Thursday, September 21, 2006

 

Life and Technology.

I am really beginning to wonder when I will finish the new technological feat of creating a web page. I think hot potato looks good but I really need to remember to come to school with my computer because I have forgotten it today.

I think it is available at uni so I will have to do some work this weekend. I hope I will be able to finish it.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

 

eportfolio


Wow now I even have an E-portfolio. I am on the internet now. Do you think if I Googled my name more than just the artist from the US would come up? These are questions best left in the dark space that is the internet.


This is the picture that I added. Here is the link

 

Exploring the Blogosphere!

This article which I found on the OLT is great. I am yet to finish but I am finding the way things are discussed is interesting. They justity the use of Blogs in class through Vygotsky's theory (1978) which states that meaning is created through social interaction. THis makes sense the students learn through doing. Theylearn the skills of editing through the self editing required when posting in a blog.

I am not sure that I think that the use of blogs in which you link to the source rather than cite will reduce plagerism. I would haope that the idea their thought are online open to use by anyone may encourage studenets to realise that they should respect the work of others.

They do provide meaningful use of language I think one of the most useful things that Blogs provide is the chance for students to post in both their native language and the language that they are studying. They truely are tools of communication that allow students to communicate with family and friends at home while showcasing their linguistic skills to those who read the blog. If they are communicating with language learners who come from differing cultural backgrounds they gain the benifit of language skills and a cultural perspective from a view different to them.

This article also raises the point that if you are going to be using them in class it is important to monitor the Blogs carefully this way you can eliminate any unsavory content that may appear.

The thing that the authors raise as the most important and the point that I agree with is that students control the imput to the website and they can see the product of their work. They can write for real porposes like expreessing their opinion also because the use of Blogs is relatively simple students are able to spend more time on the technicals difficulties of the writing not the problems of using technology.

 

All the Web Quests

Wow I have just looked at a few of the webquests and they are great. Everybody has worked so hard and you can see in the results.

I think we have all come so very far.

Friday, September 15, 2006

 

Web Quests

Well now that I finished creatng the webquest I finally had the chance to finish Tom March's article on What webquests are. It was interesting but raised lots of issues of the complexity of webquests. They are not really the simple things that they appear to be. I knew that the Quest I created had holes in it but I did not realise that I might have the major gaps that May now be present.

The things that March goes into create complexities that my toddler like understandings of technology can not yet grasp. I know that leaerning should be rich and engaging and I know that there should be more to the use of computers in the classroom than simply typing into word or using power point to create presentations. THough they are places to start.

I do however think that March ignores the fact that there are things that most students would rather be doing on the internet. Checking out fashions, emailing their friends etc. No matter how much fun I make the computer lesson I am yet to figure out how it is I can encourage my students to engage in the task at hand instead of going of in tangents.

I think that thw creation of a blog may assist in this but there is some resistance on the part of my school. They think that it will lead to students posting unsavory things, people posting unwanted comments etc. However I feel that these are all likely to occur in the activities and lives that the students encounter daily.

Friday, September 08, 2006

 

Random Thoughts

Well most of you might know I have a fairly interesting class to teach. News is that most of the interesting students has gone home. I now have the most interesting dynamic with 5 Japanese female students and 5 Cantonese speaking Hong Kong students all of whom are male.

The Japanese girls won't work with the Hong Kong boys and the Hong Kongers just won't work. They seem to think that class is for very loud discussion about something, my Cantonese exists of 2 words both of which I will not try to write here as I know one is bad and I suspect the other is two despite being assured that it only means clumsy.

At least now I only leave the class shaking my head, not wanting to hit it against a brick wall.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

 

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It has worked. It has worked. Yeah Thanks to Mahsa and Helen I could save every thing to H drive and publish it. I hope that I can add a link here. The evaluation and other tables have streached a little bit but I am happy as I was in such a panic last night I woke up and was unable to sleep from 3am to around 5. I will work on the table as there must be a reason that it has moved down to the absolute bottom of the page.

Ok the second test adding the link.

Kylie's Web Quest

Alright now I just have to edit the few mistakes out of my Quest and I can move onto the next step.

 

Panic

Oh boy am I in a panic about this assignment. I could not sleep last night as I am worried that I will not be able to post in in H drive as I have tried but when I open the pages that are there it brings up the process creation page etc. I am going to try the useful ideas put on the chat forum by Helen and then go into full scale panic if it doesn't work.

Friday, September 01, 2006

 

Web Quests

Now that I have started to read the Tom March Article I really wonder about how difficult it is to write a great web Quest. It seems that a mediocre one would be fairly easy to create but one which requires student’s to alter the material so that the information they find can not just be copied seems really difficult. It seems that he makes it all seem really easy but I think that given some of us are dealing with a lot of different kinds of student’s we have more problems.

I have tried hard to find something that will engage my students but the biggest problem for me is that I can not get my students to tell me what kind of things they are interested in. Every time I ask they say nothing or free time, or something that can not be discussed in class.

I really find that adding the internet and computers to activities really increases student’s passion for learning but they are so easily distracted by the other things that are available on the WWW and they have a real dependence on that translation website that turn previously sensible and comprehendible information into scrambled words that mean nothing.

I think that for many of the student’s that I have the best result that might come from a web Quest is that they will have to interact with others and help others as some of my students appear to be introverted and uncooperative when it comes to working with others. They also do not step outside of the boundaries of what they know. They won’t work with people who they are not friends with and this usually means people who do not speak the same language as them.

Does anyone have any idea on how I could get my students interacting better?

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?