Lernertagebuch von Friederike

Ok, I planned to do a WebQuest on gap years. And I started designing it... I really liked the idea. But: It was so difficult to find neutral websites on this topic. They're all so commercial - and I didn't like that. So I decided to do something else. This time I chose a very traditional topic of British culture: Queen Elizabeth II. I think that she is a very important person in British History already, particularly because she is has been reigning the country for so many years now. So why don't we bring our pupils closer to a British monarch that is still alive rather than talking only about former kings and queens? Furthermore, the yellow press makes people think that there's nothing more to Elizabeth II. than her childrens' scandals and affairs. We should inform our pupils that there's more!

I have thought about a possible topic for my WebQuest earlier but I didn't really come to a conclusion. For me it's quite difficult to decide on something. It should be something that students are really interested in - difficult... I thought about doing something on Harry Potter. But there are always pupils who hate that whole HP-boom so that wouldn't be fair. I thought about working on historic persons or ethnic minorities (e.g. Aborigines), one for each group but that still didn't really attract my attention. So last but not least I decided to change my perspective:

• Who will my WebQuest be for? - For teenagers from grade 10 onwards.  
• What kind of problems are they faced with? - As many of them are likely to leave school soon, it's important for them to consider how they would like to live their future life.

Everybody knows that it's hard to come to an occupational decision in a very young age. That's why more and more people prefer to take a so-called gap year between school and apprenticeship, university or job training. I think that it's really useful for students to inform themselves about possible ways how to deal with their future and a gap year definitely is one interesting alternative. So why not developing a WebQuest on possible ways of spending a gap year?

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Child labour
Ein webbasiertes Unterrichtsprojekt zu Kompetenzerwartungen des Kernlehrplans Englisch am Ende der Jahrgangsstufe 8

The new "Kernlehrpläne" focus on certain competences our students are meant to achieve. This didactic perspective is in need of new ways and methods in order to meet the requirements. Uppenkamp's and Ludwig's project is one attempt to do so.

Basically, I think they did a good job. Their project seems to me well-structured and quite elaborated. They thought of many ways to support both pupils and teachers by adding several handouts/papers on techniques as well as thematic aspects (although I wouldn't present "possible topics" to the students right from the start). By this means, the teacher steps in the background and the pupils are actviated and encouraged to a more self-dependent working and learning.

But still, there are some minor aspects which strike me:

• I could imagine to start the project in a different way. A film/picture etc. might be more interesting and motivating as an introduction to a new topic than a text.
  
• I'm not quite sure about the autocorrection via google. Basically, I like the idea of students correcting their own texts without the teacher marking everything. But I don't know whether this is an adequate method to deal with mistakes...
• The project is meant to cover about eight to twelve lessons. That means that each group works a long time on the individual topic. So perhaps it would be a good idea to present the dossiers not in class only but also on a paper board for the whole school or combine all outcomes in a webpage etc. Of course it's important that the whole class gets access to ALL dossiers as they are expected to write a test on "child labour" in general.

Die Landesakademie Baden-Württemberg für Fortbildung und Personalentwicklung an Schulen hat sich ebenfalls mit dem Thema Kinderarbeit und internetgestütztes Lernen beschäftigt und sich in diesem Zusammenhang auf die Methode des WebQuests bezogen. Mehr dazu: Globales Lernen am Beispiel "Kinderarbeit"

 

 

 

 

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

He was in his early fifties, between jobs, his wife dead ten years. When he saw the position advertised in the Wellington paper it struck him as highly romantic, and he was immediately attracted to it.

LIGHTHOUSEKEEPER. Stephen Island. References. Inquire T.H.Penn,Maritime Authority              

He took it . Sold his furniture, paid the last of the rent, filled two duffel bags with socks and sweaters and his bird watcher's guide, and hired a cart. Just as he was leaving, a neigbor approached him with something in her arms: pointed ears, yellow eyes. Take it, she said. For company. He slipped the kitten into the breast of his pea coat, waved, and started off down the road.

Stephens Island is an eruption of sparsely wooded rock seventeen miles northwest of Wellington. It is uninhabited. At night the constellations wheel over its quarter-mile radius like mythical beasts.

The man was to be relieved for two weeks every six months. He planted a garden, read, fished, smoked by the sea. The cat grew to adolescence. One afternoon it came to him with a peculiar bird clenched in its teeth. The man took the bird away, puzzled over it, and finally sent it to the national museum at Wellington for identification. Three weeks later, a reply came. He had discovered a new species: the Stephen Island wren.

In the interim the cat had brought him fourteen more specimens of the odd little buff and white bird. The man never saw one of the birds alive. After a while the cat stopped bringing them.

 

ource: T. C. Boyle: Descent of Man. Stories. Penguin Books 1987

no breech of copyright laws intended, published here for mere educational purpose

No Fear Shakespeare

... to be taken literally! In my eyes, this website is an excellent method to reduce student's fears of reading the works of William Shakespeare. Of course, it's also important for learners to dig into the world of Shakespeare's language. But reading for example MacBeth or The Merchant of Venice for the first time can easily cause frustration and disappointment. The students lose their interest in the books and as a consequence, they often read a German version of the classic rather than the English one. Isn't it better and doesn't it make more sense then to give students the possibility to use this website: Shakespeare's language side-by-side with a facing-page translation into modern English.

Musical English lesson

This website contributes a free range of worksheets and working ideas to teachers of English. I think that basically, working with music and songs in English lessons is a real chance to involve the pupils. Furthermore, music is a motiviating aspect for them. This website contains worksheets on contemporary artists (e.g. Black-eyed Peas, Robbie Williams, Eminem, Pink) and on "older" ones as well (e.g. Frank Sinatra, Beatles, Queen). Nevertheless, one should be careful not to reduce the motivating factor of the songs by working too much on their grammatical features!

 

To get a first idea what a web quest really is, have a look at "WebQuest für Eilige" (a German website).

The concept of WebQuests has been developed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March (1995, San Diego State University). He defines WebQuests as: "an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. Web-Quests are designed to use learner's time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis ans evaluation."

Pupils are meant to use the internet in order to acquire knowlegde on their own by surfing the WWW. In WebQuests, they get clear working structures and questions/tasks according to their level. By this means, the danger of an aimless surfing around the web can be reduced, time ressources are saved and frustrating experiences for the pupils can be avoided.

Susanne Brülls wrote a paper on WebQuests and had some intelligent ideas on "learning with WebQuests" (unfortunately in German...):

"Im Rahmen von WebQuests arbeiten SchülerInnen aktiv an der Aneignung und Aufbereitung von Wissen. Den Lernenden soll kein Faktenwissen übergestülpt werden, sondern ihnen soll auf der Grundlage von authentischen Situationen Gelegenheit geboten werden, Wissen selbst zu konstruieren. Dabei wird davon ausgegangen, dass

• Lernen ein aktiver und konstruktiver Prozess ist. Dazu gehört, dass der Lernende zum Lernen motiviert ist und Interesse an dem hat bzw. entwickelt, was er tut und wie er es tut.
• Lernen ein selbst gesteuerte Prozess ist, bei der der Lerner Steuerungs- und Kontrollfunktion übernimmt.
• Lernen ein interaktiver sozialer Prozess ist.
• Lernen situations- und kontextgebunden ist. Durch die Verwendung realer Kontexte soll der Transfer des anzueignenden Wissen auf andere Themen und Gegenstandsbereiche erleichtert werden.
  

Damit verfolgen WebQuests einen gemäßigt konstruktivistischen Ansatz von Lernen. Es eignet sich vor allem als Methode für zeitlich überschaubare Internetprojekte auf der Basis eines Sachthemas bzw. einer komplexen Fragestellung." (from: Brülls, Susanne: Themengebundene WebQuest-Portale als Ausgangspunkt für selbständiges Denken und Handeln im und durch das Internet, Oldenburg 2005)

A WebQuest contains the following features:

Introduction: Motivation, sets the stage, provides background information

Task: Something doable & interesting: series of questions, summary to be created, problem to be solved, position to be debated, creative work, something that requires thinking!

Information Resources: Specific, appropriate resources:web documents, experts available via Internet, searchable databases on the net, books and other documents, real objects

Process/Procedures: List of activities: Step-by-step instructions, Timeline

Learning Advice/ Guidance: Describe how to organize info: Guiding questions, directions to complete, checklists, timelines, concept maps, cause-and-effect diagrams, action plan

Evaluation: Assess student work: checklists, rubrics

Conclusion: Bring project to closure: remind learners about what they've learned, encourage learners to extend the experience

Other Elements: Roles to play, group collaboration guidelines, motivating scenario, teacher resources (source)

There are thousands of examples on the internet. Here are some websites to look at:

Connecting Teachers and Students

WebQuests für Englisch

The DaVinciCode WebQuest (don't look at the anwers! :-)

and many, many more...

 

Today, I'd like to give you some links and comments on learning, learning theories and web based learning.

http://www.funderstanding.com/about_learning.cfm                                                                                                     This website gives you a good (but brief) survey of 12 learning theories. Each explanation is divided up into the sections "definition", "discussion" (including criticisms), "how does the theory impact learning/education" and further "reading".

detailed information on BEHAVIOURISM

detailed information on CONSTRUCTIVISM

detailed information on the COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY (a web quest)

                                                                                                                                                                                               

Really good and informative: A clinical review (published in the BMJ, British Medical Journal) on web based learning. Here is an extract from the website:     

What is web based learning?  Web based learning is often called online learning or e-learning because it includes online course content. Discussion forums via email, videoconferencing, and live lectures (videostreaming) are all possible through the web. Web based courses may also provide static pages such as printed course materials. One of the values of using the web to access course materials is that web pages may contain hyperlinks to other parts of the web, thus enabling access to a vast amount of web based information. [more] 

 

 

 

Task: Try to find useful multimedia stuff on http://news.bbc.co.uk and think about using it in class.

Although the TV show "Big Brother" isn't particularly popular anymore, I assume that everybody knows it or has at least heard of it. So in order to introduce the film "Is Big Brother watching too much?" which is about public surveillance, I suggest a brainstorming about the TV show "Big Brother". I'm sure that most of the students will be highly motivated to join the discussion as it is/was something that they watched in their spare time.

After some first ideas are collected (which will certainly deal with the candidates of the show, but that's ok...) I'd ask the pupils whether they would take part in the show themselves or not. Of course, I'd ask them to give reasons for their opinion (collection of comments).

Then I'd show the film to them: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_6610000/newsid_6610300?redirect=6610331.stm&news=1&bbram=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbwm=1

Partner work: Where and when are we observed and/or controlled in our everyday life? Collect positive and negative aspects of public surveillance (film+own ideas).

Discussion in class: "Is Big Brother watching too much?" (possible inputs: Do you feel observed in your every day life? Do you want to be observed? Do we need public surveillance in our modern society or better said: Are there (moral?) limits to public surveillance?)

P.S.: Is Big Brother watching little Knut too much? *g* http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6600000/newsid_6605700/6605745.stm?bw=nb&mp=rm 

Hi everybody and welcome to my new blog! It  refers to the Hauptseminar "Web-Work, learner autonomy and English lessons".

Feel free to write comments and ask questions!