The value of WebQuests for teaching and learning is that they give students the chance to explore real-world problem solving skills in a way that presents pondering questions to them as well as allows them to work through a tutorial in order to learn these problem solving skills.
Tom March, creator of www.ozline.com, said in his article Why WebQuests (http://tommarch.com/writings/intro_wq.php) that,
“When students are asked to understand, hypothesize or problem-solve an issue that confronts the real world, they face an authentic task, not something that only carries meaning in a school classroom. Although you can't count on getting a response, when students do receive feedback from someone they didn't previously know, they join a community of learners and have their presence, if not their contribution, validated. When teachers choose a topic they know their students would respond to, they add to the relevance.” (1998)
I believe that WebQuests will greatly increase the motivation of students to learn because they present students with the opportunity of self-learning and are often more motivating when they are student-centered. Also, WebQuests often help students to create a community with their peers and thus feed off of each others desire to learn.
In this article found at: http://webquest.bmf.edu.hk/webquest/discol/essay/essay3_lfl_a.pdf, Zhou Yuxia concludes that WebQuests are designed to be self-learning and encourage students to reach for a higher level of skills through education. Although more research in this area is needed, through case studies it seems as though students do so when they encounter WebQuests that are less like traditional classroom teachings (i.e. lecturing).
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Discussion on Discussion Boards
One of the benefits to using discussion boards in a class is that this type of learning tool gives students the opportunity to interact with each other on a more personal level which then fosters more knowledge sharing opportunities between peers and thus could bring about a student with increased motivation to learn.
One way that I could use a discussion board in my “classroom” would be to have “students” post challenging questions to peers for a week and the person that comes up with the correct answer first would be given a small prize (the youth centre is all about giving out prizes). Another way that discussion boards could be used at the youth centre is to communicate with members of other youth centres in Nunavut about what programs are going on in their communities and have visitors to Computer Access Program (CAP) sites share knowledge.
Some of the challenges that teachers may face when using the discussion board tool for teaching and learning is that: students could easily get off subject if not monitored regularly, written communication is not as easily interpreted as verbal communication and thus some people may be misunderstood (i.e. sarcasm), some students may not be as timely in their responses as others and thus will hold back the class, and information may not always be correctly supplied by students.
One way that I could use a discussion board in my “classroom” would be to have “students” post challenging questions to peers for a week and the person that comes up with the correct answer first would be given a small prize (the youth centre is all about giving out prizes). Another way that discussion boards could be used at the youth centre is to communicate with members of other youth centres in Nunavut about what programs are going on in their communities and have visitors to Computer Access Program (CAP) sites share knowledge.
Some of the challenges that teachers may face when using the discussion board tool for teaching and learning is that: students could easily get off subject if not monitored regularly, written communication is not as easily interpreted as verbal communication and thus some people may be misunderstood (i.e. sarcasm), some students may not be as timely in their responses as others and thus will hold back the class, and information may not always be correctly supplied by students.
Cyber Bullying: It needs to be addressed
Over the last year, one of the main concerns at the Youth Centre that I run has been with our Computer Access Program (CAP) Site. It seems as though the visitors to our site have been, among other things, practicing cyber bullying. As the youth centre is a big place and we do not have funding for a position to concentrate only on the CAP site, this often comes to our attention when it is almost too late to do anything.
With that being said, something that must be understood about the way of life here in the north is that “only the fittest will survive.” It has always been the way of life here to take care of your family first and then whatever you had left over was shared with other families… no need to look to the future when you had to worry about surviving in the present. Children have always been taught that they need to be strong in order to survive, however, over the years it seems as though these children have taken this idea and come to conclude that in order to show that they are strong, they have to hurt others in the process.
To my knowledge, cyber bullying has harshly affected one teen in our community to the point that the teen upped and moved to another community. This is something that I would like to prevent in the future, as well as to guard from other more horrible things that come from this type of bullying. As this is the case, I thought to my self; “What is one of the most effective ways to communicate to the children here that cyber bullying is not okay?”
One of the ideas that I came up with was using the internet to find a good tool to communicate with…and what better than an animated YouTube video. Here is one that I found was done very well and was very helpful.
I am hoping to contact the elementary and high school here in Cape Dorset and ask them if I can do up a presentation about cyber bullying to present to the kids in the New Year. To me this is an issue that needs to be addressed by all members of our community and dealt with on a serious note before it gets out of hand and we have suicides occurring in result to bring cyber-bullied. The sad reality is…only when something like that happens will the community begin to take cyber bullying seriously.
With that being said, something that must be understood about the way of life here in the north is that “only the fittest will survive.” It has always been the way of life here to take care of your family first and then whatever you had left over was shared with other families… no need to look to the future when you had to worry about surviving in the present. Children have always been taught that they need to be strong in order to survive, however, over the years it seems as though these children have taken this idea and come to conclude that in order to show that they are strong, they have to hurt others in the process.
To my knowledge, cyber bullying has harshly affected one teen in our community to the point that the teen upped and moved to another community. This is something that I would like to prevent in the future, as well as to guard from other more horrible things that come from this type of bullying. As this is the case, I thought to my self; “What is one of the most effective ways to communicate to the children here that cyber bullying is not okay?”
One of the ideas that I came up with was using the internet to find a good tool to communicate with…and what better than an animated YouTube video. Here is one that I found was done very well and was very helpful.
I am hoping to contact the elementary and high school here in Cape Dorset and ask them if I can do up a presentation about cyber bullying to present to the kids in the New Year. To me this is an issue that needs to be addressed by all members of our community and dealt with on a serious note before it gets out of hand and we have suicides occurring in result to bring cyber-bullied. The sad reality is…only when something like that happens will the community begin to take cyber bullying seriously.
Thoughts on Online Assessment
Until my first year of university, I had never encountered a course that provided online assessment of the students work or tests. Although my high school was well off when it came to accessing technology (we had computers and programs to create yearbooks, etc.), the teachers never took advantage of online assessment (other than in computer class) to assess our learning. When I first encountered online assessment, I was not very fond of it. I have a bit of test writer’s anxiety, and the fact that I was being put into a completely different atmosphere and being tested a completely different way, well it flustered me to say the least. However, as the years have past, I have begun to get a little more comfortable with it but am still not very fond of it.
I believe that online assessment will become a very helpful and useful assessment style for teachers in the future but at this moment I do not believe that it is very practical. In the Designing online assessment of student learning article (Segrave & Rice, 2003) some of the advantages that are said to come with online assessment are: flexibility of assessment (who can do the assessing and what they can assess), quicker feedback (through automatic marking and on-screen feedback comments after tests), and more effective assessment (in regards to better integration of assessment throughout the course and being able to assess more from what has been taught).
Even though these are great advances for assessment in general, there are still many problems with the style of assessing.
Some reasons that Segrave and Rice (2003) put forth in their article and also why I believe that society is not yet ready for this type of assessment is because of the problems in relation to: authentication, fraud, security, logistics, high monetary costs and system reliability. As well, I believe that this type of assessment does not take into account the level of it’s disruption to those who have test writers anxiety.
Schools who use online assessment are looking into most of these problems and have taken steps to ensure that online assessment is being used properly (such as having back up labs for times of overflow and making sure that students have their student ID cards with them when they come in to take a test to verify that they are who they say they are) however, it seems that they don’t take much into account when it comes to the troubles that individuals could face when suddenly they are having to deal with changes in the way they learn and the environments they feel comfortable with.
When it comes to my test writers anxiety, I find that online assessment makes it worse because there are: no fixed locations (which means no familiarity with where you do your online assessment to where you learnt the material), fixed time limit (often represented as a countdown on a corner of your screen which tends to distract from the task at hand and add pressure), and different sounds in these environments (i.e. the clicking of keyboards, music from tests, clicking of mice, humming of the computers, squeaks of rolling chairs), and less personal initiative (finding time and motivation to get to the labs and do the tests in a timely manner).
I believe that online assessment will become a very helpful and useful assessment style for teachers in the future but at this moment I do not believe that it is very practical. In the Designing online assessment of student learning article (Segrave & Rice, 2003) some of the advantages that are said to come with online assessment are: flexibility of assessment (who can do the assessing and what they can assess), quicker feedback (through automatic marking and on-screen feedback comments after tests), and more effective assessment (in regards to better integration of assessment throughout the course and being able to assess more from what has been taught).
Even though these are great advances for assessment in general, there are still many problems with the style of assessing.
Some reasons that Segrave and Rice (2003) put forth in their article and also why I believe that society is not yet ready for this type of assessment is because of the problems in relation to: authentication, fraud, security, logistics, high monetary costs and system reliability. As well, I believe that this type of assessment does not take into account the level of it’s disruption to those who have test writers anxiety.
Schools who use online assessment are looking into most of these problems and have taken steps to ensure that online assessment is being used properly (such as having back up labs for times of overflow and making sure that students have their student ID cards with them when they come in to take a test to verify that they are who they say they are) however, it seems that they don’t take much into account when it comes to the troubles that individuals could face when suddenly they are having to deal with changes in the way they learn and the environments they feel comfortable with.
When it comes to my test writers anxiety, I find that online assessment makes it worse because there are: no fixed locations (which means no familiarity with where you do your online assessment to where you learnt the material), fixed time limit (often represented as a countdown on a corner of your screen which tends to distract from the task at hand and add pressure), and different sounds in these environments (i.e. the clicking of keyboards, music from tests, clicking of mice, humming of the computers, squeaks of rolling chairs), and less personal initiative (finding time and motivation to get to the labs and do the tests in a timely manner).
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Thoughts on Podcasting
Reading through the articles, the area of online communication that caught my attention and made me want to learn more about it was that of podcasting. Even though it is still a very new form of online communication, podcasting has gone through huge evolutionary strides over the last eight years. A Podcast, as explained by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting), is: “a digital media file, or a related collection of such files, which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.” The word “Podcasting” seems to have originated from the idea that Apples’ iPods were the first to have scripts developed for their media player which allowed the broadcasted “radio-like” communications over the Internet to be listened to portably, however, RSS feeds actually came about in 2000.
Although Podcasting began with broadcasting only audio files to communicate with subscribers, it did not stay that way for long. Some people still enjoy the “radio-like” communication to this day, but others have upgraded to a type of podcasting that involves more media. Some examples of these upgrades are: Videocasting, where visual and audio media meet to bring a message through syndicated feeds; and Audiocasting, where the words of a written document can be transformed to audio by a TTS (text-to-speech) engine so that you may listen to them rather than read them (great for the visually challenged/impaired).
Some of the ways that people have learnt to use this type of online communication to better their lives is by using it to: send sick children their school lessons at home, provide people with affordable audio tours to establishments, and send out public safety messages. Although it is a great way to communicate our thoughts and feelings, it no longer is specifically used for talk shows and blogging. (Wikipedia, retrieved Nov 7, 2007)
In response to the O’Reilly article, found at: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/07/20/WhatIsPodcasting.html, I would like to say that I found this article to be very informative and helpful. I especially liked the idea of giving the readers suggestions of programs to use for editing and other such production tasks, as well as the types of equipment to use for gathering the best quality audio that you can. I think that the article made it very clear to its’ readers that Podcasting is not an easy task to concur…but that if you take your time with it and experiment, you could have a lot of fun creating your own podcast.
Although Podcasting began with broadcasting only audio files to communicate with subscribers, it did not stay that way for long. Some people still enjoy the “radio-like” communication to this day, but others have upgraded to a type of podcasting that involves more media. Some examples of these upgrades are: Videocasting, where visual and audio media meet to bring a message through syndicated feeds; and Audiocasting, where the words of a written document can be transformed to audio by a TTS (text-to-speech) engine so that you may listen to them rather than read them (great for the visually challenged/impaired).
Some of the ways that people have learnt to use this type of online communication to better their lives is by using it to: send sick children their school lessons at home, provide people with affordable audio tours to establishments, and send out public safety messages. Although it is a great way to communicate our thoughts and feelings, it no longer is specifically used for talk shows and blogging. (Wikipedia, retrieved Nov 7, 2007)
In response to the O’Reilly article, found at: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/07/20/WhatIsPodcasting.html, I would like to say that I found this article to be very informative and helpful. I especially liked the idea of giving the readers suggestions of programs to use for editing and other such production tasks, as well as the types of equipment to use for gathering the best quality audio that you can. I think that the article made it very clear to its’ readers that Podcasting is not an easy task to concur…but that if you take your time with it and experiment, you could have a lot of fun creating your own podcast.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Realizations: Pros and Cons of E-Learning
Originally, I was going to write about how informative I found the "Working the Web for Learning" article to be. Going through it was a breeze and the examples were actually really cool to try out (it gave me a few ideas for cyber camps), but then I read the BBC News article, "UK and China sign E-learning deal" and some things struck me as important to turn my attention to. Not until that moment, after reading the entire article, did I realize how e-learning could impact our societies.
Pros to e-learning:
1. Many people choose to leave their homelands in order to acquire a better quality of life; however some eventually miss their original residences and want to return home. E-learning will allow these people to become educated in the curriculum of their homeland and return there with an education relevant to that country and thus making it easier for them to acquire a job there.
2. The e-learning movement may allow schools in countries where English is the second language to save money on the hiring of ESL teachers from other countries. As well, students who want to learn other languages will not necessarily have to attend special language schools or physically attend classes at a school...they will just have to sign on.
3. Doctors of other countries, such as India, have always had a hard time coming over to Canada and acquiring a job as a physician in this country because the schooling and practices in India are not compatible to our practices and schooling. With the coming of e-classes, doctors in other countries will have a better chance at getting jobs in their career field, even maybe even their exact positions prior to their move.
Cons to e-learning:
1. Producing and supplying systems for e-learning is becoming a major market economy. As stated in the BBC News article, the UK has claimed 28 billion British pounds in education exports (in Canadian dollars that works out to approximately 56 billion dollars). Although this is good for the countries that are involved in this marketing economy, it is not so great for those countries that cannot afford to produce these systems, nor is it great for those countries that cannot afford to buy these systems. Rather it is creating a larger gap between the rich and poor countries because it is allowing those better off countries the opportunity to get higher quality and more accessible education. Thus, allowing for the less wealthy countries to be left in the wealthier countries technology-laden “dust”.
2. One thing that bothered me when reading the “UK and China sign E-learning deal” article, was the statement made by Mr. Sanghrajka saying that the “best practices in one country will be applied elsewhere.” Who is to decide what the “best practices” are?? I mean, I don’t argue with the fact that it would be nice to common practice to many things, such as health care practices, in every country. But, how do we say that one thing works better than another? How can we limit people like that? The only good thing about this is that it won’t limit people to work in only one country….for those that wish to travel, it will allow them to do that work that they are familiar with and still see those places that they always dreamed of visiting.
Conclusion:
With e-learning being a fairly new thing to most countries, there will be a few kinks to work out. So long as countries are willing to work together and agree on "best practices" together, this e-learning thing looks to be very encouraging as a revolution in the education atmosphere. Now, if we could just get everyone to agree that education should be free to all....we'd make huge leaps!
Pros to e-learning:
1. Many people choose to leave their homelands in order to acquire a better quality of life; however some eventually miss their original residences and want to return home. E-learning will allow these people to become educated in the curriculum of their homeland and return there with an education relevant to that country and thus making it easier for them to acquire a job there.
2. The e-learning movement may allow schools in countries where English is the second language to save money on the hiring of ESL teachers from other countries. As well, students who want to learn other languages will not necessarily have to attend special language schools or physically attend classes at a school...they will just have to sign on.
3. Doctors of other countries, such as India, have always had a hard time coming over to Canada and acquiring a job as a physician in this country because the schooling and practices in India are not compatible to our practices and schooling. With the coming of e-classes, doctors in other countries will have a better chance at getting jobs in their career field, even maybe even their exact positions prior to their move.
Cons to e-learning:
1. Producing and supplying systems for e-learning is becoming a major market economy. As stated in the BBC News article, the UK has claimed 28 billion British pounds in education exports (in Canadian dollars that works out to approximately 56 billion dollars). Although this is good for the countries that are involved in this marketing economy, it is not so great for those countries that cannot afford to produce these systems, nor is it great for those countries that cannot afford to buy these systems. Rather it is creating a larger gap between the rich and poor countries because it is allowing those better off countries the opportunity to get higher quality and more accessible education. Thus, allowing for the less wealthy countries to be left in the wealthier countries technology-laden “dust”.
2. One thing that bothered me when reading the “UK and China sign E-learning deal” article, was the statement made by Mr. Sanghrajka saying that the “best practices in one country will be applied elsewhere.” Who is to decide what the “best practices” are?? I mean, I don’t argue with the fact that it would be nice to common practice to many things, such as health care practices, in every country. But, how do we say that one thing works better than another? How can we limit people like that? The only good thing about this is that it won’t limit people to work in only one country….for those that wish to travel, it will allow them to do that work that they are familiar with and still see those places that they always dreamed of visiting.
Conclusion:
With e-learning being a fairly new thing to most countries, there will be a few kinks to work out. So long as countries are willing to work together and agree on "best practices" together, this e-learning thing looks to be very encouraging as a revolution in the education atmosphere. Now, if we could just get everyone to agree that education should be free to all....we'd make huge leaps!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Text Processing: Affects and Impacts
There used to be a time, probably back in my great great grandmothers' schooling years, when textbooks consisted of ninety percent words on a page and the other ten percent was diagrams and drawings. Certainly, efforts were minimally made, through the written text process, to help children create visuals to better understand what they were reading.
Although, one thing is undeniable...educators back then were a little more hands on with their teaching as compared to today's educators. Teachers took students on road trips, encouraged participation in science experiments, and related teachings to personal experiences on a regular, almost daily, basis. It was a time when students could learn at their own pace.
Today, however, things have changed. With the coming of the Internet, web casts, blogging, and online education, children are being faced with an education that is less hands on and more "virtual" on, with a lot shorter time to learn things. Children are now able to watch a science experiment in a classroom across the other side of the world; they can click on a link that brings them to pronunciations for words in a foreign language; or they can skim through other students essays to get a better understand of Shakespeare’s plays.
In relation to publishing over the internet and the ability of students to process the text that they are reading, we have entered a time in education history where it has become very important for web authors to be extremely familiar with micro and macro-structures. Not only do web authors have to take these structures into consideration when writing, they also have to make sure that the sites they are creating are visually appealing and easy to navigate. What must not be forgotten by web authors is that throughout students schooling years, they are taught “shortcuts” in relation to reading. Skimming through articles and picking out the topic sentence or glancing at the paragraph headings has become a very important part of helping a student to figure out whether an article or paper is of any significance to their studies.
Students today are faced with a wealth of information being shot their way, and if web authors do not take into consideration the importance of writing a visually appealing and structurally sound article or paper, it is likely that their published material will be passed up, even if it is of great importance to a students learning process.
Although, one thing is undeniable...educators back then were a little more hands on with their teaching as compared to today's educators. Teachers took students on road trips, encouraged participation in science experiments, and related teachings to personal experiences on a regular, almost daily, basis. It was a time when students could learn at their own pace.
Today, however, things have changed. With the coming of the Internet, web casts, blogging, and online education, children are being faced with an education that is less hands on and more "virtual" on, with a lot shorter time to learn things. Children are now able to watch a science experiment in a classroom across the other side of the world; they can click on a link that brings them to pronunciations for words in a foreign language; or they can skim through other students essays to get a better understand of Shakespeare’s plays.
In relation to publishing over the internet and the ability of students to process the text that they are reading, we have entered a time in education history where it has become very important for web authors to be extremely familiar with micro and macro-structures. Not only do web authors have to take these structures into consideration when writing, they also have to make sure that the sites they are creating are visually appealing and easy to navigate. What must not be forgotten by web authors is that throughout students schooling years, they are taught “shortcuts” in relation to reading. Skimming through articles and picking out the topic sentence or glancing at the paragraph headings has become a very important part of helping a student to figure out whether an article or paper is of any significance to their studies.
Students today are faced with a wealth of information being shot their way, and if web authors do not take into consideration the importance of writing a visually appealing and structurally sound article or paper, it is likely that their published material will be passed up, even if it is of great importance to a students learning process.
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