Week 5

Among the reading material this week I found Less Teachingand More Learning by Susan Gaer most useful and involving. Her step by step description of how she first tried out project-based learning (PBL) is a nice guide with useful tips. Generally I find PBL very productive and beneficial in many ways, the main one being the fact that it promotes learner autonomy. I think it allows to make the best use of WWW in teaching. 

WebQuest is another tool, a form of PBL which follows a fairly specific pattern. Unlike PBL, it is built around resources previously selected by the teacher and does not as much aim at learner autonomy. However, it helps to develop creative and critical thinking, problem solving and other useful skills. We have an optional task this week, which involves creating our webquest. On zunal.com there are examples. I explored some of them closely and would really like to create one myself. I do hope I’ll fit in time to meet the deadline this week. If not, I’ll certainly try the tool out later.

One of the elements of a webquest is rubric. I have used this alternative assessment tool a few times before, though after reading Alternative Assessment, I found out some new information about it. There are four main types of rubrics: holistic, analytic, primary trait and multitrait and each of them is suitable for particular context and needs.  Icing on the cake was RubiStar using which it is possible to create a rubric in around 30 minutes. It provides ready-made categories with appropriate text though it is also possible to add you own. I created one for a class debate where I think I could also add a category for 'body language'. I think RubiStar is a real must have.

At the half way of the course I have learnt many practical skills and explored useful tools, which I can’t wait to put in practice.

 

Class debate