LEARNING TO BE CLOSER TO A BETTER WORLD

Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.

Doug Firebaugh

I'm feeling like I'm closer to a better world. It is surprising to believe, we are in the middle of our course. Every week, we get to learn new things which broaden our mind. But this week was special for me. I think, this was one year ago, accidently I had taken a class of my one of the senior. I sure I didn't stayed not more than five minutes in his class. He was giving lecture on technology enhanced project based learning. I have some sketch in my mind that he was talking about www.zunal.com, www.webquest.com. I remember, he was telling, these sites are helpful to design the project work. But today, I'm very happy that I designed project work in my own. I designed rubrics as well. Many times I have heard about rubrics and seen as well but for the first time in my life, I made it though I'm not sure whether I correctly made or incorrectly.

This week, we had five tasks; a discussion on assessment, rubrics and project based learning, a task of developing rubrics by the help of www.rubistar4teacher.com, project task 4 on describing a potential change, blog reflection and extra credit task on creating a technology enhanced project or web quest in www.zunal.com or www.webquest.com. From my side, I completed the entire task listed in our schedule. The only things remained is to listen my friends and instructor's comment and go accordingly.

As a first assignment, we had reading about rubrics, project based learning and web quests and discussion on how can rubrics, alternative assessment and project based learning encourage my students to become more autonomous learners? I read the article published by NCLRC on alternative assessment, visited some websites, took ideas by the research report of Susan Gaer in http://www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=385.html and saw the model of Gaer's students' project in http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/ which was tremendously rich in contents. I get many ideas from here which I have mentioned in our thread.  

In the same way, as a second assignment, I created a rubric to assess story writing of the children. To see my rubrics go to rubrics in our wiki page. I have added the link there. As a third assignment, we had to describe a technology related change that we will implement to help with one or more of the issues we mentioned before. It should have something that we are not doing now.

In my class the problems was on motivation of the learners. In my view, lack of the motivation in using technology inside the classroom is little knowledge on how to use it and not favorable environment at home as well not good access at school.  There is a culture in my country that students feel, only assignments of course book should be done, they are not habitual in this type of creative writing things. Therefore, they don't write and post in their blog and seems blogging project is not running smoothly. For solving the above problems, first of all awareness rising is important to the stakeholders. If stakeholders are aware in the importance of technology they provide favorable environment inside the classroom and at home. Then, each and every day students get lots of input and exposure and obviously, it will make them competent in using internet. It is one of the sources of motivation in students. Then, for the next problem solution can be providing reward, showing the values of its importance by teacher. Here, reward doesn't mean giving tangible things; it can be encouragement and affirmation.
To solve above problems I will try my best to raise the awareness of guardians and school administration and other stakeholders as well as I will encourage my students to make blogging project success through rewarding them and making them feel of healthy competition among students or group of students.

Next assignment was; extra credit task on creating a technology enhanced project or web quest in www.zunal.com or www.webquest.com. I tried my best on creating a project on STORY WRITING: NEW LANGUAGE…NEW LANDSCAPES. The project given by Courtney helped me what to do and how to do. I watch some videos on YouTube what is web quest, how can web quest be created. In addition, I visited some project on Zunal. Finally, I got some ideas and develop my own project on www.zunal.com. Dear friends, I hope you will visit my project on http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=182176 and give me constructive suggestions.

Hope to learn more new things…………J