Reflection 5

 

Part A. Webquest

Webquests represent a more learner-centered, inquiry-based approach to learning focused on ‘an activity’ rather than mere information or skill alone as the unit of learning. In light of your own experience in developing a webquest, what do you think are the main advantages (and any significant disadvantages) of the Webquest model in comparison to traditional transmission and teacher-centered approaches to learning?

 

As teachers our aim to nurture students to becoming life-long learners. One way to achieve it would be to in-cooperate various styles of teaching. By going through this module, I have learnt of the various ways that we can teach using the Internet. Other then just giving the pupils web-addresses to visit and learn on their own I learnt that I am actually able to us the Internet to introduce my lesson content and introduce pupils to self-studying methods using the web quest. It is through the web quest where I will be able to teach my pupils the content and in a way control their exploring of the web. (As I would list the closely related web sites in the resources page section)

Some advantages of using web quest are that:

- It allows students to participate in a more learner-centered environment where they are encouraged to work individually and to a certain extend with a team; doing research on the related topic and then sharing their findings with each other.

- Pupils who are new to these style would not feel out of place as there are listed web sites given to them to explore and pupils would not be left behind. And they also won’t waste their time trying to explore the web for related topic

- Pupils would learn to pay attention to only required and important information thus teaching them the skill of self-study.

- Since pupils would have to find and orgainse their findings, they are being developed with the skills of being authentic learners.

 

Part B. Seminar Presentation Focus

Briefly recount the ‘story’ of how you developed your Web Resource in terms of addressing the following prompts (no. 2 and 3 where appropriate):

1. How did you go about coming up with a specific theme (in relation to a chosen subject) that was suitable for organizing a web search and resource development?

2. To what extend did you change your general topic or your ideas for a topic resource page before coming up with a final version? – In terms of (a) any obstacles or design problems face (if any, what were these) and/or (b) trying to improve your idea or the web pages you were working on?

 

I have always enjoyed the subject of Science compared to any other subject. So when I have to choose the topic for my web quest it was not surprising that it would be related to science.

I had wanted my topic top be on a primary four science unit of Matter. It is a topic, which I had worked on before, and finding resources for the topic wont have been a problem. However, I decided to do something new simply at present, 'water' is in a way a hot topic for Singapore at the moment. I felt that I should focus into this by which I would not only be learning new content on the topic but I can actually make use of what I do now later on while actually teaching my pupils the topic of the water cycle.

When I started to construct my web quest, I realized that I had a few problems. Firstly, not only was designing a web page new to me, use of IT as in using the software page builder, was totally new to me. I had to first spent time getting used to the software and learning how to use the different tools available through the tutorial on the web site.

Finally when I got comfortable with the idea, I had problems with trying to organise the way I want my page to look. I went to learn how to use up load graphic and pictures in page builder so as to use the pictures and graphics, which I liked, and more related to the topic. The already made available pictures from the software were nice and interesting but not all were related to my topic.