nicole’s ND blog

This week, i found to be the best week so far, as i had no idea that WebQuests even existed, let alone how to use one and incorporate them into a classroom situation. In observing other people’s WebQuests i was able to determine for and against points present in each WebQuest and why they were positive and negitive. The use of the rubric as a form of evaulating the WebQuests, was a great idea as learners such as myself were able to determine what is required to produce an effective and informitive WebQuest. The Study guide was also a very effective tool for me in understanding the idea of WebQuests, i found that in looking up some of the WebQuests listed i was able to further my understanding of what a ‘good’ WebQuest is.

By having the resources supplied by the teacher or WebQuest designer, compared to having students find resources for themselves creates many advantages and disadvantages for students and teachers.

Positive points:

• allows teacher to evaluate students method of locating information
• allows students to sort out relevant information from non important
• can easly determine if students are plagiarising
• provides the same information to all students and thus all are on an equal, this is of great use for students in particular who don’t have access to the internet at home.
• teachers can control what sites are avaliable to students and thus students are unlikely to locate inappropriate information
• objectives and outcomes are very easy to comprehend

Negitive points:

• Students are unable to improve on their researching techniques and exploration of the Web
• Teachers are unable to assess outcomes concerning the use of the internet, in terms of effective research, as the websites are already provided

As seen the postives for webQuests far out-way the negitives for their use as an eduational resource.

WebQuests are suitable for most types of learning situations and scenarios, however not all learning can be done via WebQuests. A concept or idea must first be taught and explained by a teacher in order for a child to succeed in this type of learning. Learning is an ongoing process after birth and young children are also not always suited to computer based learning, as many are too young and inexperienced.

 WebQuests are very effective resources for a constructivist approach to learning, as they provide an interactive environment for which children can be apart of their own learning. The two particular WebQuests i studied, were very effective in this area, as they assigned students specific roles within a group and as a result students are not only interactive with the WebQuest, but also with other students.

Lev Vygotsky’s idea of scaffolding, is very evident within the process or task page, this page is often a summary or outline of what the students need to do. This is very effective for children, as it allows them to easily understand what is is they need to do to achieve a satisfactory mark.  

 Overall i found both WebQuests very valuable in terms of resources, and WebQuests in gerneral to be very effective and interactive for both students and teachers.

Two webQuests i studied on Ancient Egypt:

PORTFOLIO ITEM: 3

WebQuest 1    

WebQuest 2

Today was quite an interesting lesson, despite already visiting the presentaion link i did not realise the widgit link, and to be quite honest i had no idea what a widgit was but now after the workshop i am understanding a bit more about posting and how the blog site operates.

Despite reading the study guide for this week i was still slightly confused on hyperlinks however through the portfolio activity i was able to understand the hyperlinks and how to be more effiicent in creating them. As previously i had heard of them but never actually created them correctly, as in they never actually linked to the designated website.

PORTFOLIO ITEM 2:  portfolio-item-2-search-engines.doc

Through reading this weeks study guide i found that there were many uses for the interent in education that i had never heard of before! like the  computer white boards, i really found it interesting as to how advanced technology was and overall how advanced young children are with technology. As an example i went to visit my uncle in singapore recently and his 3yr old daughter has her own webpage and knows how to opperate it!!!!!!

The other thing this weeks lesson did was open my eys as to how technology is helping stuents of the 21st century learn and develop, for example some of the online projects and classroom resources listed just amazed me.

The workshop also revealed to me how important it is to understand how the internet works in order for the teacher to be able to help student. This really appied to me as im not too bad at using the computer, but as for knowing how it works…..well thats a different story…. so overall i found this workshop vary interesting as a lot of the information in the studyguides was very new to me.

This week i found i was a little ahead of the rest of the class as this lesson was more of a catch up lesson for those that didn’t attend  the previous workshop. However i was able to fix up my compencies link which was failing to work, with the help of my lecturer and a couple of other students in the class.

Im looking forward to next week as im hoping to be able to improve my word processing skills, and in particular my table making skills.

Here are the results of my ICT competency test. To be quite honest i was surprised as to how little i knew about the programs listed on the competencies sheet. Despite being ok at word processing, i seem to have very limited knowledge of visual design programs such as photoshop and programs such as imagine which i actually have never heard of before. Clearly i have quite a lot of work to do to be able to pass this unit and be able to pass my knowledge on to future students.

I honestly believe that this course will be of great help to me as technology is becoming more and more apart of primary school environments and students lives.