Online Collaboration and my venture into CCTI

Friday, January 24, 2014

USE of GROUP ROLES

As I continue toward my final destination, a completed project that facilitates project based learning I can say that it has been an enjoyable experience thus far, even at those moments where I felt challenged. Designing with my students in mind certainly takes a lot of preparation but in the end I am confident that I will have a project worthy of my students and comfortable to know that i can add it to my resources for classroom use in the future (with tweaking as needed of course).

Assignment of group roles can prove to be a little tricky sometimes but once you keep in mind that you are providing a real world context to the students, things tend to take shape as you proceed. Remember also to provide roles that the students will be excited by and tasks that allow the students to have ownership of the project so that they are encouraged to continue working on the project. It may become necessary as you progress with your design to review the roles assigned and make changes as necessary. For me and the project I chose it was not difficult to assign group roles in this particular project because of the nature of the said project but let's see how I do in future projects. I am confident that practice will make perfect.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Reflections of a Facebook Teacher or why we should use Facebook in the Classroom

Click on the link below

Reflections of a Facebook Teacher

Friday, December 20, 2013

Beginning a WebQuest

To boldly go where no teacher at my school has gone before! Set your phasers on stun Mr. Tim, the mission proceeds as planned.

Truly i feel impatient to get to the end of the journey and have a complete WebQuest ready for my students in the new term.

To date, i have done the Introduction and the scenario to the quest and i can say that while it was not that difficult, care must be taken to word them properly bearing in mind that the introduction is the tool that will grab the attention of the students and intrigue them to be part of the task and the scenario lends realism to their roles in the group. Thank God for graphics! A well written introduction and a very appropriate graphic can combine to achieve that task of bringing the student into that eagerness to want to pursue the quest. Bear in mind that you should, in my opinion, be as concise as possible in your wording because anyone can be put off from reading through by lengthy words. I think that WebQuesting is going to be very enjoyable for me, i can only hope that my skill to design them meets the needs of my students because i can totally see this being employed in my classes from here on out.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

WebQuests! Am I excited or what?

WebQuests, the answer to my prayers! For sometime now i as well as other teachers have given students research to do online and all too often we receive plagiarised copies of web pages as their work. I felt it to be a complete failure on my part to provide students with new understandings. Of course the problem was me because of the way i would structure the research and how it was executed. Oh i did try several strategies to aid the learning process but i knew at the back of my mind that something was still not right and being the technophile that i am, it was depressing!

The answer? WebQuests! I cannot express fully how much i love the concept. Excerpted from my online discussion with my group i said, "Quests allow students to employ higher thinking skills perhaps without their realising that they are indeed so engaged. I think WebQuests can indeed facilitate the project approach when conducting the research part of the project and what makes it engaging is that the students are able to work online, conduct their research, answer questions, analyse situations and gain new understanding in a totally non traditional way of chalk and talk. Group work allows the students to feel that they are in charge of their project and responsible for their contributions to the group." Indeed i have gained new knowledge on how to conduct a project and how to facilitate online research for that project using a WebQuest and i am ready to try them both! Once i learn how to design a WebQuest properly of course. I want to be able to see first hand how this would work for my students and of course, being a Head of Department , i would like to share both approaches with my teachers in the department since we use the project approach and online research a lot in the teaching of Technology Education.

So bring it on! I am ready to learn more about WebQuests!

So in looking around YouTube to gain some more info about WebQuests, i found a couple that grabbed me

WHY USE WEBQUESTS?