A learning materials resource that I discovered on MERLOT that I thought would be able to use within my classroom was titled "ESL CIVICS: Martin Luther King Jr. with KidPix". The author is Mrs. Taverna and the submitter is Troy Tenhet. The material website is: www.pocanticohills.org/taverna/98/king.htm. To meet the evaluation criteria of the Session 2 Share Activity, this resource will be evaluated on quality of content, potential effectiveness as a teaching-learning tool, and ease of use.
Quality of Content:
This resource presented a very simple timeline of important events in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life. It used KidPix to show the timeline. The timeline was valid, it presented accurate dates, and it was visually appealing. After viewing the timeline there is a link to a quiz about Dr. King as well as a website for further information. At the bottom of the quiz is a link to the answers. This website also includes two word searches, excerpts from a conversation about 'What if Dr. King were alive today?', and links to go to more websites about Dr. King. An award from EdGate.com was given to this website for "exceptional quality, content, and design". The website does present educationally significant concepts, models, and skills for the discipline if it were used in a third through sixth grade classroom. My concern is that seventh grade students and beyond might find this site too elementary and not appealing.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool:
The stage in the learning process/cycle that this material could be used would be in the practice stage, where students are investigating or learning about Dr. King. The learning objective would be that the students are able to understand more about Dr. King, successfully answer a quiz about his life, and contemplate the idea 'What if Dr. King were alive today?'. The characteristics of the target learner would be an upper elementary age student who is able to easily navigate websites. The presentation of material does improve the students' abilities to learn the materials. I think that this website would engage the upper elementary aged student, and thus it would improve the faculty's ability to teach the content material. This website could be readily integrated into current curriculum and pedagogy within the Social Studies discipline. I don't think that this "software" could be used in a plenitude of ways to achieve teaching and learning goals, however there are several different ways to use this website. Students could explore this website independently in a computer lab; teachers could have students record their own response to what if Dr. King were alive today, compare the responses to the student responses on the website, generating a class discussion; or the teacher could project the website on the Smartboard and go through the site as a whole class. The teaching-learning goals are not clearly stated on this website, the teacher has to infer what the goals are, or use this however they choose as a resource. It appears that it would be easy to write a good learning assignment for this website resource.
Ease of Use:
The labels, buttons, menus, text, and general layout of the computer interface is consistent and visually distinct. The user would not get trapped in the material, nor easily lost. This site does not provide feedback about the user's responses. The quiz portion of this site is an online worksheet and is not interactive.It provides appropriate flexibility in its use and an upper elementary student would be able to easily navigate through the links of the website. This learning material does not require a lot of documentation, technical support, or instruction for most students to successfully use. The material presents information in ways that are familiar to students. Even though this resource does not provide interactive feedback, I think that this material presents information in ways that are attractive to an upper elementary student.
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