Scenario 3: I found this wonderful website that I want my students to go to tomorrow in the computer lab, but it has a lengthy URL address. It will take them half of our lab time just to type in the web address. What do I do?
This happens quite often. There are a few simple tricks that you can do in order to speed up student navigation online for lessons in the computer lab or in your classroom.
First, at the beginning of the year, I would suggest having all of your students set their home page in two different Internet browsers. That way if one doesn’t work, you have a backup plan ready to go. For instance, in York we often use Safari and Firefox as our two main search engines, however, this also works if you use Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator as well. I would have my students enter the lab on one of our first visits of the year and have them open up an Internet web browser, type in the URL address of the school, tech integrator’s page, or teacher’s home page. From there they need to set this page as their home page before they start navigating around. This will enable them to open up the program again in the future and be right on the page they need to be at to get started. A short tutorial video for setting your home page in Safari is below.
Secondly, it’s important as an educator to think hard about this home page. You are trying to make navigating easier on your students and eliminate steps, or clicks, that students will have to make in order to get to the site you intended for each lesson. I’m not saying that navigating the web isn’t a skill we should teach our students. In fact, this is becoming more and more important, but we all know that time is limited in the lab, and sometimes you just want the students to get to the site quickly. If you are a teacher that often updates their web page, creating links on your own web page may be the best logical choice. A tech integrator’s page, or school page, is a good choice, but it can still take multiple clicks to get to the page or content that you want for each lesson, and if the home page does not have a link to the site you found last night while surfing, then you are out of luck. Best advice would be to add a couple of links to your own teacher web page before each computer lab lesson, or a lesson in which students will need to navigate the Web. This way it is only one or two clicks away for them.
Lastly, bookmarks are a great way to teach students about keeping track of web sites that they will need to visit over and over again. I would create a link on my teacher web page if I want the entire group to navigate to a single web page for the lesson, however, if the group is in the lab for research, collaborative small group projects, or RtI practice, it may be wise to teach them a quick mini-lesson on bookmarking. This way individual students, who have individual needs, can navigate to their pre-selected pages quickly by clicking on a bookmark.
In a school district that has a Wide Area Network, having the students set their home page and adding bookmarks will follow them to whatever device they login to using their network account. In other words, a 4th grader at Coastal Ridge Elementary School will have access to his bookmarks and home page when they move up to the middle school in 5th grade. Or if the student goes to another school for after school activities, they can login to a computer in that building, using their network login, and they can still access the links and bookmarks they need to continue to work on their project. We hope this helps. If you have any comments or suggestions we would love to hear from you.