Barbie's Weblog

Using Blogs and Wikis to Encourage Collaboration and Foster Critical Thinking Skills

            Weblogs and wikis are tools of the Read/Write web that both students and teachers can use to publish what they are learning in the classroom, to collaborate with other students and/or classes, and to engage in student-centered learning.  Blogs enable students to create a web site that allows online conversations around a given topic without learning HTML coding.  They generally allow individuals reading the blog to post their comments or reactions to the site.  Wikis are more open than blogs and encourage collaboration because they are web sites that anyone can edit at any time.  However, teachers can if desired password-protect wiki sites so that only certain individuals can access them for editing purposes.  These new tools enable students to share their writing or learning experiences with not just the teacher but with authentic worldwide audiences.  Therefore, students are more motivated and want to produce the best quality work possible.

            In the article, ?The Educator?s Guide to the Read/Write Web,? the author, Will Richardson, mentions several key strategies being used at the high school where he teaches to use these tools in the classroom.  At his own school, students have used blogs to communicate with students from Poland when learning about the Holocaust, to collaborate with the authors of novels they are reading, and to contact mentors in journalism classes.  These strategies use blogs for more than what most students are accustomed to, which is as a personal journal.  These strategies require them to use their critical thinking, reading and writing skills.  Therefore, when using blogs with my own students I want to try to use them in new and creative ways that encourage higher-level thinking and take full advantage of the possibilities available with this resource.  I also hope to brainstorm possible uses of blogs and wikis with co-workers and students so that we can use these tools in a variety of ways that are interesting to the students, while being applicable to what they are learning.  The author also mentions that these tools can be used for collaboration between students either within the classroom or between classes located around the world.  Therefore, I would like to use these tools to assist my students in interacting and collaborating with students from francophone countries to learn about cultural differences and similarities and francophone diversity in general. 

            In my classroom, I can envision the use of these tools to accomplish a variety of my French goals and objectives.  In all levels of French, I have students write journals using structures and vocabulary that they have learned on a regular basis.  Instead of having my students turn in journals to me, I could have them use blogs instead.  Students would be required to blog about a certain topic and then post it for the rest of their classmates to read.  Each student would then be required to post a comment or to react to a certain number of blogs written by their classmates.  As a result, students would be interacting with one another using the French language rather than just writing something for the teacher to read.  We could also take this strategy one step further by having students from my classroom blog about life in their own town and country in French for another classroom in a francophone country to read.  They could also include scanned photos to further illustrate life in their town and country.  The students from abroad could then respond in either French or English to the students blogs and then share information from their own countries. 

            Wikis would be a wonderful tool that would enable students to collaborate and write stories as a class.  Each student would be assigned a certain number of lines to contribute within a certain window of time.  Each student would have to practice their reading skills, because they would have to read and comprehend what the previous students wrote, their editing skills because they would be required to edit the work of the previous entry, and their writing skills because they would have to write a new entry.  As a teacher, I would be able to look at the history of the story and see how students edited the work of their peers so I could hold them accountable for completing this step.  In the end, we would have a story that we have published as a class for other French speakers to read.  Furthermore, I could possibly contact students learning French at the elementary level and collaborate with a teacher for their students to read the story and possibly draw pictures to illustrate their understanding to be sent back to my students or to be scanned in and included online with the storybook.  As a result, my students would be sharing their knowledge and teaching others, which would make this project more motivating and exciting for them.  

Posted at 02:08PM Nov 14, 2006 by bdbook in General  |  Comments[0]

Using WebQuests to Engage Students in the French Classroom

            A WebQuest according to the article, ?Five Rules for a Great WebQuest,? is ?an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web.?  WebQuests when well written can be an excellent tool for both teachers and students because they provide structure and make the volume of information on the web much more manageable.  With WebQuests, students are researching predetermined sites and resources given rather than just aimlessly searching and feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of information available on the Internet.  WebQuests generally include an introduction, which presents the students with a real-world problem, a task, which explains what students have to do, resources, which link to websites and worksheets students will need to reference to accomplish their task, the process, which lists the steps that students must follow to complete the task, evaluation, which explains how students will be graded, and a conclusion stating what students should have learned and accomplished by the end of the entire process.  In addition, WebQuests engage students in higher-order thinking by asking them to analyze synthesize and evaluate the information presented and then having them produce a real-world product that illustrates their understanding of this information. 

            The author of this article, Bernie Dodge, presents five guiding principles that one must consider when choosing or creating a WebQuest for their students.  He first states that teachers must ?find great sites? that are interesting to our students, current and accurate.  Therefore, when creating a WebQuest for my own students, I plan on identifying sites and archives that are unique and provide a variety of information from which students can draw.  Next, he states that teachers must, ?orchestrate their learners and resources.?  Therefore, I will make sure that all students have something to do at all times so that there is no down time in the classroom.    In addition, when writing the process, I will make sure that each student has a unique role that requires students to collaborate as a group in order to be successful.  Afterwards, he mentions that teachers need to ?challenge their learners to think.?  To accomplish this task, I will assign my students a real-world problem and assign them a task that requires them to use their higher-order thinking skills.  Finally, he recommends that teachers, ?use the medium,? and ?scaffold high expectations.?  To accomplish this task, I will take advantage of the multimedia environment that the web offers by including audio, video, and images.  Finally, I will model and provide the necessary resources to help students achieve higher expectations by including tips, guides and charts that illustrate how students are to approach various tasks.

            I see several applications of WebQuests and I intend on using both WebQuests currently available on the web and designing my own WebQuests with my French students in the future.  In my French II classroom, I teach my students house and apartment vocabulary as a part of the curriculum and a WebQuest would make this topic more interesting and give it a real-world context.  As a part of this WebQuest, I would assign students to groups to research apartments in Paris, France online.  I would give students a list of sites in French to access where they could study and learn what apartments are like in France including their location, price, size, what furniture/appliances are included, colors, etc.  Students would be given the real-world task of locating an apartment, designing the interior and marketing it to prospective clients.  Each student would be given a different role as well such as designer, apartment manager and marketer.  Each of these roles would require students to complete different tasks needed to accomplish the end product, which would be either a brochure or poster.  In addition, students would be required to interview other agencies about their apartments and to respond to interviews from prospective clients about their own apartment.  In the end, students would have to choose the apartment that is best fit for them based upon all of the information provided and justify their choice to their classmates and the teacher.

            I could also see using WebQuests in my classroom to teach students about all of the major sites and monuments in Paris.  In this type of WebQuest, students would pretend that they are a travel agency creating an all-inclusive vacation package for a family on a given budget.  Students would have to research transportation costs and times for the subway, plane and train.  They would also have to select the best sites to visit and research their cost and location.  Students would also have to consider including a variety of things to do since it is a family vacation.  In the end, students could once again create a brochure and engage in interviews with various agencies about their packages. 

Posted at 02:43PM Nov 03, 2006 by bdbook in General  |  Comments[0]