The World Wide Web (WWW) is network-accessed information, which can
be
downloaded to your computer then displayed. The information is
displayed in pages
(web pages), each of which has its own URL and may contain hyperlinks
to other pages,
either within the same site or at another site. Information from
anywhere in the world
can be accessed, provided you have the correct address.
As of yet, there is no control over what content can be placed on the
WWW.
Anyone can place a site on the World Wide Web (provided, of course,
that the person has
an Internet account that allows for this). Information abounds
concerning almost
anything imaginable.
Of course, with the good comes the bad. Pornography and explicit
pictures can
be found easily. Due to the simplicity of copying and saving,
plagiarism and violated
copyrights go unchecked. Because any person can place anything
on the WWW,
so-called facts must also be read with a skeptical eye, unless coming
from a very reliable
source. The sites themselves are sometimes seen as a muddled
mess, as no real
organization ever occurred. Additionally, there is the headache
of ever-changing URLs.
It seems almost an impossibility for a person maintaining a web page
to keep up with the
changes in URLs and disappearing sites.
All this said, one must not feel that the Internet is a corrupted mess.
On the
contrary, there is much good to be found on the Internet, especially
for ESL teachers. It
offers a wealth of authentic materials at the click of a button.
Students may also take
advantage of sites designed for their needs, and likewise for teachers.
Newspapers,
magazines, journal articles, video clips, sound clips, radio stations,
lesson plans, and
interactive exercises are all available via the Internet--if you can
find them.
Some attempt has been made to make sense of the tangle of web sites.
Powerful
search engines such as Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/)
can help you sift
through the sites to find what you want. Another common search
engine, Yahoo
(http://www.yahoo.com/), has the
sites organized by hierarchical indices. Web page
authors can register their sites with search engines for free, encouraging
some
organization to the ever-increasing mass of information.
There are two types of materials on the Internet: informative
and interactive.
Informative materials are there to be read, printed, and used in activities
planned by the
teacher. The interactive sites have activities that students
can do and submit for
immediate feedback, or a place where they may type text to be incorporated
into the site.
WWW documents can support multimedia, which has the advantage of catering
to all learning types as it can present both audio and visual at the
same time or separately.
With the click of a button, the learner may be able to choose the presentation
he or she
prefers. It can be used to promote bottom-up or top-down processing.
For example, the
vocabulary may be presented prior to reading a text (bottom-up processing)
or students
may be encouraged to guess the meaning of words before obtaining the
definition by
clicking a link in the page (top-down processing).
Multimedia and hyperlinks build connections between concepts in the
learner.
the page has links to more information for expansion or clarification.
Information can
be summarized in an image or diagram so students can internalize the
information. This
summary could be available through a link so that students must try
to internalize it first
themselves. It also builds upon previous knowledge and experiences,
as links follow one
another in a logical order, which helps to integrate the new material
into an already
existing knowledge structure.
Teachers must also beware of multimedia presented through the same mode
(visual or auditory) as it may be in competition for processing resources.
For example,
text presented with animation will be more difficult to read and comprehend.
If the
material is presented through different modes, such as text with audio,
then learning
increases (Mayer & Anderson, 1991, as cited in Chun & Plass,
1997).
The history of the WWW is a bit more complex and technical than that
of the
Internet. The WWW really has two lines of history--hypertext
development and Internet
protocol--which converged to become the basis for the WWW. I
will not go into detail;
however, I would like to mention the main events that took place, as
outlined by Internet
Valley, Inc. (1998).
In the early 1970s, the “Data Communications” at CERN employed a
variety of methods, media and protocols, but in 1984 TCP/IP was installed
as the
standard protocol, thus ceasing the conflict and competition between
the many others
used.
Tim Berners-Lee created the WWW at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 1989,
he proposed the hypertext network for CERN. In 1990, the first
prototype Web server
(NeXTStep) was built, and client machines added. It used a standard
form of database
that could be searched by all networked machines. Berners-Lee
chose the name World
Wide Web.
From that point on, the idea grew. The prototype was revised in
1991 to adapt to
any computer, and the first Web server was set up in California, U.S.A.
By 1992, there
were fifty Web servers, and a text mode browser was made available
(Internet Valley,
Inc., 1998). The first graphical browser, Mosaic, was released
by National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 1993 (Cailliau, 1995).
Since then, there has been an explosion of WWW use and software.
In July,
1992, there were 50 sites, and in January, 1998, there were 2,450,000
sites (Internet
Valley, Inc., 1998). Today Mosaic is out-dated, and the two well-known
graphical
browsers are Netscape and Internet Explorer. Web software is
produced and upgraded at
an amazing speed.
As with any other resources that are to be used in the classroom, you
must first
view web-based resources with a critical eye. With such a huge
number of sites on the
WWW, there are bound to be excellent ones for the ESL/EFL classroom,
however, many
are useless. Often sites look attractive, but in actuality are
lacking in content. As a
teacher, you must ensure the site you use is going to be appropriate
for the students, and
for the lesson.
Tillman (1997) has outlined some general criteria to follow for evaluating
web
sites. She suggests that instructors do the following:
These are only the general features to watch for in web sites, and what
you decide
to be important depends on your class and the activity you are planning.
Also, when
planning, always keep the copyright legalities in mind.
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