Website Review #2

Mywonderfulworld.org

Global Knowledge for Students and Help for Teachers

Intro:

Mywornderfulworld.org is a useful educational website that can aid teachers fight against students inability to understand geography.  I will look at this particular website as a 7th grade social studies teacher.  Trying to find all positive and negative aspects of mywonderfulworld; as well as, finding ways to use it in my classroom.  Mywonderfulworld is a website that incorporates a lot of active learning for students, allowing them virtual experiences.  As discussed in Contemporary Learning Theories: Problem Solving and Understanding by Oakes and Lipton, "John Dewey argued that children's learning is essentially problem solving, especially when they are engaged in devising their own experiments, building equipment, and cooperating with others in planing and doing projects (pp 69)."  Using this website, students will be able to engage in individual activities that allow them to problem solve as they go; thus, allowing them to "learn" according to John Dewey.  This website gives the students the ability to learn at their own pace and work with their weaknesses as well as their strengths.

  

Positives:

Though this website is engaging and useful, they have also done a nice job of making it very attractive.  Mywonderfulworld incorporates numerous colors and attractive pictures to invite users to stay on their website.  On the front page they have listed "10 Ways to Give Your Students the World."  This is their opinion of how teachers can better engage their students in activities to help them become more proficient in geography.  The 10 outlined ways of helping students become more proficient in geography are attainable goals, aided by the websites' numerous links, the material can be received quickly.  If one looks at item #7 on the list of 10, they will find: "Connect Students with People from Other Countries and Cultures", I find this very important.  As Fredrick Erickson stated in Culture and Human Development, "Both those local social groups and the persons within them are presumed currently to be multicultural rather than monocultural (pp. 299);" thus, while connecting with individuals from other cultures, students will see differences among each of them.  This would eliminate some of the sterotypes that are associated with people from different locations; such as, all "Asians" are good at mathematics.  For students who do not understand what geography really means, there is a Kids and Teens link that will define it for them.  This particular link gives them each of the ways that geography can be seen around them, reminding them of music, food, and clothing.  Also explaining to the students why geography is so "cool".  Finally, this website can help students from different ability levels, as all teachers know, students develop at different stages and require different levels of interaction from the teacher.  Oakes and Lipton define development well in Traditional Learning Theories: Transmission, Training, and IQ, "Development refers to the relatively orderly changes everyone experiences throughout their lives.  Theories of development attempt to explain how these changes take place.  Most consider development to be a progression from one distinctly different stage to the next, rather than changes that are smooth and gradual (pp. 43)."  Although the development may not be smooth, there are defined levels of development that each individual must reach.  With mywonderfulworld, students would be able to see development and use it accordingly, again allowing them to actively become involved in their own learning.

Negatives:

Though I try to focus on the positives more then the negatives, I feel in this case, it is important to raise a coupe of issues.  One issue I see with this website and any website, is the access issue that faces many people around the world.  The use of these websites is dependent on students having access to computers, internet, and sufficient time to use them.  Thus, it is likely that teachers would have to find time to allow students to explore what this particular website has to offer.  Not all schools/classrooms are created equal either, not every school/teacher has this equipment available to them either.  The second issue is time, teachers are limited on the amount of time they have available to them to introduce "new" types of lessons for their students.  With today's assessment tests receiving so much emphasis, it leaves little time to focus on anything outside of what assessment tests define as essential.  As Tina Wages learned in Jane Agee's study: Negotiating a Teaching Identity: An African American Teacher's Struggle to Teach in Test-Drivin Contexts, all teachers have a plan of what they would like to do; however, after a year or two of teaching, it becomes apparent there are things more important than others.  This does not mean that you have to throw your teaching identity away, it means that you must change it a little, as Tina found in her second year of teaching: "Tina also talked about how the mandated tests were pushing her to teach literature differently than she had planned (Agee pp. 768)."

Use in the Classroom:

I will be quite honest about this particular website, I plan on finding ways to incorporate it into my 7th grade social studies class.  Often I give map tests and quizzes in my 7th grade class, this website gives numerous games/quizzes that would help my students study for those test/quizzes.  Also, in my 7th grades social studies class, they work on a group project based around countries from Latin America.  This website would help them to work on this project, by giving them many different virtual experiences that they can incorporate into these projects.

Final Notes:

I enjoyed reviewing this website for many different reasons, mostly because I quickly found ways to use it in my future lessons.  Also, I liked the games available from this website; despite being educational, they are also fun to play.  I encourage anyone to play a few of these games and enjoy themselves.

Works Cited:

Agee, J. (2004). Negotiating a Teaching Identity: An African American Teacher's Struggle to Teach in Test-Driven Contexts.  Teachers College Record Vol. 106, No. 4, pp. 747-774.

Erickson, F. (2002). Cultural and Human Development. S. Karger AG, Basel. pp. 299-306.

Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (2006). Teaching to Change the World.  New York: MacGraw Hill.  Chapter 2: Traditional Learning Theories: Transmission, Training, and IQ pp. 39-65.  Chapter 3: Contemporary Learning Theories: Problem Solving and Understanding pp. 67-94.