Week Five

“Any growth requires a temporary loss of security.” – Madeline Hunter

This quote certainly reflects my feelings at the beginning of this week as I started reading through the reading resources for this week. I had never used, or to be exact, never seen a WebQuest prior to this session. I have always had extreme confidence with every single session until this one. Therefore, I prepared myself for a long day with my laptop and began reading all the articles, searching the internet and looking at sample WebQuests until I had a clear idea of what it is. I compared Zunal and Questgarden and decided to go for Zunal especially after reading through the rather detailed explanation about WebQuests on their website.

The next step for me was to start building my own, which is when I needed to take a break to think about what I should be including in my WebQuest, in addition to making sure it would fit my newly decided upon group of learners who are English Teachers. It was indeed tiring as I would write a plan sketch and think it would be final, but change it a few minutes later. Finally, after going through five different ideas, I decided on creating a Jigsaw group activity where teachers would work together to create a unit of literature. The ultimate aim behind this webQuest is not only to create the unit, but to have teachers experience integrating web tools into their teaching by  providing them with a sample WebQuest and help them experience project based learning. Creating the WebQuest took hours upon hours to complete (and I will continue to work on it), especially when describing the process and creating an explanatory Prezi. Although it is very time consuming, I feel that it is worth every effort as teachers can use WebQuests to create a cooperative and supportive learning experience for his/her students.

One of the reasons I decided to use the Jigsaw method was because I gave extra attention to the articles about Project Based Learning which describe a positive experience for the students (the examples by Susan Gaer). Indeed, I wanted to create a memorable and meaningful experience for teachers while encouraging them to work together towards an ultimate goal. The teacher in this case, would serve only as a guide and observer while students work independently and are responsible for their own learning process. This is, in fact, one of the main ideas in the New English Curriculum in Israel which strongly emphasizes the idea that meaningful learning is based on learning by doing:

An additional task for this week included creating a grading rubric on Rubistar. I felt this was fairly easy to do when using this website as it offers free templates which can be modified and adapted according to the teachers’ needs. When discussing the issue on Nicenet, it was apparent that all participants find rubrics useful and I am sure we will continue to revisit and use the site as it makes our job slightly easier. I have always used rubrics for exams, assessing the four skills and even for peer assessment and I will continue to use them in the future. However, I intend to give self-assessment a try as well in hope of it becoming an integral part of my assessment plans.

When combining alternative assessment, project based learning and rubrics, it is apparent that the goal is create autonomous learners who effectively interact with others, independently analyze information, take responsibility for their own learning and use their skills to create and be creative. All the session tasks and provided readings were of immense importance to me and as I have mentioned before, I am indeed growing as a teacher and becoming more aware of the needs of my students. Every week presents a new concept and the practical applications, I believe, are of great importance because that is how we learn, by experiencing.

I cannot wait for next week’s session as it states that we will be creating an interactive presentation.

Nahla

Gaer, Susan. "Less Teaching and More Learning". FOB, Vol. 2, Issue D, Dec. 1998