6.9.4 Lessons Learnt

                                                            

I struggled through this course.  Lesson six was quite heavy and demanding. The Web-quest was a big challenge.

The WebQuest is something any one can do. However, it was such a put-off for me because it was more demanding than I could imagine. Why does it encourage the teachers do design projects in the same way? Especially at the tasks and process. I tried my hand at creativity with Literature and it was thrown out. Why is it so restricting? My mind stopped working!

I learnt that the teacher can create a WebQuest from examining the problems in his vicinity and, with the children deeply involved in an investigative problem-solving and later on work together collaboratively, their minds can be sharpened in many ways.

I am still staggering under the weight of getting a total grip of the Web Quest. I am determined to use it with Literature. Literature is about life. The substance of literature is born out of life experiences and I will think out of the box and the restrictions of the Zunal to come up with a successful project in Literature.

Prossy Sengooba. Edward Ayo… without you having gone out of your way , I would have been a drop out by now….A million thanks for holding my hand and directing it purposefuly. I promise you  a treat at Cafe Javas.

6.8.4 Formative and Product Assessment

I was forced to rework my webquest after a mind clarification process. My web quest centers on  a writing project - in order to produce a magazine for a newspaper based on Uganda’s celebration of her Golden Jubilee of independence in the year 2012 titled: memoirs of Uganda at 50.

From developing this project gave me the following insights:

The writing process is in self an evaluation process  provided the teacher gives the learners the guiding questions for each step of process assessment. It is in this regard that I provided questions that prompt their thinking during the process phase and also a self –evaluation questionnaire at the end of the project: refer to my Zunal (in the conclusion). The purpose of this is to   help the student reflect on their own work and thus assess it objectively.

The students worked together in teams to polish their projects before they presented the final product for a general class evaluation. It is at this point that I used the rubric I had created as an assessment for the finished product (product assessment).

Conclusively, finding the right assessment method depends on what you are really trying to assess in terms of skills or knowledge or understanding.

Oh Gerald has just condemned my work as a mere assessing of writing skills- not a challenge at all- lacking in the elements of a good project. I am shot at the back. I have ran out of ideas, I have worked so hard to put the work together. Anyone with an idea of what and where and how I can improve? Visit my webquest at: http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=325524  Thank you.

6.7.4 The Processing phase

                                                

This may sound academic but it is what I learnt while constructing the step-by-step process phase. It is akin to the ‘body’ of an ordinary lesson plan except that the learners work a lot on their own and the output is the end-product of what the web quest is about.

It is quite demanding for the teacher to make the process phase short clear and to the point; laying down tasks clearly and concisely. These tasks   can be divided into sub  tasks which include collaborative group roles and descriptions of roles to be played or perspectives to be taken by each learner. Putting the learners in Collaborative groups enables them learn how to solve problems and interact socially and take ownership of their learning. On the other hand, students are also left to learn on their own   and get together afterwards in order to share knowledge. The teacher provides the hyperlinks as a guide to the resources that the students will use to research, analyze and draw conclusions about the data they have gathered or the problem they have solved. The teacher can also provide a template on to which the learners respond or pose a research question.

6.4.5 : The Webquest and Role Play

Role play is defined as pretending to be someone else or pretending to be in a specific situation that you are not actually in at the time.

How is it used in a WebQuest? It is enhanced by wrapping motivational elements around the basic structure by giving the learners a role to play and scenario to work with. Students (players) are given some information about the problem. Students self-select the roles and give themselves pseudonyms in order to investigate an issue from more specialized perspectives. While playing out the role and analyzing the sites, selected by the teacher, they become “experts” on a certain aspect of the problem. So, finally, they complete real world task and create a presentation or a product to demonstrate their knowledge. In this way, “knowledge and skills are learned in the contexts that reflect how knowledge is obtained and applied in everyday situations”.

The difference between the role play in a WebQuest and the role play I used to conduct in my Language classroom is that the former is in the form of a big project, involving self –directed learning and investigation, promoting higher order thinking and creativity in order to solve a real world problem while the latter involved a very short skit focusing more on the acting but relegating the critical thinking, investigative skills and the creation of a new product to demonstrate knowledge.

This is an eye opener for me.

6.4.4 The Challenge Phase

       
                         

The challenge phase of the project posed a real challenge to me. What should constitute the introduction? The tasks? What they? How should I approach these? I tried and failed. Tried and failed. Tried and failed again and again. Why?

I had steeped myself in the realm of failing to  un-learn and opening  up  to re-learning something new, new methodologies, new approaches and above all to open my mind to inventiveness and creativity. Gerald forced me out of my reverie by pointing out over and over again what constitutes a good introduction and what constitutes a good task.

Finally, I have come to appreciate that the introduction serves to whet the appetite of the learners, this needs to be written in a learner - friendly language. The introduction needs to lend itself gently to the tasks. The tasks which gain energy from the introduction,   describes the activities’ end-product – which in my case, is a presentation of an interview report conducted among the youth living in various contexts: Village, town, city- what drives their decision- making?

Anyhow- the struggle continues…I have just received a review that I need to improve the nature of my tasks and that some of them are too menial and redundant!  - Re learn, unlearn and over learn, Nellie- and Kudos to Gerald the tutor.

6.3.4 :thinking about WebQuests

"For never was a story of more woe
 Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 5.3

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember.
I do and I understand."
— Confucius

The marriage between the overriding question of my Webquest ‘What drives the choices we make?’  and my experience in creating a WebQuest resulted into  the image and quotations above.

"A WebQuest," according to Bernie Dodge, the originator of the WebQuest concept, "is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to allow learners focus on using information rather than on looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation."  

WebQuests give students a task that allows them to use their imagination and problem-solving skills. Communication, group work, problem solving, and critical and creative thinking skills are encouraged more than having students memorize predetermined content. The answers are not predefined and therefore must be discovered or created.

WebQuests allow students to explore issues and find their own answers particularly with controversial issues – My overriding question was ‘What drives the choices we make?’  Through a careful study of the characters in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the students were expected to process the information in meaningful ways and reach moral and ethical decisions guided by facts from the play and their life experiences.

Creating the WebQuest was a challenge to me in that I had to learn how to navigate the pages and also discover that I could use Microsoft Word to work my responses and copy and paste it to the Web Quest. In that manner I was able to save my data bundle, work better and smarter. WebQuests forces me to organise my information into manageable sections and also gives me the flexibility to work as I edit my work on the go.

6.2.4: EXPLORE. ANALYZE. PRESENT Shakespeare's tragedy ROMEO AND JULIET

EXPLORE. ANALYZE. PRESENT

Level:

Grade V Teacher trainees of English Language and Literature in English:  PBL Romeo and Juliet Program

Project Overview Duration:

5 weeks

Text:

William Shakespeare’s tragedy ROMEO and JULIET 

Project idea:

Great tragedies resonate throughout time. After a close reading of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet you will explore the story of these star-crossed lovers and examine the problems the characters in this play face. These problems reflect the problems people, especially teen-agers, face today.  You will think carefully about the motivations of the characters and the circumstances surrounding the tragic outcome of the play. You will research the real-world problem of what motivates people to do what they do in your groups and collaborate using google Docs in to developing its solution using evidence to support the claim, and presenting the solution through a multimodal approach.  (Combining print text, visual images, soundtrack and spoken word as in film or computer presentation media.)  Finally, you will respond effectively in a text response essay at the completion of your study.

We will be looking very closely at developing in you the following 21st century skills: critical & creative thinking, collaboration, self-monitoring and self-direction, leadership and project management skills.

We will be looking at achievement this curriculum standard:  Students create a wide range of text to articulate complex ideas. They make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, building on others’ ideas, solving problems, justifying opinions and developing and expanding arguments.

Driving Question:

What drives the choices we make?