As we said in our first entry, we are far from being digital natives. However, this does not mean that we are not aware, as future teachers, of the greatly helpful tool that Internet sources represent when we plan our lessons. The big question seems to be: How do we know if the materials available in web pages are reliable, trustable and, most importantly, relevant to use them in possible lessons?
Luckily, there are some parameters that we can take into account when evaluating a website, such as: who the author/s is/are, available information to contact them, last time it was updated, its main purpose, etc.
To illustrate them better, we are going to present two websites that we have recently analyzed:
The first one, Pearson ELT provides tools for people of all ages and levels of proficiency. We can say that the webpage main purpose is commercial-educational because textbooks, courses and resources are available in print, online and through multi-lingual packages distributed to teachers and students all over the world.
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| Pearson Catalogue |
The website is owned and operated by Pearson Education S.A., a registered company in Argentina. Pearson is a well-known organization whose authors have sufficient authority to speak on the subject. They provide information to contact them.
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| Pearson Facebook Web page |
Taking a closer look at the site, there is appropriateness of format, the content is classified into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary places, and also a place for exams, each containing downloadable material. The information is clearly presented, with colours and big clear font which is legible, formatted for easy reading. Fortunately, there are not advertisements. As far as we could see, there are no mistakes in spelling or word usage.
We can get in easily and quickly, and it is simple to move around the site, but, unfortunately, there is not another alternative for the visually-impaired.
We can conclude that taking into account the positive and negative things found, this webpage is a valuable and reliable resource for teachers.
The second web page that we analyzed is MES English, owned by Mark Cox, a teacher of English, MA in Applied Linguistics, who designs materials and resources for teachers since 2002. At first sight, the site is not attractive in design, the content is presented in categories that are quite disorganized and it contains distracting advertisements. Nontheless, the information of this website is accurate and there are not areas under construction.
To contact him, there is an e-mail address, a link to a forum and to a Facebook web page.
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| Contact Section |
The website covers the topic fully since there is a wide variety of resources for all ages, levels and needs. The site provides flashcards, videos, games and already made resources for teachers to download. The content is also helpful to students with different learning styles since you might choose to use flashcards, games, videos or phonic activities among others.
To conclude, we can say that both web pages are potentially useful for the classroom.
Finally, we should bear in mind that acquiring skills to recognize the authority and reliability of webpages is not only important for teachers to design materials, but also, for students to be digitally literate members of their society.
