http://www.nationalgeographic.com/earthpulse/

Why
I chose this website because it provides students with an opportunity to access a learning tool which it flexible and will allow the students to be interactive. The website includes virtual worlds where students can interactively learn about the different topis that are available through this format. The virtual worlds provide a variety of information in all these areas. The benefits of the virtual world was that it provided the user which an opportunity to be interactive which their research. It also allowed the user to navigate through the world the way they wanted.

Who
I would use this website for students from latter stage 1 to stage 3. The reason I believe that this website is appropriate for so many grades is because the website have a variety of approaches in different sections. The website is easy to navigate but still requires the user to keep track of where they are.

Language
The website uses language which could be challenging for students in grade 2 or upper stage 1 however there are areas on the website where information is in a manner which is more suited to students of this stage. Overall the language which is used on the website is informative and descriptive. The tone is not formal but information and to a sense almost colloquial. The website does not attempt to add emotion to some of the information provided through the use of exclamation marks of inverted commas. If used they could in fact make the text more appealing to the reader. Some of the grammatical features that are apparent is the use of short simple sentences.

Visuals
The website is very visually appealing. Each piece of information is accompanied by pictures or a video clip which related to the topic explored. The effect of this technique is that it is engaging for the user. The written information accompanying the video clips were short and provided enough information to be relevant for primary school students. Other areas of the web site included fact sheet which provided more detailing information for the users. The website used photos, video clips, diagrams and measurements appropriate to that form for instance there was an infra red diagram and measurement of hurricanes.

The main page of the webpage seems very boring and cluttered with links in small font under sub headings. The most salient feature on the main page is the large picture of the world which is depicted below. After that the sub heading virtual worlds stands out due to its position and size. That is its at the top right hand corner of the screen and it the largest font after the word Earth Pulse which is only the title of the web site.

In the classroom
Example 1
Stage 2 students could use the website when working on a unit on Australian Environments. Students could access the website as a research tool in groups when working on a task such as creating a a pamphlet, or a power point presentation where students will be advertising the great barrier reef to one of the species that currently resides there.

Example 2
The website could be used on in stage 3 in unit which looked at rainforests. The website could be used as an introductory tool by the teacher where students were asked to navigate the virtual world on rainforests and write down anything they found interesting which the teacher could use to begin an introductory discussion on topics relating to rainforests such as deforestation.

Reflection

Creating this Blog was a new and interesting experience for me. I have previously viewed and visited Blogs of friends and family members but I always thought that it would be a time consuming task and never created my own. Now I know that creating a Blog is time consuming however it is best to work on it in short intervals rather than all in one session. I did not think creating the Blog was difficult but it was fiddly in that sometimes I had to experiment and play around with features before I could get what I wanted.
I felt that creating a Blog about a website that could be used in the classroom related to the theory of multiliteracies. This is because once I had created the Blog and researched the website I wanted to use I had been exposed to two forms of multimodal texts one which was a website and the other was the Blog itself. A Blog is a useful tool where students can reflect on their learning in a creative and non restrictive manner where students have the opportunity to use technology in communicating themselves. Websites are also another form of multimodal texts which can be found in such a variety of formats and styles and in such a valuable research tool that students need to be given the opportunity in the classroom to learn to assess the different forms of information presented.