We have taken the course 5 weeks ago and now are just in the middle of our learning process. I would call it a gold mean as we have already learned a lot and will acquire much more invaluable knowledge.
This week we discussed the advantages of project-based learning which “aims to engage students in the investigation of real life problems and develop students’ creativity, problem-solving and lifelong learning” (Barron, 1998; Breault & Breault, 2005; Blumenfeld et al., 1991) (http://www.atesl.ca/cmsms/home/newsletters/december-2007/project-based-esl-education/). WebQuests as forms of PBL were a real discovery to me. Having read about these activitiesand looked through some great WebQuests created by educators I’d like to mention that it is definitely a new form of activity to engage our students to and make the process of learning English efficient and enjoyable.
Creative activities need special evaluation and here alternative assessment is of great help offering different methods (checklists, rubrics) to assess every step done by a student. The emphasis is made on a student’s strengths. Performing one of the tasks for this week I have created a rubric on RubiStar to assess my students’ presentation skills on topic “Describing Graphs / Charts” (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&module=Rubistar&rubric_id=2151322&).
We continue our work on a project and this time we were to describe a potential change we are going to implement using technology. As my current goal is to improve my students' listening and comprehension skills I’ve decided to use the Class Blog as we have never done it before and I do hope it will help to enhance my students’ listening skills.
Hi Helen,
ReplyDeleteVery nice recap of this week’s activities. Time flies, doesn’t it? I can’t believe we are already half way through this webskills journey!
I have exactly the same impressions as yours about WebQuest – it’s a real discovery to me, too. Although I love technology and use it quite a lot in my teaching, I have never really used WebQuests before. After making my own WebQuest this week, I have found out that it is such an effective way to present lessons to students, and I plan to create more to use for my classes and share with my colleagues.
See you online in week 6, Helen.
Ky
Hi, Ky!
DeleteWe are surely moving forward.
You've done a great job creating your own WebQuest. I'm planning to make it in the nearest future.
Helen.
Hello, Helen.
ReplyDeleteI think everybody enjoyed WebQuests this week. PBL is very interesting, too, although it is something I have been doing for quite some time. I didn't think about it as such, but the design, steps, guidance, presentation were basically what we have been reading about. You can find an example of something nice I did using Facebook in my last blog post. Check it! Maybe you'll like it!
Hello, Luisa!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your suggestion. I'll certainly check it.
Helen