Students plan and organize a showcase of their website.
The objective is for students to present their websites to an authentic audience. "Authentic audience" will vary by teacher/classroom depending on what audience the teacher, school, and district policies allow. Teachers will need to identify the authentic audience that student groups will present and showcase their website to at the end of the unit. The goal is for students to 1) share their knowledge with people outside the class, if possible, and to see if their message is resonating, and 2) obtain feedback on the operation and content of their website. Your school and district privacy and security policies, along with any partnerships with outside groups, will dictate the nature of that audience. Begin to think the group or individuals that would be a good audience for the student website, where students are incentivized and encouraged to have their websites meet the needs and quality that an authentic audience would require. The intention is to have people review and experience the websites for two purposes: 1) website construction, execution and technical design i.e., links, pages, navigation, general content); and 2) as a resource to engage, educate, and motivate an audience to care about the problem illuminated by the website.
Activity 1 (Budget 30 minutes)
Students review their website to make sure all technical aspects of their site are in sound shape and ready for the showcase.
1. Teacher reminds students of the importance in having a sound technical website to enhance the audience experience at the website. Teacher reminds students to review the 4-box sheets from their peer reviews earlier in the unit to make sure any previous construction or technical errors have been addressed. Teachers might even find it useful to use their rubrics for technical and HTML features to have serve as a checklist for their website review.
2. Students work together, or divide and conquer, to review the website and fix any errors.
Activity 2 (Budget 20 minutes)
The whole class generates questions they would like their audience/reviewers to think about and answer during their review of the site.
1. The teacher will lead the class in a discussion to identify or generate a list of questions students want their audience to answer regarding their website. In advance, the teacher should prepare a sample list of questions to help students see the type of questions that would be useful to ask. These should focus on not only technical aspects, but also on how the website engages the audience in the problem. The 4-box prompts might be useful to think through, but think of these as survey questions, like "How well did our website inform you of the problem we are trying to solve?... or How does our website inspire you to get involved in trying to solve this problem with us or other members of our community?" It is possible for the curriculum authors to generate such a list, but there is significant value, at this point in the CAPACiTY curriculum to have students complete this task.
2. Students will then generate a Word (or similar) document to provide the audience that contains the questions or prompts from Activity 1 of the Reflection section that is after this section. The teams will decide the design and content of their question sheet. Students must complete this activity before the showcase begins.