As students develop the reading, writing, math and communication skills to enter the workforce, they must also develop the digital skills required. While increasingly facile on mobile devices, students often struggle to locate and glean important information from a website. There are many reasons for this:
- Websites are composed of text. Students may struggle reading a website in much the same ways they struggle reading paper-based texts.
- They may lack the physical facility of using a mouse, touch-pad or keys, double-clicking files, dragging icons, selecting blocks of text.
- They may think it should come easily to them, and become frustrated.
Whether we’re in a computer lab together, or doing work asynchronously, it’s important to treat websites as textual sources, and use similar reading strategies to the ones we use with paper-based texts.
Website Orientation: Ask Open Ended Questions
Before asking students to search, find, click or navigate, they have to know where they are and why. Asking open ended questions allows them to orient themselves to where they are and what they see before them. Ask questions such as:
Once students are grounded in a clear understanding of the kinds of information the website contains, its purpose and audience, they will be better prepared to enter and use the website, navigating to find the information they are looking for, and beginning to read and understand what they find.
This discussion can take place in a computer lab together in person, or virtually by sharing a screen and discussing what students see, wonder and predict.
For a complete description of tech tips when using websites with students, see the piece titled, How to Lead Students Through a Website Navigation, on p. 39 of the NYSED/CUNY CareerKit User’s Guide.
