This website is designed and set up as part of the assessment for Computer Assisted Language Learning course. I decided to compile an online guide to one of the literature texts used in Malaysian secondary school which is The Boscombe Valley Mystery Graphic Novel based on the work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. One of the reasons I choose to create this website is because I could not find many websites which has specific guides on graphic novels. This is pretty unfortunate for Malaysian students in this web or digital oriented era in which where students no longer should rely on traditional printed books for literary guide. Hence, I set up the website.
The website covers all the elements of graphic novel taught in secondary school including information on the writer, synopsis, background information, plot, setting, characters, themes and moral values. The explanation on each elements are sometimes followed with pictures as visual aids. The content is adapted from teacher’s resource book for Form 1 English literature component published by Malaysian Ministry of Education. I used an OCR freeware to extract the text from the PDF.
The website also contains some exercises adapted from the resource book. Students could test their knowledge through the exercises, which were structured to be similar to what they might encounter in exam papers. Students might also show or hide the answer for each questions. More exercises could easily be added from time to time.
The thing that I'm most proud of the website is the technical part. I managed to use my rusty knowledge of Javascript and HTML to design and present the website in this manner. As you can see, it is actually built from a blogging platform. Hence, I had to tweak some of the codes in order to make it presentable and look more like a proper website than a typical blog. I also used Javascript in some parts of the website to toggle the display of answers for each questions in the exercises. It is a good thing to know that I could still use a few of my basic computer skills to help me in designing teaching tool.
Hence, this assignment has taught me that as an English teacher, you will benefit from being resourceful and knowledgeable about computers and technology. Solid knowledge on the language itself is of course, invaluably necessary but other skills like computer skills would be useful to enhance your teaching methods and expand your creativity.
-Aina (2012)