" The role of WebQuests in learning a foreign/second language"

" The role of WebQuests in learning a foreign/second language"

 

Webquests have been used in one form or another since the Web began to become popular and to be used in instruction with the arrival of the Mosaic browser in 1993. Bernie Dodge of San Diego State University is usually identified as the originator of the concept of the Webquest, which he which he defines as "an inquiry  oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources  on the internet. Webquest is useful and has its role in learning second or foreign language .One is that  Students are enthusiastic about learning through webquests. In participating in one of the Classroom connect quests (Galapagos) the students begged not to go back to the standard curriculum after the month  longendeavor.  This is a particularly good medium for low achievers.  Our results with those students using Webquests were outstanding. Also, With a quest students can be exposed to materials, people, activities and ideas that are not available in our standard text and are highly meaningful. In addition, Students tested after the quest experience achieved higher scores, had better retention of the information we were trying to get across. Also, Quests offer the student self pacing and self learning.  Whether they work individually or in groups does not change this. Furthermore,  Students learn through discovery and synthesis with a quest.  (if structured properly)  This higher level of thinking is what we are striving for all students to achieve. Also, Webquests offer an organized approach to using the web.  Students have resources at their fingertips and make the best use of time.  I believe there is nothing worse than using precious class and lab time to send a  student looking for websites on a topic. In addition, Students using webquests must use their thinking abilities. They are required  to compare, contrast, make decisions and recommendations. They cannot lean  on a quick cut and paste for their answers. So, Webquest is very useful for learning foreign and second language.

part2

“How would English language teachers use blogs, wikis and delicious with their students?” Don't answer in general.

Specify activity for each tool, a part of how I used it with you in EDU 401

I think that we should use technology in classes with students for example; using blogger posts to test
 student's skills in writing and grammar. Teacher asks the students to write a paragraph as short story or description of an event to measure their ability in writing, and the group's member's comment and correct the mistakes of their friends' posts.
By using delicious also, teacher can give the students hyper links to go over and also to share with other some links that useful for the class work . For example, a web site offers activities that help students in learning vocabulary such as giving them multiple choices with sentences to choose the correct word.
By using wiki teacher and students can create a data pace for the group works such as projects and creating lessons such as vocabulary and grammar activities

Reading

a.    Who are Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students as categorized by the author?

Digital Native students:

What should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N-[for Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-gen. But the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.

It  is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today‟s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age

Digital Immigrant teachers : So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital

Immigrants.

b.   List down 3 differences between Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students?

Digital Natives students: are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

But Digital Immigrants teachers:  typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice. These skills are almost totally foreign to the Immigrants, who themselves learned – and so choose to teach – slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously.

c.    What is meant by Digital immigrant accent? List down three examples of “digital immigrant accents.”

The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it.

examples of the digital immigrant accent:

They include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you – an even “thicker” accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). My own favorite example is the “Did you get my email?” phone call. Those of us who are Digital Immigrants can, and should, laugh at ourselves and our “accent.”

d.   According to the author, what is the biggest serious problem facing education today?

the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. This is obvious to the Digital Natives – school often feels pretty much as if we've brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them. They often can't understand what the Immigrants are saying. What does “dial” a number mean, anyway?

e.    “Should the Digital Natives learn the old way, or should their Digital Immigrants learn the new?”

I prefer the second choice, the digital immigrants learn the new way. Because today's learners are difference. They are no longer like the teachers when they were students. Kids born into any new culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist using the old. Smart adult immigrants accept that they don't know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate. Not-so-smart (or not-so-flexible) immigrants spend most of their time grousing about how good things were in the “old country.” There should be some improvement. First, our methodology. Today's teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. Second, our content. It seems to me that after the digital “singularity” there are now two kinds of content: “Legacy” content (to borrow the computer term for old systems) and “Future” content.

Legacy” content includes reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc – all of our “traditional” curriculum. It is of course still important, but it is from a different era.

“Future” content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological. But while it includes software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, etc. it also includes the ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them. This “Future” content is extremely interesting to today‟s students.

f.     What should the Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives?

So we have to invent, but not necessarily from scratch. Adapting materials to the language of Digital Natives has already been done successfully. 

for example ,In math, the debate must no longer be about whether to use calculators and computers . they are a part of the Digital Natives. world . but rather how to use them to instill the things that are useful to have internalized, from key skills and concepts to the multiplication tables. We should be focusing on ¡°future math¡± . approximation, statistics, binary thinking.

Another example, In geography – which is all but ignored these days – there is no reason that a generation that can memorize over 100 Pokémon characters with all their characteristics, history and evolution can‟t learn the names, populations, capitals and relationships of all the 101 nations in the world. It just depends on how it is presented.

We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us. The process has already begun – I know college professors inventing games for teaching subjects ranging from math to engineering to the Spanish Inquisition. We need to find ways of publicizing and spreading their successes.

Sustainability and CALL: Factors for success in a context of change

Hi all

This is my first time to use Blogger

I hope to enjoy blogging together and WELCOME in my blog ^_^

Sustainability and CALL: Factors for success in a context of change

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Claire Kennedy
Griffith University
Mike Levy
Griffith University


A team of university Italian teachers at an Australian university has been able to obtain enduring benefits from CALL, through projects that last, and indeed grow and develop over time. The projects have focused on supporting students in effective use of out-of-class time once they reach an intermediate level of proficiency. This paper analyses the team’s 15 years of CALL experience by first examining the opportunities and constraints of the changing technological context—with rapid developments in both the types of tools available and the students’ relationships to them—and then seeking to identify aspects of the team members’ role as agents in that context that have allowed the projects to be successful despite the challenges. While we acknowledge that a certain level of skills, ability to work as a team and institutional support have been essential, we stress that the key to the success lies in three key principles that shape the team’s approach, namely: tailoring, integration and an iterative development process. Recommendations follow on strategies and techniques that we believe will assist in the sustainability of CALL over the long term in a university setting. Introduction As a culture we are susceptible to the lure of the latest technology, and our expectations of what might be achieved are often at odds with the realities. Such reactions to new technologies have been captured in Gartner’s Hype Cycle model (http://www.gartner.com/), which articulates five distinct categories or stages that occur in the emergence of any new technology, namely: Technology trigger; Peak of inflated expectations; Trough of disillusionment; Slope of enlightenment, and; Plateau of productivity. This trajectory provides a sense of how unrealistic initial expectations can quickly lead to disappointment, and the realization that it is only through extended use and systematic evaluation over time that a more reasoned assessment of the technology may be arrived at; unfortunately, this is time that typically we do not have, as yet another new technology makes its presence felt (Buckingham, 2007; Lanham, 2006; Levy, 2007a). While Gartner’s model emerged in the commercial world, it is, we believe, reflected in the educational world, although perhaps with a certain time lag, a much reduced selection of technologies than those included by Gartner, and certain differences that relate to differences in the goals and context between business and education. With respect to emerging technologies, the educational literature often reflects the broader environment in that a particular technology or group of technologies or application is initially broadcast as having the potential to revolutionise education. There is also a corresponding tendency to undervalue or underrate what has worked successfully before, simply because it does not follow the latest trend. The technology trigger and peak of inflated expectations can also generate one-off projects to investigate the value or potential of a particular application or technology, through a development project or a research study. Often, however, by the time that project or study is completed, newer technologies have arrived. In the educational literature, it is quite common therefore to see widespread discussion of a technology or application at one point in time followed by a complete absence of discussion two or three years later (the trough of disillusionment), by which time a new technology or suite of technologies is attracting all the attention. At the same time, when new technologies have proved themselves in an educational context, pressures to upgrade the necessary hardware—with decisions often taken out of the hands of teachers themselves—can lead to a situation where it is not possible to sustain good materials simply because the hardware to operate them has been superseded or replaced. Two significant implications that tend to follow from this set of circumstances are: the unwillingness of teachers to engage with a technology because no sooner will they have acquired the necessary skills and expertise than the technology will be replaced; and the challenge for educational administrators who fear the costs of continually upgrading hardware and software when the benefits appear to be transitory.