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what a site! entrance contents introduction warming up four web flavors finding evaluating integrating sharing sites taking home __________ help, please! discussion area references

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Is the World Wide Web just another one of those instructional technology fads of the past, like television, video, and multimedia, that starts with grand promise of how it will revolutionize learning and then ultimately fades away, light years short of its lofty goals?

We do not know the answer. But we do know the web is exciting, explosive, and can scare teachers to death if they are unable to master it. And perhaps that is what is different with this technology; no one can "master it" so why try? Maybe we do not have to master it?

What a Team! Alan Levine ("the techno-geek") Instructional Technologist Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction Maricopa Community Colleges alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu Mary Lou Mosley ("the supportive administrator") Associate Dean of Instruction Paradise Valley Community College Maricopa Community Colleges marylou.mosley@pvmail.maricopa.edu Donna Rebadow ("the impassioned teacher") Faculty, Health, Wellness, and Internet Paradise Valley Community College Maricopa Community Colleges d.rebadow@pvmail.maricopa.edu

After seeing many faculty's sum total of usage the web as simply sending students out to a search site or just providing them a laundry list of hyperlinks, we thought, "Can we do more?". We also heard many utterances of "There's nothing of value on the web in the area of __________", where the fill-in-the blank item is the subject they teach.

Rather than just casting students out among the surf, we kept asking, aren't there creative, clever ways, to build activities, our own activities, around the great resources "out there", that have some thought, design, and purpose built-in? Rather than spend our efforts trying to create original learning materials, can't we do more by leveraging what's already available?

So we figured a good place to start was by showing teachers how to find a handful of worthy "starting" points for subject-oriented information. They can get out of the business of combing the net and building "hotlists" since someone else has already done it for them.

Then we started thinking about the ways, different "flavors", that the web might be used in the course of learning. One obvious, and it seems like sometimes the only, idea is a course that is taught entirely on the web. That's okay but is certainly not the whole enchilada. Another "flavor" might be creating an activity that is integrated into a course that uses the web as a resource. Yet another approach might be providing on the web, brief but useful course-related information. And finally, you may want to provide subject-oriented resource sites that are as instrumental in your discipline as its leading published journals.

Even if it is not your aim to deliver a course on the web, what a better place to find ideas than looking at how your peers are using the web, when it is the delivery medium?

What a Workshop! Developed as a workshop at the Connections '98 conference in Vancouver B.C, "What a Site" has also appeared at Oregon Community Colleges Online '99 and the 1999 League of Innovation Conference on Information Technology. We also have brought "What a Site!" to Miami-Dade Community College, Oakland Community College, and the Iceland Association of Sociology Teachers. We do take requests... Our evaluation section was highlighted as a resource in The Children's Partnership published report: The Search for High-Quality Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Communities: Evaluating and Producing What's Needed.

And the web, like any other learning resource, should be evaluated in terms of what value it offers for the subject that you teach. There's no magic or scientific formula for doing this, so we've compiled some ideas into a format of questions that you might ask yourself when looking at each of the "four" flavors of web sites. For example, the questions you should ask yourself when looking at an online course are not the same ones that you might be asking when looking at a subject-resource site. But rather than looking for an absolute formula for web site evaluation, we encourage you to form your own.

And we are talking about evaluating the content and its potential for applications to learning; leave the vanity ratings ("best of the web!" "top 1%") of overloaded graphics and animated gizmos to other forums.

Finally, we introduce a way to share your results with others, by entering them into a searchable database that can be accessed via the web.

So we hope that your experience here is useful, one that excites you with potential rather than draining you with the dread of not being a guru of everything web. No one is. And that is okay.

Let's start! Next is a warm-up activity so you can get your fingers busy clicking at web links.