The Website

I have selected this particular website as it has been well documented that today’s children face unprecedented health challenges related to poor nutritional choices and lack of exercise. For example, many children potentially face a shortened life span and a diminished quality of life from chronic illnesses such as diabetes. Early education on nutrition and healthy food choices can help address these issues. Using this website would facilitate this.

This website would be used as part of a PDHPE unit of work on Personal Health Choices, specifically nutrition and healthy eating choices. Students can navigate their way through information on nutrition such as the basic food groups, healthy food combinations and the quantities within food groups which should be consumed to ensure optimal nutrition needs are being met. In addition there are interactive activities such as games and a nutrition tracker which students would find engaging and fun. There are also a number of links which students can use in order to learn more about healthy eating, nutrition and general physical well-being thus a real-world context is being catered for.

This website would be suitable for Stage 1 students. The website is visually appealing to children with its use of bright colours and animations. The messages conveyed on its pages are positive and pro-active. The language used is simple and direct but not ‘dumbed down’ for children. The text types used are the information report and description.

Grammatical features of an information report include the use of technical terms such as “other important nutrients such as protein”, and action verbs such as “strengthen bones, which are growing longer and stronger”.
Grammatical features of description include the use of particular nouns such as “your body”.

Within the classroom context, the information on the website could be used in the following two ways:

1. The grammatical features of information reports and description could be explored with students using the website as a basis for discussion and development of these text types.
2. Using the information on the website, students can work in small groups to design and create a PowerPoint presentation on healthy food groups and share their presentations with the rest of the class.

link to classroom website

http://www.nutritionexplorations.org/kids/nutrition-main.asp

Self Assessment

Hmmm, creating a blog was easier than I had anticipated! I have to admit to delaying this part of the assignment, having relegated it to the 'too hard, will do later' basket. Am now feeling a bit silly because it is so simple, a child could do the same task easily.

Adding pictures proved to be a little trickier. However, after following the instructions in the "help" section I managed to work it out on my second or third attempt. I don't seem to be one of those people who learns anything to do with technology on their first attempt. But I manage with perserverance and stubborness.

I also found including the link a somewhat frustrating experience. As it turns out, I was following the instructions correctly; it just took a little while for the link to show up on the webpage. So I actually wasted a lot of time looking for alternative ways of adding the link and feeing helpless when it didn’t appear to be working.

I have enjoyed learning these new skills and am pleased that I eventually sorted it all out. However, I do feel that this task would have been easier if a short workshop had been available for those of us who have absolutely no background in ICT. There seems to have been an assumed background level of knowledge. Although the task proved to be quite simple, I lacked the confidence to trust that what I was doing was right and so time was wasted.