Webquest final evaluation

Best Webquests: World of Shakespeare and Anti-Earthquake (click on links)
Best means having thought put into work, being creative and having comprehension with good cohesion. Organization of the material is also very important so students do not have to go on a treasure hunt.
Worst Webquests: Foreign Country Presentation and Waves and Sound
Worst means confusing examples or no examples at all. No collaboration and teamwork are used and the task and benefits from the activity are unclear in some instances.

Webquest evaluation as the efficiency expert

"Saving the Gorillas": Good links, presentation, and clear and concise project, but the relevancy to education is lacking since most students will not decide to be zoologists or have a job working with exotic animals.
"World of Shakespeare": Strong in relevancy to education and college material. The links are to good informational sites and the project is multimedia. The problems I see arising come from the performance or skit due to lack of enthusiasm or trouble with Shakespearean language.
"Anti-Earthquake Designer": has good use of groupwork and collaborative learning. This is very much a field specific project though. To make the project shown in the example would take a lot of time, valuable time for education.
"Foreign Country Presentation": This project has the least examples and even the Teacher Process page is blank. The idea of introducing students to different countries is a good learning experience, but the organization is a bit too concise.
"Waves and Sound": The strength of this project is that the process is detailed with specific questions to answer, but the links were a bit confusing. The standards are not related to teacher education standards and the introduction and task are abrupt. What the teacher wants the students to learn from this is unclear. This is a worksheet in webquest format.

Blog Prompt 11/13

This activity, link is here, is not something would have experienced in my K-12 education. Some of my teachers were  more interested in using book research instead of web research. We often did not do group work, presumably because noise levels, or we had trouble concentrating on the task at hand. My learning style is addressed in this project a lot. Seeing all those worksheets made me cringe though. Three or four are more understandable, but perhaps the teacher did this activity over a long period of time.

I am not surprised that textbooks were not used in this activity, because the librarians at my schools did not use textbooks to help us with our research projects. Scholastic was also a popular resource when a textbook was not used, though textbooks do tend to have activity ideas like this in teacher editions. The wiki page was a surprise though. I am unsure if I shall teach this way because of my subject matter. Art is sometimes best when not quite so structured and done with more demonstrations, depending on the age of the students. I remember enjoying this particular freedom as a student and I would like to offer some to my future students. Barriers on this activity would include time constraints, absences, lack of student interest, and unproductive group work.

Blog Prompt 11/10

I like keeping a blog for this course because it is simple to do homework, just find a computer and write a paragraph or two and the teacher will see it. It feels creative to make your own blog, but not creative enough to me for some reason. Keeping a blog will become useful later because I may decide to keep my own teaching blog that students can check out and see useful resources I find on the internet or get to know class expectations. I might not post to my blog after this class though, I am horribly behind on writing in my own diary as it is. Hmmm. I do not really know if I will, sometimes I become fascinated by something I normally would not consider and work on it for a long time.

This blog is an example of appropriation because I sample and mix things like graphs from surveys and Bob's watercolor videos (see earlier posts) Collective Intelligence exists in all of the blog projects because we can check out each others' blogs, a good concrete example of that is the fact that a fellow classmate is following my blog and another university student talks with me about the updates I make.

Blog Prompt 11/8

In taking the learning style test I learned several things about myself. One of them includes that I tend to resort to routine procedures when solving a problem. I would draw a map when giving someone difficult directions because it includes the familiar act of drawing. What I found surprising was that I had zero preference for audio learning. I've taken a similar test before and my results showed that I was a visual and a reading/writing learner. This test confirmed I had a preference for reading/writing. According to the test I should write down what I am studying and read material a couple of times to memorize it; which works out well since I already use those techniques. This test is fairly accurate, but I felt the questions should have been worded so that routine would not influence the answer.

I guess my Picasso portrait is a bit too serious for the assignment, but the drawing just looked empty without some realism. Besides, Picasso didn't use digital media for his paintings...

Blog Prompt 11/5

Questions about Twitter
The limit of 140 character does not bother me, but using textspeak is a bit aggravating. It is sometimes so hard to decipher that I end up staring at the screen a long time, trying to piece together what is being said. I did not change anything based on the length, but I did change what I would say after knowing that all of my peers could see my messages.
I do not think that texting and twittering will have any impact on the way I write. I cannot think of any ways it could possibly effect how I write things, recreational or otherwise.

Twitter Prompt "Poem"

"Poem" Made from a Twitter activity:

Do not sing at the table, it is bad luck.
Do not cross your eyes or they will get stuck like that. 

Do not talk to strangers.

Do not sit too close to the TV or your eyes will cross.

Do treat others how you would want to be treated.