I do appreciate the essence of this exercise: to get student-teachers to engage the Alberta education curriculum in a critical fashion and ‘fish out’ what is most important. Then taking these important parts make a lesson that you would teach. But not only make a lesson that you can teach, a lesson that is based online and that would include ICT outcomes as well. These are good and valuable skills for a student teacher to have.
However, I do feel that the approach of using a webquest is not valid based on 2 main reasons. 1) The format of the webquest itself does not allow for the flexability and adaptability that using internet resources really entails. The webquest format itself provides a route which students should take so as to learn, gather resources (from the links provided by the teacher), and ultimately to create something or learn something that they could not have done before. I recognize that this format’s strengths are it’s ‘share-ability’ between teachers teaching the same curriculum. However, the gathered links/resources for the student is where the webquest really falls apart. I think that teachers should teach the topics that they want to teach and then incorporate websearching techniques into the body of their lesson. This allows for a dynamic flow of information, skills, and understandings to the student varying upon search keywords, intentions, and even temporal factors. This also teaches the student about how to run searches effectively and how to limit and crop e-language in such a way as to focus upon the topic at hand. Given that students of earlier grades might not be able to run an effective search on their own, the process should at least be shown to them and the links provided to them. The teacher should sit down with the students and explore the sites with them… outlining such aspects of the webpage that is information, opinion, advertisement etc. Older students can be expected to run searches, collect, organize, analyze and synthesize ideas from the internet by themselves.
2) One of the key factors that contribute to effective classroom teaching is the idea of authenticity. If it’s not authentic then it probably isn’t very good. I agree with this fact completely. I think that using a webquest can create authentic tasks, but it does not create authentic teaching whatsoever. As a student teacher without much experience in the field, I do not know what terminologies the students use on a day to day basis. Even if I did, the terminologies that they use would vary from region to region, from class to class. Should a teacher not teach in the same ‘language’ as his/her students? I appreciate the value of modelling, but when teaching, should a good teacher not get his/her point across in the most crystal clear method and terminologies available? For example, if I’m teaching some stereotypical mid-income students about finances and refer to money as ‘liquid assets’ they probably would understand. However, if I wrote up this lesson for the internet and a teacher from ‘the hood’ took this lesson, he/she would have to revamp my lesson to use the word ‘chedda’. You got to speak the same language. This language that the students use is fluid. The teaching environment is fluid; passing up on teachable moments is horrendous. A webquest does not allow you to incorporate little ‘Jonny’s’ experiences at the bank last week. AHHHHHHHH
So to say the least, I do NOT like webquests. I will only use webquests in the future if I have a substitute teacher and I need to hit the ‘automatic’ button on my students. The internet is a much more powerful tool and can be used much more effectively than a rigours conditions surrounding a webquest can ever offer.
Q
1 comment:
Hey there all I sent my blog to two well educated people. One of them sent me an article by Royal van Horn entitled "technology" published in May 2006 Kappan.
The other person wrote the following,
Hi Qian…
[other stuff was written here but I deleted it… the real meat and potatoes are below]
You made some good points about technology and the importance of the "human" factor in teaching. I couldn't agree with you more. From my experience one of the strongest factors of technology in education has been the ability of technology to link people over long distances to collaborate on projects. It's the human connections that you can make that make the technology powerful. Technology must remain to be seen as one tool at our disposal to help students learn and create and collaborate. In the same light, the webquest is just one tool that may be effective in certain situations. Keep looking at technology and other tools through your critical eyes and question, it will serve you well.
By the way, I enjoyed reading the article sent by ####. I have seen many classroom teachers give up on many uses of technology because the investment was far too heavy for them to justify it, and I understand completely. It's a tool, period.
To which I then responded:
[other stuff was written here but I deleted it…]
I will acknowledge that webquests are a tool that can be used to digitally bring people together in the context of a particular teaching situation. I, personally, feel that webquests are a particularly un-dynamic way of going about teaching students a particular topic... especially when there are far more intuitive (to technologloical natives) and powerful ways of delivering the same lesson. So my basic question is that: is it really worth while for current and future Education Undergradutes to be learning this particular tool? Would our limited time in this undergraduate degree be better spent learning other pedagogic tools that achieved the same goals, but in a far more dynamic and effective way than by webquests?
Q
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