Week 5 Sweet Tastes of PBL and WebQuests

     Finally, I'm relieved as I've done all my assignments though I'm not sure about their quality.  But as somebody said" Doing your best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment".
     This week has been full of activities, all challenging, interesting and worth the efforts made. I've read about PBL and WebQuests and thought about ways how they might work in my classroom. I'm fascinated by their beauty and utility as they ask students to learn in a new way. I've read Susan Gaer's article where she focuses on less teaching and more learning. She amazingly reveals that PBL builds trust between staff and students because the latter are given a voice and teachers are put in a place of learning right alongside students.
I came across a very nice poem written by Matti Helela   
        In education it is trust
       That gives a thrust
       It creates a positive atmosphere
     And learning can appear.                                                     
                 Sharing the responsibility
                 Enhances the ability
                 To learn the knowledge and skills
                 That give the chills.
Without interaction
We learn a fraction
Together we learn indeed
The skills we really need.
       

      The poem underlines the benefits of student-teacher collaboration / student autonomy. By going deep and taking an active role in their own learning, students retain a great deal more than when teachers "stand and deliver"

     This week we have started to look at different technologies that could be used for our projects. I've described some potential tecnology changes I would do in order to overcome the class issues described last week (poor writing skills and lack of collaboration). I must confess that at the beginning of the week I had butterflies in my stomach as I was supposed to choose the right tool that suits the problems mentioned above. I didn't know what technology could be the most appropriate. Now I feel lighter and renewed with enthusiasm thanks to Robert, our mentor, who helped me narrow my chaotic ideas and choose a good tool. I think a WebQuest on making a class newspaper would be a great idea. 

     After being a little apprehensive at creating a WebQuest I found it quite interesting. I've learnt the  different elements that go together to create it. Looking for the appropriate ressources for the task was time consuming but worthwhile. I've discovered such a wonderful tool to cultivate learners' autonomy.

      And this is not all. I've created my own Rubrics on RubiStar for one of my classes, namely for an essay "The Inernet - the death of the newspaper?". The rubrics are easy to create and could be applied for any lesson. They save time and establish good and clear evaluation criteria. The rubrics monitor the students' performance by showing them how to meet their teachers' expectations. I wish I could have discovered RubiStar earlier!  But as we all know it is never late........

    See you next week!