Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Websites in CALL Essentials (Chap.5)

Filamentality (http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/)

This website is intended to help educators learn how to create their own websites. You may wonder what the word “filamentality” means in this case. Well, according to this website, “Filamentality is a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Internet, gathering good Internet links, and turning them into online learning activities. Support is built-in along the way through Mentality Tips. In the end, you'll create a web-based activity you can share with others even if you don't know anything about HTML or serving web pages.” I am deeply attracted by this description. As the topic of this chapter indicates, creativity is one of the most paramount elements that in designing activities for learners as well as for learners to carry out a task successfully. I used to think that build up a website is a difficult task, but after I come across this website, I change this thought in a sense. This website mainly consists of six categories: start a new page, search filamentality, a tour of the process, edit an existing page, activity formats and user guide. Each category is user-friendly so that I can know what I should do by following the instruction step by step. What piques my interests most is the activity format part. It is suggested that a specific goal for learning is the most important thing in the first place. It is when you know what you aim to achieve that you can carry out an activity efficiently. It also gives users a clear outline as to what can we create an activity. After setting the goal, we can assemble resources and promote learning. And this websites instruct us how to assemble resources and promote learning. For examples, we can make internet links by means of hotlist. It also gives us two useful examples of hotlist: China on the Net and A Hotlist on Colonial America. This chapter also mentions the concepts of input and output. Input and output take many forms, from lectures to diverse activities, and from essays to multimedia presentations. And I am also convinced that this website combines production with creativity very well. If teachers and learners can capitalize on this website wisely, this website is definitely an exceptional learning tool.

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