c.
Selecting ICT Resources
It
was much harder for the teacher to choose a software tool for
pupils to use. He considered that raw HTML would put off many
of the pupils who were not motivated by ICT itself, and who wanted
to focus on the use of ICT for things which they thought were
important. He considered just using Word (Publisher), as it has
a Wizard to help build pages, but felt that it was not flexible
enough. It was also too difficult to check how the pages would
work in a hypertext browser as they are being developed. He also
considered Multimedia Textease, which was relatively easy and
powerful for pupils, but it didn't produce pages that could be
used with a web browser.
When
he consulted with colleagues in other schools, one recommended
Netscape Composer, one recommended Hyperstudio, and one recommended
FrontPage Express. These all had snags: the school had standardised
on Internet Explorer for web access; he could not afford a licence
for Hyperstudio; and he could not obtain any documentation for
FrontPage Express. However, he decided to use FrontPage Express,
as it is easy to use for pupils familiar with Word, and the main
principles are easy to implement. He did not expect the lack of
documentation to be a problem with a class containing a number
of expert computer users who already use the program at home and
are happy to share their knowledge.
Questions
for Consideration
- Consider
the pros and cons of using raw HTML with various groups of learners.
- Identify
a number of available programs which support hypertext authoring
- some you may already have, some are available free on the
WWW, at least in trial versions, others can be obtained as demo
versions from suppliers. How do they compare for your purposes?
- The
teacher only consulted a small number of local colleagues whom
he knew well. How else could he have obtained professional advice
from colleagues?
 d.
Developing Your Own Knowledge of the Resources
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