Web Quest

"A well-designed Web Quest combines research-supported theories with effective use of the Internet to promote dependable instructional practices." (March, T. 2003)

Web Quests, if used correctly, are an engaging and challenging experience for learners. They open the learners thinking and engage them through interesting and relevant material. I have completed a web quest for another subject in my first year of my degree, and I found it quite enjoyable, but time consuming at the same time.

I believe that if a teacher had the time to complete a web quest, it could be used so well in the classroom. You would be able to have the students working at their own pace, on a task that you have created yourself. The only real constraint of a web quest is the amount of time it takes to create one.

As I have made one already, I understand the time it takes to complete, even just a simple web quest. And even when you think you have completed it, the amount of links that are needed, etc. can be quite daunting for teachers who are not extremely technological savvy.

If the teacher did have enough free time to complete something like a web quest, and they did have the right classroom environment/computer lab to complete a full class activity, a web quest could be utilised effectively.

There are just so many constraints with a web quest.

Quiz

I am slowly making my way through the extremely long list of things we need to complete for our blog. Now I am up to the part where I complete a quiz of my own.

You can find my quiz through the following URL: http://www.classmarker.com/my_tests.php

I only made a very short and sweet quiz with only two questions, as I thought we just needed to show that we can actually complete a quiz and we know how to navigate our way around the Class Marker website.

I found the quiz really quite easy to make. The explanations were very simple and straight forward, and the website was easy to navigate around. I believe that using a website such as Class Marker to create quizzes for your students would be an excellent idea. You only need to know what the questions are going to be for the quiz, and all of the rest is done for you. All you do is sit back, type the questions, and all of the formatting, etc. is completed automatically (I'm not sure about anyone else, but I have made a quiz before, and sitting down putting in all of the tick boxes was extremely boring, and this great website did it all for me).

I would have loved to create a quiz to show to my class and to reflect on that for you all, but I am not doing prac this term, so it was a little difficult for me to complete this activity. So instead I sat down with my 12 year old sister (she's currently half way through grade 7, almost at high school!) and we made a quiz together. She came up with the same idea's as I did, that the website was excellent in itself. We made a simple quiz that used multiple choice and free text. The only problem we came across with the free text was that if the child that was completing the test was a poor speller, or something along those lines, it would be extremely difficult for them to complete the free text section of the test.

Thailand

As you can see, I have finally worked out how to post other people's pictures from Flickr onto my blog!

I came across a bit of a error when I was posting these photos. When I was trying to post some of these photo's, I found out that not all of the photo's can be posted onto a blog. If you look down to the post titled 'My Journey', you will see that there are still some links to some photo's. These are the photo's that I would like you all to see, but I cannot work out how to attach them to my blog. If anyone has shed any light on this issue, if you could tell me, that would be great!

With regards to utilising Flickr in the classroom, I think flickr would be a valuable tool to use. Flickr could help engage the learners of your classroom if you went onto the topic of family, history, war, overseas, poverty and many many others. The amount of pictures that you can gather from Flickr is amazing, there is millions of images available for all to see. This little website would be a great tool to utilise if you had an overhead projector in your classroom and could broadcast these images for all the students to see.

Flickr would also be beneficial to use within a power point presentation, if you were wishing to put pictures on it. If you were doing some sort of dramatic presentation, and you really wanted to hit home with violence, poverty, etc. you could gather images from Flickr that really pull all the right heart strings.

All in all, I think Flickr would be a great tool to utilise within the classroom.

New Zealand

Thailand

Interactive Whiteboard Demonstration

When looking through the interactive whiteboard presentation, I thought I would post a different video I found on You Tube. I thought this video was rather good at explaining the concept of interactive whiteboards. I also thought that an Interactive Whiteboard would be an excellent idea to have in your classroom (if possible).

With regards to my personal opinion about interactive whiteboards, I think that they are an excellent too to have available to you in the classroom. You can not only do the normal things you would during the school day (writing down spelling words, math sums, etc.) but you can also engage your learners through the use of movement with just the touch of a button.

One of the main points that I find extremely interesting and useful for teachers is the fact that you can save the work that was completed during the day and give it to students that were absent. I believe this tool would be extremely useful for teachers because they do not have to remember work that was completed a day ago (or sometimes even a week ago) and there is a simple worksheet to follow for the student. The classroom teacher can even go one step further and have a worksheet page to hand to the student, and have an answer sheet that you may give to the student the same day, or the next day, which has all of the working completed within the class and the correct answers. This would be extremely helpful not only to the classroom teacher, but also to the student, as they can see where other students in the class are coming from and where they are going wrong, which may also be where the absent student is struggling with concepts, etc.

Other ways that you can use the interactive whiteboard in the classroom are as follows:

• Save lessons to present to students who were absent
• Create video files to teach a software application, a lesson, or as a review to be posted to the server or web. Example- How to create a graph in Excel or hoe to burn a projects to Cd's
• Use the built in maps to teach continents, oceans, countries, or states and capitals.
• Present presentations created by student or teacher
• Have students create e-folios including samples of their work and narration
• Digital storytelling
• Teach whole group computer or keyboarding skills
• Brainstorming
• Take notes directly into PowerPoint presentations
• Reinforce skills by using on-line interactive web sites
• Creating a project calendar
• Teach editing skills using editing marks
• Use in the 6 trait writing process
• Use highlighter tool to highlight nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
• Use it with Kidspiration or Inspiration
• Teaching students how to navigate the Internet
• Illustrate and write a book as a class. Use the record feature to narrate the text.
• Use the Inter write software to create lessons in advance at home or at school. Then save them for future use or to be shared with other teachers
• Diagramming activities
• Teaching steps to a math problem.
• Have students share projects during Parent/Teacher/Student conferences
• Graphics and charts with ESL learners and special ed students.
• Teaching vocabulary
• Electronic Word Wall
• End each day by having students write one thing that they learned

(Resource materials and Technology Centre for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom, 2008, http://www.fsdb.k12.fl.us/rmc/tutorials/whiteboards.html, viewed 1 August 2009)

The following is the video I found in You Tube:

(Boomerpetway, Interactive Whiteboard, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjdNPMZJbLs, viewed 5 August 2009)

I believe that utilising a tool such as a video within the classroom is an excellent idea. The video takes some of the focus off the teacher, allows the students to view something different from the norm (teacher standing in front of the class and talking), and being the technology-based learners that students are now-days, video's get onto their level and engage with their way of thinking, etc.

My Journey

Wow! There is so much about the Internet that I am now learning that I had no idea existed before!

I am still struggling a little bit with the amount of content we have to cover just for assignment one (I am still working through 4.An Introduction to Teacher's Delivery Technologies, naughty I know!). There is so much information, I sometimes feel like my brain is going to explode!

One thing I did work out (which may have been obvious, but it took me a while to understand) was that when I was starting some stuff within Picnik, I had no idea how it all related to our blog (except for touching up some of our photo's to make us look even more gorgeous =]), until I started on my Flickr account. The photo's I have made very pretty (I am not very creative, so all I did was whitened my teeth =]) I uploaded on Flickr and I will now post on my blog. Because I am horrible for taking photo's, I have barely no nice ones of myself, my family, etc. so I thought to fill in the gaps a little bit, I would just use some of the photo's already posted by other people.

I thought I would make the theme something along the lines of, 'Where I have been & what is important to me'. I chose this because I thought it was extremely broad and I would be able to find plenty of photo's surrounding things that are important to me (such as family and music) and places I have been (my parents have quite a travelling bug and we have travelled to Bali, Thailand, New Zealand, Singapore and Kuala Lumpar). Although I found that some of the photo's were kind of just pictures of landscapes, etc. there were some good photo's that actually did remind me of these amazing places.

Well I well get a wriggle on and post some of these photo's for you guys.

Beautiful

Family

Bali

Just a quick photo of my boyfriend Matthew and I, just to show that I can use Picnik and I can change the effects on pictures and add frames.

Just a photo I decided to change to black and white.

Sorry, but I'm sure how I can save the photo's that other people have taken, so I thought I would just add the link for them!

Also, the photo behind my blogs title is something I had a little play with on Picnik.

Cheers,

Claire