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Introduction:
During
the past five weeks, the students of CTER 4 at the University
of Illinois have been engaged in network projects designed
to engage us in electronic based network activities with
the hopes of improving our methods of conducting these
activities on the world wide web. For my activity,
I chose to develop an on-line network project that enables
fellow Health teachers and their students interact with
each other using some of the more common internet tools
available to us. The name of my project is Teen Health
and Wellness Project. The web site can be found
at
http://students.ed.uiuc.edu/krodeffe/kro_wellness/index.html.
The Participants
The participants
ranged in ages from 5th--12th grade students to Adults.
The younger students tended to actually try some of the
activities while the majority of the adults tended to just
look at the sight and give me feedback in how they thought
the site could be improved. The adult occupations
covered a wide range, including academic professionals
and a minister from a Champaign Church. I also had
2 teachers contact me saying they were interested in participating
in the school year project , but could not find the time
to do so now.
The Activities
The activities
included participating in a live chat, writing poems and
essays about health concerns, and a few artistic drawings
done by the younger participants. Interestingly,
none of the participants volunteered to have their works
publish so in keeping with their wishes, I did not do so.
They told me it was not due to concerns over privacy as
much as it was they were not willing to show their work
"in Public".
Feedback
The majority of the
feedback was positive. The Local minister and I had
some discussion about both of our concerns regarding the
use of the chat room and the main concern is not the chat
room itself as it is for the advertisements included with
the use of the chat space. The cost of eliminating
the advertisements would be about $10 per month.
Therefore, I'm investigating other avenues in this venture.
The other feedback was generally good. Some seem
to think that once the "bugs" get worked out of the system
it should be a pretty good project. The younger students
seemed to enjoy most of the activities while the older
ones tended to be "bored" with the activities. Some
of the other participants also had concerns about where
the chat room would go and wondered if I considered a
web board type of set up instead. The concerns I
have here is about monitoring the site while I'm not online.
This is where N2H2, our district's filter will have to
come into play. I'm investigating more about N2H2
now.
Results
As a result of this
project, I'm sure I've learned a great deal about the
considerations that need investigated before developing
a project web site. I was told by a good deal of
the participants that the project did, in fact make them
think a little more about teen health and wellness concerns.
One student in particular replied that in considering violence
and crimes against others, the computer was a tool the
same way a gun is a tool. It is how we use the tool
that determines if it will be a weapon against other humans.
I thought that was a pretty deep thought.
Conclusion
In concluding, I would
have to say that I'm really glad I did this project.
There were many headaches involved, some expected and some
not expected. An example is when my ISP had difficulties
for four days and I could not work on the internet.
Being a summer course with relatively few people responding
to my call for collaboration, it was not as great a problem
as it could have been. It did cause a few unexpected
tense moments and this is something that will always be
in the back of my mind whenever I take on a project like
this again. I did learn a great deal more about
building and maintaining web sites and I feel much more
comfortable about taking on this task "for real" when
school begins. Lastly, I learned a little more about
myself and my abilities to work in the world of technology.
I still do not feel extremely comfortable while
taking on new tasks with computers, but each day brings
on more comfort and willingness to go along the information
highway.
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