These lessons were taught during school year 2000-2001 at Montera Middle School in Oakland, California to seventh and eighth grade students enrolled in the HTML computer class. While students often understand the mechanics of an HTML editor, they do not necessarily understand how to organize information. When do you use an ordered list? An unordered list? A table?
The following lessons emphasize how to code files to best communicate different kinds of information. Each lesson takes approximately 30 minutes. The classroom instructor can build upon this material during the remainder of the week by working with students to teach the actual HTML code. The lessons are:
Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
Explain to a Time Traveler How to Make a Phone Call
Uncover the Purpose of a Web Site
Introduce the idea of procedures using an ordered list.
Have the students write and test their instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to help them understand a procedure.
You need the following:
Ask students to write instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, including all the steps in the procedure. When students are finished, ask for two volunteers: one student to read their procedure while the other student follows those exact instructions to make a sandwich. What happens?
Elicit more discussion about what makes a good procedure, a series of numbered consecutive steps performed over a specific period of time. Who gets to eat the sandwich?
Introduce the idea of procedures using an ordered list (alternate lesson 1, with an emphasis on understanding audience).
Have the students write and test their instructions for making a phone call to help them understand a procedure.
You need the following:
Walk into the classroom without a word, pull out a telephone or telephones of some sort and plunk them down on the teacher's desk for all to see. Pull out an elaborate hat (tri-corner with a feather works well), and place it on your head. Write a phone number on the board. Explain to the students that you are a person from the 18th century and got yanked into the present day by some freaky space-time thingee. The only way you can get home is to talk to someone by phone and that you have to dial the number on the board.
Ask for a volunteer to come to the board to be a scribe. Ask the students to collaborate on writing instructions.
Elicit more discussion about what makes a good procedure, a series of numbered consecutive steps performed over a specific period of time. Emphasize that knowing your audience is an important factor in determining the kinds of instruction to include in a procedure.
Introduce the idea of an unordered list.
Have the students write a list of their favorite things to help them understand the use of an unordered list.
You need the following:
To set the tone of the day's lesson, as students enter the classroom, play Coltrane's My Favorite Things in the background.
Review the previous lesson. Introduce the idea of an unordered list. Ask students to take out their notebooks and pencils.
Introduce the idea of an table as a way to organize and quickly display information.
Have the students develop a table in a group situation that also helps them to think critically about technology.
You need the following:
Demonstrate how a table works to organize information by displaying different examples from the Internet. Point out the basic features of a table including heading, columns, and cells. Using one of the questions that you've prepared for class or a different practice question, work with students to develop a table, using the board to demonstrate. Here are some sample questions:
Allow students, if applicable, to volunteer to work on certain questions together. Students spend the rest of the period working in groups. A scribe from each group reports on information contained in the group's table.
Give students certain tools to uncover the purpose of a Web site. This material was adapted from Teaching Zack to Think by Alan November, located at: http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html
Help students to think more critically about the information and Web sites they find on the Internet.
You need the following:
Can we always believe what we read? Students should always try to be aware of a Web site's purpose. What is it trying to do? Why was it created? Most Web sites are designed to sell services and products, present information, advocate ideas, or entertain. Many sites do several of these at once. A Web site's purpose will not always be clear. Look at http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html (as one possible example).
These materials offer an introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism by an Asociate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University.
This sounds authoritative, but is it?
Discuss the results. What do the linked sites show about the Butz information? Time permitting, divide students into groups and have them research other URLs to understand who are the promoters of a site, and who has a vested interest in the information? What are some scholarly sites that are available for historical research purposes? (Library of Congress, Smithsonian etc.)