This
week I wrote my first webquest and I liked this experience very much.
What
I like most is that students get involved in the project literally from the
very start of it – from choosing the topic! Let’s do what we all like, what is
close to our national tradition, what will bring the best fruit to all of us.
The
topic being chosen, we move on to assigning roles. Here again, we can
distribute tasks according to what a person likes – collecting information,
analyzing it and making conclusions, writing essays, or working on the
technological side of the project. Everyone can choose a task that corresponds
to his / her abilities and level of knowledge. This aspect is very important
since it allows all types of students (weak and strong, active and passive,
with various learning styles) to participate in group work.
The
results of the work can be presented in all sorts of ways and it will bring
creativity into the classroom. Modern technology gives a chance to make all our
ideas come true – with pictures, voice, animation, virtual, or real. So why don’t
we create something educationally profound and beautiful and share it with our
classmates and the whole world?
And
last but not least. Projects and webquests teach real communication and
collaboration. Students learn to work together and it resembles real life
situations – they learn to obey authorities depending on their positions, solve
conflicts, and contribute to achieving the mutual
goal.
A project /
webquest is like a game. We do not teach / learn, we play it. Here education
becomes fun to our benefit and, first of all, to the benefit of our students.
Dear Natalya,
ReplyDeleteWith pleasure, I have visited your blog, and this is an occasion for me, based on what you have posted, to reiterate that "the more the lesson is fun, the more students like it".
Ok, let's try it always!
We keep in touch!
Sosthene
Hi Natalya,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your successful experience of WebQuest in class. This gives me confidence to plan it into my class in the upcoming semester. It's summer vacation in Taiwan now. We still have some school lessons, but not very formal and long. I agree with your idea that it gives students opportunities to have their own decision making, cooperative leaning process, and creative learning outcome. In return, it can foster students' learning in autonomy. Moreover, it allows students to have a real communication and collaboration that make learning full of fun. I hope I can make it as successful as you did!
Best,
Yu-Zhen