Sunday, November 4, 2012

Week 5: Reflections


"A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web."



My webskills grow like muscles!

First of all, I found out about alternative assessment, a very useful discovery! I would like to share with everyone interested in this topic the articles recommended to my e-class by our instructor Courtney  Assessing Learning, Alternative Assessment and Practical Ideas on Alternative Assessment, a very successful duet of theory and practice. However, if you open Rubistar, a wonderful teacher assisting tool that helps to create rubrics, I assure you will fall in love with it! I created my first rubric “Story Writing : The Story of an Hour” and you can see it here.

The last point of our discussion was PBL. In this respect I can say that  Less Teaching and More Learning by Susan Gaer is wonderful. The projects that she has mentioned in this article are very appealing to me. However there is another part of the coin, as Courtney has mentioned in her post, sometimes not all the members are involved equally in the project. Therefore, we have to pay attention to crucial elements of project-based learning. The project must be directed to the population, students must see its value, and there must be flexible timelines. PBL is motivating as it appeals to students' creativity and self-expression, and implies a lot of independent learning. PBL is very motivating!

My next step was to concentrate on a technology–related change that will be helpful in struggling with the core issue I decided to focus on - plagiarism. I googled for some plagiarism detectors and found something interesting for myself. Smallseotools.com is a good starting point! I will definitely use it, but not before I come with a presentation about plagiarism. Thanks again to Courtney! Sometimes I wonder how she manages to do all the things! I think that she will teach us this skill as well!
                                          Courtney, thank you for the video!


Finally I did some extra-task. I created my first WebQuest that is aimed at introducing my students to blogging. To Blog! is  my first WebQuest. I need to work on it more, as in my understanding WebQuest is a kind of a project, or better saying it can be a good backbone not only for lesson planning but also for PBL.

Week 5 is over! See you Week6!

Ina



4 comments:

  1. Hi Ina,

    Your enthusiasm for the week 5 material is apparent! I'm glad to hear that you gained so much!

    I think it is great that you want to incorporate blogging into a webquest project with your students. My biggest piece of advice is to have a clear idea of the purpose that the blog will serve. For example, this blog serves as a weekly reflection for all of the webskills participants. You reflect on what you learned and how you will apply it to your teaching practices. Make sure your students have a clear purpose to, you will see greater success this way. You could change the purpose or focus each week, but just always make sure they know the direction that their posts should take.

    I look forward to hearing more about the success of the "blogquest"!

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  2. Hi Ina

    It seems that great job. You have completed all the tasks on week 5. I miss the discussion and the WebQuest. In term of the Rubistar, I do agree with you. It is easy to create it because everything is automatically by clicking some tools.

    In addition, I like the picture, It seems that everything should be considered before deciding.

    Best regards

    Muhamad Suhaili

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    Replies
    1. Hi Muhamad,

      This course is very important to me that is why I try to be involved in all the activities. Our weekly discussion as usually was very interesting, because some of us read one article the others read something else, and in conclusion we have a very informative and constructive discussion. With other words we learn from each other as well.

      Ina

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  3. Hi Courtney,

    I wanted to use the class blog for their writings. We very often comment on different proverbs, quotes, make up stories. The purpose of creating the class blog is to have audience, and involve them into independent learning. It will be a kind of our class portfolio. That is why I dedicated my first webquest to blogging in general.

    Ina

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