5. Informally assess how foreign language & culture education webquests promote language learning.
I feel that webquests in FL classrooms can be useful, if carried out correctly. From the few webquests that I have found online, it seems that many seem helpful at the outset, however lack a key point to make them extremely useful in the classroom. Some constrain language learning by having the instructions in English. I have also seen that students simply write out answers on paper. By writing answers on paper and not posting or discussing answers, students are “islands” in the FL world. It seems more useful to have students post answers online, or to have the webquest more as a jigsaw. If teachers ask different groups of students to research different parts of the webquest and later have students share on a blog or through a Wiki, the students get the affordance of having a community of thinkers/learners, and can share with one another through the artifact.
6. Return with a definition and a single artifact of what you have assessed and one suggested change to the artifact that might improve it, making it more congruent to thinking together using technology.
First of all, I find it useful to define the term “Thinking Together Using Technology”. Although many people in our class would define this differently, here is my take on it: I feel that this term embodies many things. First of all, there is thinking. There are is a plethora of parts that go into this definition, but it has to do with a person pulling in information, processing the information utilizing prior knowledge, and coming to their own conclusions. Once a person has done this, they are able to utilize the conclusions that they come to and synthesize these conclusions. The metacognition that fuses together many personal conclusions and thoughts is what embodies thinking together. Now, we must pull in the technology piece. The last part of the puzzle, technology, is utilized to fuse and synthesize thoughts and connections while communicating through digital mediums (Twitter, tumblr, facebook, etc.) When people come together over these social mediums and make explicit and implicit connections, thinking together using technology is taking place.
A webquest is a scavenger hunt, of sorts, in which students utilize technology to find out information on certain topics, and when they are effective, they include scaffolding to build up knowledge and comfort leve.l For instance, students can look up words on a website and report back with them. Later, they might find sentences and report back with them. A constraint that I can foresee with webquests and my students is that they would write down what they find verbatim, and would not learn anything. I can picture my students skimming websites for the exact statement that is requested by the webquest, however not making connections.
In the webquest which I have discovered, it explicitly tells students the task, intro, process, evaluation. The webquest puts students in groups, and each member of the group has a certain role in the group. I have found two constraints with this webquest. The first is that the whole webquest is presented in English. I feel that at a minimum, instructions should be presented in Spanish. The other problem with this webquest is the fact that students do not have an opportunity to share their answers within the digital world. They only write answers on paper, and this constrains the “community of learners” (New London Principles)
Discussion: I feel that it was somewhat useful for me to do the webquest to find out more about this digital literacy. I already had a store of memory committed to the idea of webquests before completing this exercise. For this reason, I was able to breeze through the exercise. I found it helpful to get to play on the web while finding information about webquests. I had originally had the idea of using a webquest in my lesson (which I took out) and after looking at this webquest, I realized what I did not want to do. I was able to draw on the constraints of this webquest to be able to develop better webquests for my students later.
5. Informally assess how foreign language & culture education webquests promote language learning.
I feel that webquests in FL classrooms can be useful, if carried out correctly. From the few webquests that I have found online, it seems that many seem helpful at the outset, however lack a key point to make them extremely useful in the classroom. Some constrain language learning by having the instructions in English. I have also seen that students simply write out answers on paper. By writing answers on paper and not posting or discussing answers, students are “islands” in the FL world. It seems more useful to have students post answers online, or to have the webquest more as a jigsaw. If teachers ask different groups of students to research different parts of the webquest and later have students share on a blog or through a Wiki, the students get the affordance of having a community of thinkers/learners, and can share with one another through the artifact.
6. Return with a definition and a single artifact of what you have assessed and one suggested change to the artifact that might improve it, making it more congruent to thinking together using technology.
First of all, I find it useful to define the term “Thinking Together Using Technology”. Although many people in our class would define this differently, here is my take on it: I feel that this term embodies many things. First of all, there is thinking. There are is a plethora of parts that go into this definition, but it has to do with a person pulling in information, processing the information utilizing prior knowledge, and coming to their own conclusions. Once a person has done this, they are able to utilize the conclusions that they come to and synthesize these conclusions. The metacognition that fuses together many personal conclusions and thoughts is what embodies thinking together. Now, we must pull in the technology piece. The last part of the puzzle, technology, is utilized to fuse and synthesize thoughts and connections while communicating through digital mediums (Twitter, tumblr, facebook, etc.) When people come together over these social mediums and make explicit and implicit connections, thinking together using technology is taking place.
A webquest is a scavenger hunt, of sorts, in which students utilize technology to find out information on certain topics, and when they are effective, they include scaffolding to build up knowledge and comfort leve.l For instance, students can look up words on a website and report back with them. Later, they might find sentences and report back with them. A constraint that I can foresee with webquests and my students is that they would write down what they find verbatim, and would not learn anything. I can picture my students skimming websites for the exact statement that is requested by the webquest, however not making connections.
In the webquest which I have discovered, it explicitly tells students the task, intro, process, evaluation. The webquest puts students in groups, and each member of the group has a certain role in the group. I have found two constraints with this webquest. The first is that the whole webquest is presented in English. I feel that at a minimum, instructions should be presented in Spanish. The other problem with this webquest is the fact that students do not have an opportunity to share their answers within the digital world. They only write answers on paper, and this constrains the “community of learners” (New London Principles)
Discussion: I feel that it was somewhat useful for me to do the webquest to find out more about this digital literacy. I already had a store of memory committed to the idea of webquests before completing this exercise. For this reason, I was able to breeze through the exercise. I found it helpful to get to play on the web while finding information about webquests. I had originally had the idea of using a webquest in my lesson (which I took out) and after looking at this webquest, I realized what I did not want to do. I was able to draw on the constraints of this webquest to be able to develop better webquests for my students later.