Kia Ora (Maori for hi).
A WebQuest is an internet based activity many teachers are including in their classrooms as they encourage students to use Productive Pedagogy links focusing mostly on higher order thinking skills. WebQuests are usually problem based and inquiry orientated.
WebQuests normally have a compilation of six essential components. They are
· An ‘Introduction’ which should hook the learners,
· A ‘Task’ which needs to be based on a problem and have a focus question
· ‘Resources’ which are usually internet information links
· A ‘Process’ which should step the students through the learning and assist them to complete the task
· An ‘Evaluation’ which should inform the students of what is required of them
· A ‘Conclusion’ which should assist the students in answering the focus question
· And a ‘Teachers Page’ is often included to assist teachers with what age/grade it would suit, links to standards it addresses, time it will take to complete and implementation strategies.
We designed WebQuests last year in our SOSE course. And I found not having access to a decent computer or internet access caused me to really struggle in the design of that WebQuest. Most of the work took place at a friend’s place using her computer and internet and sometimes proved inconvenient for us both. As an educator I would have to take that into consideration in relation to my students being able to have those basics at home to be able to access and complete a WebQuest that I had designed them. I wouldn’t want to hinder students learning by compiling such a task for them and then them not being able to enjoy it. I would also have to consider if they had access to those basics in class or in the school library.
I would additionally have to think about if parents want their children to work on computers at home. Many families I have spoken to don’t like their children being stuck inside interacting with themselves and the technology in front of them. They feel their children are already involved in too much computer based play and learning as it is.
I furthermore believe a lot of KLA’s would have to be covered in a WebQuest to make it a worthwhile pursuit. In classrooms a lot of the day is structured to include assemblies, 30 minutes a day fitness programs, library, religion, music and other specialist activities such as languages and drama. Include the focus on literacy and numeracy and there isn’t a lot of free class time or opportunities to include other activities. A WebQuest would have to warrant taking time from any other occurrence in the room.
Plus include the days needed to design a WebQuest and it can all be quite time consuming. The designer would have to ensure all the desired KLA’s were being covered and that outcomes for students were achievable for all. There would also have to be a set assignment task to be completed to check for learning. Additionally there would need to be research done as to what information links would be added to the WebQuest plus the designer would then need to check all the information links could be opened and didn’t open on to other unwanted links. All of this and it would need to be fun and exciting to keep the students interest.
All those considerations and I would still include WebQuests in my lesson planning. Knowing your students would dictate if your students would benefit from this different teaching approach. Although all learning styles- visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners should have something to gain from interacting with WebQuests. The students would hopefully develop literacy skills from reading and listening to directions and information. The learners should also develop writing skills if the set assignment task included that. The students would also in turn develop technology skills such as moving a mouse, how to manoeuvre through links and sift through information on webpage links. Plus develop higher order thinking skills as they would be analysizing, criticizing and assessing rather than just cutting and pasting information.
Haere ra (bye in Maori)
References:
Department of Education. (2002). Productive Pedagogies. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia: Curriculum Implementation Unit.
What is a WQ? Overview. (2009). Retrieved the 13th of August 2009 from WebQuest Direct. http://www.webquestdirect.com.au/whatis_awq.asp
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Podcasting
G'day (hi in Australia).
Podcasting= Personal On Demand
A Podcast is an internet based auditory file that is sent via an RSS feed. The auditory file is sent with an ‘enclosure’ tag which can be compared to an email attachment for us less technically minded folk. Basically a person only has to choose what content and which programmes they want to download. And then once downloaded on to a device that supports an RSS feed such as an iPod, mobile or computer the person can chose to listen to the podcast when and where they like. It is the same with VodCasts except they are video files rather than auditory based files.
Podcasts can and are used for stories, self guided walking tours in museums and art galleries (imagine getting students to create their own walking tour around the school or local area!), music, radio and television shows and training and instruction giving. Just imagine the possibilities this could create in and outside of the classroom.
As stated in a previous posting my cousins are in a local high school and podcasting is now becoming a form of learning for them. I was curious as to how that could benefit them all but it is used in a way to strengthen their knowledge rather than being their only form of lesson delivery. It appears to be of great benefit to students who learn in auditory (podcasts) and visual (vodcasts) ways. One of my cousins now actually enjoys her classes as she can learn in her own style when and where she likes!
To be honest, I hadn’t used iTunes for anything other than music before. Opening the education category, again opened my eyes to a world I hadn’t seen or experienced before. I then got busy downloading on to my computer and iPod and watching and listening to these newly found sources of knowledge as I want to be considered as a 'progressive' teacher not a 'traditional' teacher of the bygone eras as suggested by Turner-Bisset.
See ya (bye in Australia).
References:
Housley, S. (2009). What is Podcasting? Retrieved the 13th of August 2009 from Podcasting Tools: Resource For Podcasting. http://www.podcasting-tools.com/what-is-podcasting.htm
Turner-Bisset, R. (2001). Expert Teaching: Knowledge and Pedagogy to Lead the Profession. London, UK: David Fulton Publishers.
Podcasting= Personal On Demand
A Podcast is an internet based auditory file that is sent via an RSS feed. The auditory file is sent with an ‘enclosure’ tag which can be compared to an email attachment for us less technically minded folk. Basically a person only has to choose what content and which programmes they want to download. And then once downloaded on to a device that supports an RSS feed such as an iPod, mobile or computer the person can chose to listen to the podcast when and where they like. It is the same with VodCasts except they are video files rather than auditory based files.
Podcasts can and are used for stories, self guided walking tours in museums and art galleries (imagine getting students to create their own walking tour around the school or local area!), music, radio and television shows and training and instruction giving. Just imagine the possibilities this could create in and outside of the classroom.
As stated in a previous posting my cousins are in a local high school and podcasting is now becoming a form of learning for them. I was curious as to how that could benefit them all but it is used in a way to strengthen their knowledge rather than being their only form of lesson delivery. It appears to be of great benefit to students who learn in auditory (podcasts) and visual (vodcasts) ways. One of my cousins now actually enjoys her classes as she can learn in her own style when and where she likes!
To be honest, I hadn’t used iTunes for anything other than music before. Opening the education category, again opened my eyes to a world I hadn’t seen or experienced before. I then got busy downloading on to my computer and iPod and watching and listening to these newly found sources of knowledge as I want to be considered as a 'progressive' teacher not a 'traditional' teacher of the bygone eras as suggested by Turner-Bisset.
See ya (bye in Australia).
References:
Housley, S. (2009). What is Podcasting? Retrieved the 13th of August 2009 from Podcasting Tools: Resource For Podcasting. http://www.podcasting-tools.com/what-is-podcasting.htm
Turner-Bisset, R. (2001). Expert Teaching: Knowledge and Pedagogy to Lead the Profession. London, UK: David Fulton Publishers.
Wikipedia Search
Haai (hello in Afrikaan).
Wikipedia is an internet based encyclopaedia. Wikipedia originated from Nupedia which was also a free English language encyclopaedia that was written by experts and reviewed under a formal process.
Wikipedia was developed to be multilingual and remain a free resource that has the opportunity to be edited and added to by everyone. With that freedom Wikipedia remains to be criticized for its reliability and accuracy and its ability to be referred to in assignment tasks.
As a university student I have not been as a rule, allowed to acknowledge Wikipedia as a source of information gathering. I wonder if we as educators will in turn pass on that thinking to our acceptance of it in assignment tasks we receive.
My search of Wikipedia was in relation to my class growing vegetables and I came across these resources-
· That there are different types of the plant are called the vegetable- leaves, roots, bulbs, stems of plant etc...
· The Latin meaning of ‘vegetable’ and when the term was first used in the English language
· Nutrition
· Colour pigments
· Storage
· How to tell the difference between fruit and vegetables
· Pictures
· Individual uses
· Individual history of each vegetable
· Production trends
· World Health Organisation recommendations
I would take advantage of technology to make these resources available to my students inside and outside the classroom by allowing them time on computers to look at pictures on the web and in clip art- remembering my students are still developing letter and word recognition skills in Prep. Cittadini suggests educators view each child as an individual able to construct their own learning and that we listen, observe, interact and learn from our students. I would let them guide their learning throughout our learning experiences from planting our seeds to utilising our freshly grown vegetables by reading the available information to them as they asked and required.
What do you think? What would you do?
Totsiens (byein Afrikaan).
References:
Cittadini, S. Reggio Emilia Approach to Education. Retrieved on the 12th of March 2009 from http://www.cityneighbors.org/reggioemilia.htm
www.wikipedia.com
Wikipedia is an internet based encyclopaedia. Wikipedia originated from Nupedia which was also a free English language encyclopaedia that was written by experts and reviewed under a formal process.
Wikipedia was developed to be multilingual and remain a free resource that has the opportunity to be edited and added to by everyone. With that freedom Wikipedia remains to be criticized for its reliability and accuracy and its ability to be referred to in assignment tasks.
As a university student I have not been as a rule, allowed to acknowledge Wikipedia as a source of information gathering. I wonder if we as educators will in turn pass on that thinking to our acceptance of it in assignment tasks we receive.
My search of Wikipedia was in relation to my class growing vegetables and I came across these resources-
· That there are different types of the plant are called the vegetable- leaves, roots, bulbs, stems of plant etc...
· The Latin meaning of ‘vegetable’ and when the term was first used in the English language
· Nutrition
· Colour pigments
· Storage
· How to tell the difference between fruit and vegetables
· Pictures
· Individual uses
· Individual history of each vegetable
· Production trends
· World Health Organisation recommendations
I would take advantage of technology to make these resources available to my students inside and outside the classroom by allowing them time on computers to look at pictures on the web and in clip art- remembering my students are still developing letter and word recognition skills in Prep. Cittadini suggests educators view each child as an individual able to construct their own learning and that we listen, observe, interact and learn from our students. I would let them guide their learning throughout our learning experiences from planting our seeds to utilising our freshly grown vegetables by reading the available information to them as they asked and required.
What do you think? What would you do?
Totsiens (byein Afrikaan).
References:
Cittadini, S. Reggio Emilia Approach to Education. Retrieved on the 12th of March 2009 from http://www.cityneighbors.org/reggioemilia.htm
www.wikipedia.com
ClassMarker Quiz
Aloha cousins :)
WOW! Yet another great classroom resource! Malaguzzi challenges us to think outside the box and to re-think the way early childhood education is taught and this is definately a way to do it.
If I had older students this would definately be an advantage in the learning environment. For my prep students I would have to read the questions and explain the concept of true and false before they could answer the questions but I am sure they would love doing an online test like big kids. I am thinking I might even use this testing as my form of end of term assessment for them and see what words they recognise and how they go with it all. I will keep you all posted on how they go and if you want to give it a go and give me feedback here is the link-
Take our online test
Mahola, Rissa.
References:
Edwards, C., Gandini, L. and Forman, G. (1993). The Hundred Languages of Children. USA: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
http://www.classmarker.com/
WOW! Yet another great classroom resource! Malaguzzi challenges us to think outside the box and to re-think the way early childhood education is taught and this is definately a way to do it.
If I had older students this would definately be an advantage in the learning environment. For my prep students I would have to read the questions and explain the concept of true and false before they could answer the questions but I am sure they would love doing an online test like big kids. I am thinking I might even use this testing as my form of end of term assessment for them and see what words they recognise and how they go with it all. I will keep you all posted on how they go and if you want to give it a go and give me feedback here is the link-
Take our online test
Mahola, Rissa.
References:
Edwards, C., Gandini, L. and Forman, G. (1993). The Hundred Languages of Children. USA: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
http://www.classmarker.com/
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Using musIc on/from the web
Salut (French for hi).
I tend to have a more eclectic taste in music and having a racially diverse class made choosing a piece of music from the INCOMPETECH site easy for me- African and World! I wanted to see what they had available in the form of more culturally diverse music. I found a great variety of music but had trouble downloading it and then when it downloaded it took a long time to buffer to be able to play but that could be my old computer rather then the site. I love the fact that this site is free to download and able to be played to a group of people without the concern of copyright breaches because the organisation has already dealt with the Creative Commons Licence delemias for us (educators).
I had planned on adding the music to my lesson in the Gingerbread Man’s travels this week but I will have to play around with the site some more and see if I can find something else to download for my next lesson. Instead I am using a CD this week which I think will be just as entertaining and enjoyable for the children.
Other uses for music could be for-
· Setting the tone in the room while completing tasks (slow quiet music to calm students or more upbeat to motivate and re-energize students),
· Including students in the classroom (more diverse music rather than mainstream or generalized children’s music),
· The start of a lesson (the students hear a certain type of music and know it is time for a specific KLA).
Bye.
P.S. Can you think of any other great ideas?
References:
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
I tend to have a more eclectic taste in music and having a racially diverse class made choosing a piece of music from the INCOMPETECH site easy for me- African and World! I wanted to see what they had available in the form of more culturally diverse music. I found a great variety of music but had trouble downloading it and then when it downloaded it took a long time to buffer to be able to play but that could be my old computer rather then the site. I love the fact that this site is free to download and able to be played to a group of people without the concern of copyright breaches because the organisation has already dealt with the Creative Commons Licence delemias for us (educators).
I had planned on adding the music to my lesson in the Gingerbread Man’s travels this week but I will have to play around with the site some more and see if I can find something else to download for my next lesson. Instead I am using a CD this week which I think will be just as entertaining and enjoyable for the children.
Other uses for music could be for-
· Setting the tone in the room while completing tasks (slow quiet music to calm students or more upbeat to motivate and re-energize students),
· Including students in the classroom (more diverse music rather than mainstream or generalized children’s music),
· The start of a lesson (the students hear a certain type of music and know it is time for a specific KLA).
Bye.
P.S. Can you think of any other great ideas?
References:
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
Static Websites
Hi (Germans say hi too- did you know that?)
Doing a Google search for ‘Static Websites’ bought me across a wealth of information. Although one bit of information remained clear in each page I looked at. A static website is a website or web page that doesn’t need changing or updating often. A static website is also supposed to be quick to set up and require next to no maintenance so if the information you are trying to get across to readers doesn’t need to be changed often then a static website is for you!
Most of the information I read said any individual, business or company can have a static website. Most websites usually recommended people to have an active website so the person creating the website could change the content when or how often they like with minimal fuss. That way the website could still be static if the person in charge of it decided not to update or change it very often.
So basically websites whether active or static allow people to view the information you are attempting to get across to them.
Bye (Germans also say bye!).
Reference:
Static Websites. Retrieved the 13th of August 2009 from GemBiz. http://www.gembiz.co.uk/page5.html
Doing a Google search for ‘Static Websites’ bought me across a wealth of information. Although one bit of information remained clear in each page I looked at. A static website is a website or web page that doesn’t need changing or updating often. A static website is also supposed to be quick to set up and require next to no maintenance so if the information you are trying to get across to readers doesn’t need to be changed often then a static website is for you!
Most of the information I read said any individual, business or company can have a static website. Most websites usually recommended people to have an active website so the person creating the website could change the content when or how often they like with minimal fuss. That way the website could still be static if the person in charge of it decided not to update or change it very often.
So basically websites whether active or static allow people to view the information you are attempting to get across to them.
Bye (Germans also say bye!).
Reference:
Static Websites. Retrieved the 13th of August 2009 from GemBiz. http://www.gembiz.co.uk/page5.html
Saturday, August 15, 2009
E-Portfolios
Hej (hi in Swedish).
During some research I found that Lorenzo and Ittelson sum up what an e-portfolio is quite nicely by stating that it is a personal web based collection of work, responses to ideas and work and personal reflections that can be used to show case skills and accomplishments for a variety of situations and times. They then go on to add that e-portfolios are a valuable learning and assessment tool.
The how and why would I use this in a classroom environment led me to finding out several things- The e-portfolio could contain video and audio taped interviews with students, photographs and work samples that might be used to create discussions and high light students achievements. Using an e-portfolio would benefit and lead students to developing critical reflection, collective learning and knowledge sharing as skills to be used in and out of the classroom setting. It could also assist in the development of writing and communication skills, technology literacy skills and how to use digital media.
After discovering what an e-portfolio was and how it could be used, I signed up for Mahara (our university chosen e-portfolio) and got started looking around. It was all quite painless apart from the having to pay money part. Although in the long run it may well be a good investment. I haven’t started uploading anything of great interest there yet so it could be challenging once I do. I hope to adjust my resume and put that on there soon and then I hope to start adding lesson plans and ideas. Wish me luck as I do you on this exciting adventure into the unknown.
Hejda (bye in Swedish).
References:
Lorenzo, G. and Ittelson, J. (2005). An Overview Of E-Portfolios. Educause Learning Initiative.
During some research I found that Lorenzo and Ittelson sum up what an e-portfolio is quite nicely by stating that it is a personal web based collection of work, responses to ideas and work and personal reflections that can be used to show case skills and accomplishments for a variety of situations and times. They then go on to add that e-portfolios are a valuable learning and assessment tool.
The how and why would I use this in a classroom environment led me to finding out several things- The e-portfolio could contain video and audio taped interviews with students, photographs and work samples that might be used to create discussions and high light students achievements. Using an e-portfolio would benefit and lead students to developing critical reflection, collective learning and knowledge sharing as skills to be used in and out of the classroom setting. It could also assist in the development of writing and communication skills, technology literacy skills and how to use digital media.
After discovering what an e-portfolio was and how it could be used, I signed up for Mahara (our university chosen e-portfolio) and got started looking around. It was all quite painless apart from the having to pay money part. Although in the long run it may well be a good investment. I haven’t started uploading anything of great interest there yet so it could be challenging once I do. I hope to adjust my resume and put that on there soon and then I hope to start adding lesson plans and ideas. Wish me luck as I do you on this exciting adventure into the unknown.
Hejda (bye in Swedish).
References:
Lorenzo, G. and Ittelson, J. (2005). An Overview Of E-Portfolios. Educause Learning Initiative.
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