Technologies are more and more present in our life. It is especially true when it comes to kids’ and the teenagers’ life. They literally grew up with technology. Information communication and technology (ICT) have begun to be integrated in schools and in teaching for a few years now. Sometimes, teachers use a website or a portal to communicate information with the students. Not every teacher is good with these ressources and they often do not want to use it. There are many strenghts to the ICTs, but there are also some weaknesses.
Strenghts of integrating a website or portal into teaching practices
- Students have access to their teacher whenever they want
If they have a question concerning homework, they can easily ask it to the teacher right away, even if it is the weekend. They don’t have to wait until Monday anymore.
- It facilitates the communication between parents and teachers
As Jay Cooper said, it is sometimes hard to get informations about what is happening in school from students. Using a website or a portal, it is easier for the teacher to communicate informations to the parents about the students’ grades, behaviors, or any other business.
- It can be very motivating for students
Students know how to use technologies and it’s part of their life. Using a website at school or a portal helps them to gain valuable knowledge in computers, as Rusmini Ku Ahmad explained in his blog. Students are always more motivated when it comes to something they know and they like.
For an ESL classroom context, where the teacher don’t see the same class everyday, a platform or website can be particularly useful. For example, it allows the teachers to easily contact his/her students if theire is an important message to communicate befor next class.
Weaknesses of integrating a website or portal into teaching practices
- Students have access to their teacher whenever they want
This argument can be found in both strenght and weaknesses of integrating a website or portal into teaching practices. It can be a weakness for the teachers because they work a lot all week long and sometimes, it is normal that they want to get their minds off their students during the weekend.
- Some portals and websites can be difficult to understand for the teacher
Some teachers are not very used to technologies and they can consider having a portal or a website is more like supplementary work, not a useful tool. Because of their lack of knowledge in the field of technologies, some teachers can find even the easiest web portal difficult to understand.
Classroom uses
In an ESL classroom, a website or an educational content management system can be as useful as in a regular class. There are plenty of platforms that a teacher can use with different features. For example, some platforms allow to take attendances, to grade the students, to post the homeworks, etc. All these options are really interesting because it allows to follow the students’ progress and to react immediately if there is a problem with his grades and/or behaviour.
My opinion
Considering the strenghts and weaknesses of integrating a website or a portal into teaching practices, I think it is a good thing. Personnally, I experienced it five times during high school and Cegep. The first portal was Edu-Groupe, in high school and we used it only to have access to the corrected versions of our exercises in mathematics and sciences. I can say that I rarely went on it, so it was not really helpful. Later on, I experienced Col Net in Cegep. It was a portal where we could have access to all our grades and we could send and receive messages from our teachers or collegues. This portal was quite good, but there were sometimes problems with it when there were too many students logged on it, for exemple before the exam week. For this aspect, it was really not useful, but for the rest, this portal was excellent. I also experienced Moodle in Cegep in my mathematics course. The teacher could easily give us our homework on it and we never had any problem with it. Finally, this year in university, I discovered google drive. This is a website where we can upload documents and share them with our peers and teachers for example, and they can give us feedback on our work. They can modify the document whenever they want and I will see their corrections. It is also very helpful when we do a team assignment because everyone can see the teammates’ work. Google drive is a very good platform and I have nothing bad to say about it.
In conclusion, I think using the right website or portal can be a very powerful tool in teaching practices. The key for the teacher is to search for the right one that will be perfect for what he wants to do. If it is used properly, it can do miracles!
juliaeslteacher 