Friday, May 7, 2010

It has been productive and I have my first WebQuest!

I have to agree that the tasks this week cost me a lot of time to accomplish. I think we - the participants of this course - should be given 2 weeks to finish all the tasks of this week.

Since it is the first time that I created a webquest, I found it interesting and I prefer to have some more practices in this matter. I do have a lot of plans NOW and webquest is a suitable place for myself and my students to try something new. Although I have heard about it before, this course brings me the opportunity to create it.

Webquest is good, but it may cost money if we would like to have more than one. Free account hits the limit of only one webquest. However, nothing could prevent me to continue on another webquest which will be very useful for my students. I create another account and what I need to do is to find a place to memorize the other username and password. It's fun.

I have visited the "Student Projects Sampler," by Susan Gaer and I am not able to find out the ways to accomplish my tasks this week until Ruslana posted the webquest on the Nicenet. It is much easier and I continue to spend more time in reading materials for my chapter in webquest, searching and downloading the appropriate information for it. It is a sort of failure to launch and when Ruslana provided a hint, it is much easier and brings more fun.

I have read most of the materials and links this week, but could not find time to share on the discussion of Nicenet. I will try to do all of them by the end of this weekend. If I do have some more freetime, I will keep finishing my second webquest as another practice.

I bet you agree with me that when we are finding something useful, we better try to do it several times. Doing that will facilitate it to become a skill so that I can do or share what I have learned to my colleagues in the future.

I still have a few posts ahead to accomplish and a thousand of chores in my office since it is the end of the semester. Good luck to me!

Thanks Deborah, another wonderful lesson and tasks for this week! But do you think that the due date should be modified this time?

Khang
KGCC

5 comments:

  1. Hi Khang!

    I agree with you when you ask for another week! It will be impossible for me this week to complete the WebQuest I’ve started…

    I agree with you even more when you say that when we are finding something useful, we should try to do it several times, since doing that will make it easier for it to become a skill so that we can do or share what we have learned with our colleagues in the future, and that is one of the goals of this course, to prepare us so we can pass on to others what we are learning here!

    It`s a shame we have to keep on creating new accounts to be able to build more than one WebQuest for free! It`s such a rich tool! But still it`s worth the effort and password memorization!

    Here is a website I found about WebQuests I think is worth exploring: http://eduscapes.com/sessions/travel/index.htm.

    I hope it will be of some help to you!

    Keep up the good work!

    Yours

    Susana

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Susana,

    Thank you very much! I found the WebQuests at eduscapes useful as well. I will have a plan for creating something this summer.

    Let's keep moving forward!

    Khang
    KGCC

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello Khang,

    you stated two interesting and true ideas here: as the course is so demanding and we are not on holiday, we would need more time to accomplish our tasks. But found out practice confirmed that in general people learn better in stressful conditions. We lack time, but we learn better. Otherwise, we'd say "I have time.." and may the results wouldn't be the same (it's proved).

    As for the second WebQuest, you are right: the second one will be much better, I am sure, as improvement comes with experience. However, the sum is not so great: 20$ for 3 years... if we want, we can! It's a real help for us and for our students and I know it's worth the money.

    Good luck with your work,
    Nadina

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello, Khang.
    I agree with you.
    The first thing I have done this week is my WebQuest. And then I try to contribute to the nienet discussions although I always think about topics given by Deborah and discuss it in my mind.

    I also prefer to practice and then analyze and make conclusion whether it works for me and my students or not.

    Believe we will have other 5 weeks of productive work!

    Regards,
    Nilufar

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear Khang and All,

    The issue of time will probably come back again and again, but the reason is the range of the subject matter of our course. Every time we click on some link, we find new interesting things to explore and ... new links to open - a never ending exploration of the web... On the other hand, I agrre with Nadina saying that we work better under pressure. Personally, I prefer regular wroking time to holiday time for accomplishing challenging tasks. I feel I am better organized and I value time more! This course shall be treated as a door to some knowledge and skills. Opening one door, you want to go further and see what is behind the next... and next... and next...

    See you behind the door then,
    Joanna
    Poland

    ReplyDelete