Website of Elizabeth Wolfson-Ruiz
Website Evaluation Form Website Title: McDougal Littell Producer of the Website: McDougal Littell Internet Address and Phone Number: http://www.classzone.com/cz/index.htm (800)727-3009 Grade Levels: Grades 6-12 Subject Areas: World Languages (Spanish, French, and German) Reviewed by: Elizabeth Wolfson-Ruiz, Spanish Teacher ●WEBSITE DESCRIPTION The website was created by the publisher McDougal Littell as an ancillary to the textbook series, ¡Avancemos! We have just begun to use this series for Spanish 1 at the middle school and high school where I teach. McDougal Littell publishes a variety of textbooks and levels in other subject areas other than World Language which are also represented on this website. This site offers materials for German and French, as well as Spanish. The Spanish textbook series goes from level 1 to level 4. I am reviewing only the online materials for ¡Avancemos! 1. This website may be accessed by any user; however, it is most relevant to students who use this textbook in their school. Once the user selects the world language category for the state of Connecticut, they click on, Go. The next screen shows visuals of all the world language textbook series and the user is to click on the textbook icon for ¡Avancemos! 1. This link leads the user to a home page which has six main content categories. The categories are: animations, @ home tutor, culture, ¡conjuguemos!, online review and audio. The animations link has mini-cartoon movies with grammar functions. The @ home tutor link gives detailed line by line instruction of grammar lessons in the textbook. The culture link has traditional holidays listed with interactive video links, key information about each Spanish speaking country studied in the book and compare and contrast web quest questions. The ¡conjuguemos! link offers verb conjugation drills. The online review link offers practice homework exercises and printable workbook pages, flashcards for each chapter and unit with native pronunciation of each word, practice quizzes, online help and games. The audio link has listening exercises that provide kinesthetic activities to show that the student has comprehended what the speaker has said. There are also three secondary links listed at the bottom of the home page. These are the 2007 and 2010 online books, the teacher’s toolkit and the online test practice. ●ACCURACY OF CONTENT The information on the site is accurate and without any omissions. The content is appropriate for the curriculum and the intended audience. The content is easy to read, because the directions are in English. One positive feature is the change to Spanish language button on the cultural readings. This feature allows native Spanish speakers in a level one Spanish class to be challenged. Accessibility may not be easy for students without prior experience and teacher direction to let the students know which unit and exercise or activity to focus on. The arrangement of information is good, but I think that the get help online link should be moved from the online review category to the @home tutor category, so as not to confuse users. ●TECHNICAL QUALITY The site has so much to offer that I feel that it may be cumbersome for some students to navigate without teacher direction. I found two non-functioning links. The first link is in the ¡conjuguemos! conjugation link. The verb chart link button is not working. I also found that the online test practice link reveals an error message with a statement that the site may have been temporarily removed. The navigation system is fairly easy to use. The main categories have an index tab to include a home link, so if any page freezes one can simply exit out and click on the home tab. I also like how the home page is organized and clearly labeled with six key categories to include a visual for each category. The colors used are mostly primary and do not distract the user. The site’s graphics, sound and animation all work smoothly with clear sound quality. A free Quick Time 7.6.4 download is available and is quick and easy to install for users to see the sites videos and narrated pictures. The audio dialogues would be more effective if there were movies of the conversations instead of students seeing a blank screen while listening. So many cultural characteristics are lost without the non-verbal gestures used in conversation. I also would prefer to see videos shown with the traditional holidays instead of narrated pictures. These pictures and narrations provide students with key information to compare and contrast what they have seen with their own culture. ●USE OF TECHNOLOGY The site makes good use of technology to promote student learning in the web quest category, because students are to create products in Spanish to present to the class using research from the Internet. These web quest projects should be given at the end of the unit and can be used as the performance based summative test instead of the textbook test. I also like how students are asked open-ended compare and contrast reflection questions in the culture link activities, because they can see similarities and differences when they view the picture narrations. I also like the effective use of listening activities that creatively embeds kinesthetic physical responses to see if students comprehend conversations among native speakers. An example of this is to point to yourself if the speaker is introducing him or herself and to point to your neighbor if someone else is being introduced. The quizzes that are available can be printed and given as a formative assessment. I do like that they give the correct answer, but it would be nice to have a short explanation along with it. The rest of the links are low level recall activities that can be done just as well with a ditto and wipe boards. The one recall activity I do like is the online flashcards, because the students can hear the words pronounced by a native speaker, which they will not have with homemade flashcards. ●ROLE OF STUDENTS This website is constraining in that it does not offer more than one quiz per unit and lesson, it only offers one learning game under the game link and it does not differentiate for product on the web quests. There is little choice for students but the same prescribed material. The only link that has a challenge built into it the culture link where the readings on cultural holidays may be changed from English to Spanish. Even the verbs on the verb conjugation link are chosen for students. Authentic cultural information is shared, but the same learning activity is provided. The products created on the web quests provide students with higher order learning activities and can be used for summative performance based assessments and the online practice quizzes can be used as formative assessments or as non-graded checks for comprehension. All of the activities can be done individually, the animations, flashcards and cultural activities can be done as a large classroom activity, some can be used for pairs and the web quest and cultural activities can be done in cooperative groups. ●ROLE OF TEACHER The teacher will need to give a virtual tour of the website at the beginning of the school year, since it has many links. Once students know where to go to find the different activities they can navigate on their own. Initial instruction will be needed to show students what link the planned activity is under and what unit and lesson number to choose. Finally, the teacher should monitor individual student progress while they interact with the activity. If the activity is used for large class instruction than the teacher will model and check for understanding. Teachers may request a printout of a student’s score sheet, or the student can e-mail their score to the teacher in the verb conjugation link or the final project will be turned in or presented to the class in the case of a web quest assignment. The teacher could also plan a lesson based on a variety of activities from this website as it offers the ability for students to use the four language skill sets of; reading, writing, listening and speaking. ●CLASSROOM USAGE This website can be used for individual or large class review before a test or quiz. Most importantly it can be used at home individually as students can access their textbook online to do homework and they can receive tutorial help instantly on any grammar topic. I feel that the links provided are best suited for individual work at home. The web quest and cultural links work well for paired or cooperative groups, but the instructional links work best for large group and individual use. ●CRITICAL SUMMARY Many of the links on this website are limited, because they only offer one small assessment that can be taken many times, but no other practice assessments are offered. There is no choice of difficulty in levels therefore no differentiation is included. Only one game is offered as a learning activity and student choice is minimal to non-existent. On a positive note the audio exercises are helpful for pronunciation and the cultural links provide a venue for students to compare and contrast North American culture with Hispanic culture. Additionally the web quests offer teachers a way to use performance based assessments that they can augment to provide for differentiation of product. ●OVERALL RATING: 7 OUT OF 10 ●EXPLANATION OF RATING: This website is a satisfactory tool for students and teachers using the McDougal Littell textbook series. The site needs more development in the areas of online practice quizzes, tests and games. I also feel that more differentiation could have been used both in content and product. Since all links are based on the textbook, I would only recommend the culture links, grammar animations, online flashcards and audio activities to augment lessons from other textbook series.
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©Elizabeth Wolfson-Ruiz | Last revised: 12/01/2009