Before you read this blog entry you should know that I will be discussing an ongoing project of mine in education. So if you aren't interested in issues involved in education, don't fear I will soon be posting some more stuff about comic books and basketball soon (Infinite Crisis and the NBA preseason are upon us, I don't know which geeks me out more). Also it should be mentioned that for various reasons I can't go into great detail about the who's and where's of this project. For those of you in the know I'm sure you can fill in the blanks. For those of you not in the know, this may be a little frustrating to read. I'm sorry about that, but maybe you should wonder why I haven't let you in the know.
I recently began working with a high school in my area to help design and create a website. This is a fairly common place task these days. Many professionals find thmselves increasingly involved in some sort of web design project at their own place of work. I really am involved in this project instaed of your basic web consultant, because I come from a perspective of education which the high school appreciates. However, this project is a little more complicated than I had anticipated. First, I am not designing a website for a particular school, but rather for a specialized program within the school. Second, there a remultiple teachers at the high school involved in this project who, in theory, are directing my team in what to do. Except, they can't seem to agree amongst themselves about some of the major goals this website is meant to meet, or how it should go about using them. This was on the points that they did have a specific vision for, and not those for which they were expecting our team to sort of generate some kind of purpose Athena-like from our brows. Third, the website is meant to be for a huge audience, including parents and students who are interested in the program, those currently involved in the program, the alumni of the program, and the teachers themselves. All in all, I was a little unsure how we should go about this.
In spite of all of this I determined that I should indeed sally forth and explore this program with my own eyes. I have to say that the program (which combines classes in the social sciences and humanities under the auspices of a few teachers, and a lot of interesting ideas in how to teach the material) is actually quite impressive, and I would think something that could lend itself well to the flexibilty of the Internet. I was really intersted in learning what the students woul like out of this website. I thought that a generation of students raised under the influence of the Internet would surely be interested in the oppurtunity to include a website into their education. I was astonished by the actuall reaction of the students. I was honestly told by more than one student that creating such a website would be impossible.
They felt that the program was so special and so self-contained that it couldn't be transferred onto a website. They couldn't imagine what a website could provide them that they didn't have already. I understood that this program is set aside within the schools, to the extent that they percieved the whole program existing in a kind of pocket universe, that doesn't touch upon the rest of their world. I watched these students use other web resources with ease. I know they use the web as a major source of entertainment. I came to think that they might view the Internet, the same way I view comic books. I love reading comic books, and I can see many more uses for them than the average person would, but if you ever told me a comic book would be incorporated into a class I was taking I would still balk at the idea. So I realized the challenge for myself would be determining what I could bring to a web site that would give it special educational value for these students.
My first thought is that I should use the adabtibility of Internet to emphasize the lelements that the program provides, but that websites normally lack. In my past experience I have found that what the Net adds in convenience it tends to lose in context. Meanwhile the program is steeped in context, as the teachers try to link their lessons around common themes and materialsl. Sso the question become how to I create a context rich website? I will keep you posted on any ideas I may have, but I will also welcome suggestions, in the comment section.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Joel, your framing of the issue is a provocative one. It makes me think that, perhaps, part of the task might be to find a way to convey the feel of the program, or the feelings towards it held by the students. I don't know if this fits into the scope of the work as you're currently understanding it, but I'm thinking in terms of students describing their experiences, or attempting to represent those experiences through artifacts. What makes FLEX special? What habits of mind have I established, what have I done, or what have i found myself thinking about that I would say have something to do with FLEX (and why would I say *this*?)
Sometimes when an institution endeavors to convey a sense of itself to an external audience, they find themselves engaging in a productive process of deciding what's important about "us" that ultimately benefits the institution and its members.
Post a Comment