cannot view the handout, you may need the Acrobat reader, available for free from Adobe.
During our second session, we'll spend much of our time developing a Web page for use as part of your language arts/English unit. As with the first session, the focus will be on teaching and learning concerns over technology, though the second session will be more technology-intensive than the first. By the end of the second session, you should have a basic functioning Web page which would be useful to your English students as well as to your teaching colleagues. The basic steps, sample files, and some of the issues to think about are outlined here.
If you haven't created a Web page on the University of Michigan server, you will need to set up a folder to hold your Web pages. Here's how to do it:
- Go to any Macintosh computer on campus. Turn it on and log on (enter your uniquename and password)
- In the folder labeled "Communications" on the hard drive, find a program called "NCSA Telnet." You may have used this program in the past to check your e-mail. Open the program by double clicking on its icon.
- At this point, it may appear to you that nothing has happened. Don't worry. Pull down the File menu at the top of the screen and choose "Open Connection. . ."
- In the "host" box, type "login.itd.umich.edu". Hit return. This logs you on to a central computer.
- You'll be prompted for your uniquename and password. Type them in.
- You should see a line at the bottom of the screen which ends in a percent sign (for insance zaxxon%)If you're used to using Telnet to check e-mail, you know that you would normally type "pine" at this point. Don't do that.
- Type "mkdir -p ~/Public/html", but without the quotation marks. Press return.
- You won't see anything happen, but you have just created a folder named "html". Anything which you put into that folder will become visible to anyone using a Web browser. The url for the Web pages in the folder will start with "http://www-personal.umich.edu/~yourname/", where "yourname" is your uniquename.
- Type either "exit" or "logout" to log off the central computer.
- Under the File menu at the top of your screen, choose "quit".
- Turn off the computer if you are done for the day.
You'll only have to follow the directions above once. If you have trouble, ask one of the site consultants for assistance or call 4-HELP from any campus phone.
Copyright 1998, The University of Michigan Regents. Please direct technical inquiries to Jon Margerum-Leys. Content inquiries should be directed to Lesley Rex or Anne Ruggles Gere. To comment on these pages, please use our feedback form.
