The role of WebQuests in learning a foreign/second language?

 

The role of WebQuests in learning a foreign/second language?

 

 

 

 

 

Frist of all we have to know what is webquest.  Bernie Dodge defines WebQuests as "an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing."

This program enables the students to discover and     knowledge by using computer and sources of knowledge available on the internet. Also, it facilitates the learners' performance assessment and measures their development of higher mental skills according to Bloom's Taxonomy.

This program is important because it gives students certain tasks and activities enable them to use sources of knowledge to solve problem also makes them learn some skills like: discovering, reasoning, inference, and circulation. Also, it can develop their creativity and creativity production. In addition, it enhances the spirit of collaborative and cooperative learning between students. When the students are given a specific task to do, they will divide themselves to do their own part, then they will share the information they're gathering to come up with a creative and complete task. Also, it enables the students to develop their critical thinking and deal with information in useful way instead of just memorizing and remembering.

The teacher in this case should be act as a guide and facilitator the process to the students and students should be active participants. The class environment is something important especially when we're dealing with programs or website or any anything requires any source of technology. So we have to make sure that the classroom is provided with required equipment like: computers, or labtop, internet..ect

As future English teacher, I will use this one with my students but I should keep in mind their level, policy of school, classroom environment and any other obstacles I may face. And the reasons as I mentioned before.



Website Evaluation ..

 

 

 

Website Evaluation

 

    The availability of ESL/EFL sites made the learners and teachers confused about which website should used.  There are a lot of sites addressed for learners and teachers, and it will be a difficult task to trying to show all such sites and their evaluated, and decided which of these sites fit the user's expectations.  What follows now is an evaluation of http://a4esl.org/ 

    This website is for ESL/EFL students which includes lot of features. This site includes quizzes, tests, and puzzles to help students to learn English very well. Each element is divided into subheadings which reveal the required skill and level of difficulty. Also, there is a section for bilingual quizzes in which students can take the quiz in any skill in many languages.

    The website home page is good but it may be appear boring; it needs more creative thing to look like attractive for the users. According to images and graphics, they're useless and monotonous; it needs more developing. It can be pictures from real life or animations. The users can move easily from one page to another because of the good navigation. The links are up-to-date and they are exiting in site for educational purposes. The background of the website is unattractive and uninteresting; it needs more colorful and vital pictures and line to attract users. The color choices can let you know if a certain link is visited or not. For copyright it's 100% good because any links or websites mentioned in the website is provided by its writer or author. The font is clear and east to read; the site differentiates between headings and subheadings by using different fonts. Also, the sounds are clear and the students can understand easily to what they're listening to. Finally, the spelling and grammar are accurate and excellent; no errors are found. One point is important which is the teachers can write their own quizzes and contribute them on the website.

   In conclusion, it's important to know how to evaluate any website in the large presence of different sites in the world of net. These website can confused the users because of their uselessness or the material is inaccurate and if it's provided the needed utility or not.



 

 

 

 



Interactive Language Learning on the Web

The online journal, listserve, newspaper, magazines play an important role for language learners; it's providing you with authentic materials while teachers can find different lesson plans and ideas.

The article discuses some of advantages and challenges can any teachers face in creating Web-based language learning activities and what are the activities that can be used in these webs to teach language skills.

Creating your own web-based language learning activities have some advantages include: accessibility, renewability and adoptability.

Accessibility: By putting course material on the Web, teachers provide students with 24-hour, independent access to course information, and updates to Web pages and new assignments are immediately available to students.

Renewability: Once created, materials can be updated easily and often.

Adaptability: Web-based activities can easily be modified to support students at different proficiency levels or with special needs.

In addition, there are many challenges and difficulties that teacher may face while creating web-based activities:
§ lack of technical skills and in fact teachers think that they don’t have time to gain these new skills.
§ Types of computers and browser which students use and what is the connection speed they will be used to access activities.
§ Also, it's important to take into account individual with disabilities when creating these webs so they're not left out.

Teachers can teach all language skills: vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, reading and writing tasks and even pronunciation through this web. The writer also discusses the types of activities that can be used with languages skills.

 Also, teacher can assess and evaluate her students' own works online by developing an online test that students fill out and submit to teacher for grading and feedback. This type of online assessment can be done through the use of HTML forms and CGI script. CGI refers to "Common Gateway Interface" and there are many of these scripts available free on web.

In our context, in school and universities we don’t have such a web-based language learning, we only deal with it a little bit in university for some courses not all. It's because of teachers' lack of skills in how to create these webs and how to use it and I think they don’t believe on these new ways of teaching, they only deal with tradition ones.

 

 

 

Wordle

Blogs, wikis and delicious

 

How can blogs, wikis and delicious be used in the Saudi EFL context?

Frist of all, in order to use these technologies in our Saudi context, we should have an idea about these websites:

 

 

¨ Blog:
A blog (a combination of the term web+ log) is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first).

 

 

 

 

 

¨ Wiki:
Is a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser usually using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.Wikis are powered by wiki software. Most are created collaboratively. Wikis serve many different purposes, such as knowledge management and notetaking. Wikis can be community websites and intranets.

 

¨ Delicious:
Is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

 

 

In my opinion these website can improve the students' skills especially writing and communication skills. Also it provides better educational services; it helps to learn through sharing information and discussion. It helps to activate learners ' skills and increase their ability for creative thinking in different way because of the communication between different educated people. It also provides amount of fun and entertainment for learners but this fun will be for education purpose. It enhances the spirit of communication between the teacher and students. The Saudi teacher can benefit from these websites when she/he wants to evaluate and assesse her/his students' skills just by clicking on the area she/he wants to check.   

 

 



 

Digital Natives Vs. Digital Immigrants

A. Who are Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students as categorized by the author?

¨ Digital immigrant teachers are those who were not born into the digital world but they have become fascinated and adopted by some or many aspects of the new technology.

¨ Digital natives are those who born and spent their lives surrounded by and using technology.

 

B. List down 3 differences between Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students?

¨ Digital Native students:

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast.
They like to parallel process and multi-task.
They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.
They prefer games to "serious" work

¨ Digital Immigrant teachers:
Printing out a digital document to edit it rather than editing it online.

Bringing people physically into office to see an interesting websites rather than just sending the URL

Printing out E-mail.

 

C. What is meant by Digital immigrant accent? List down three examples of “digital immigrant accents.”


¨ It’s a language learned later in life.
¨ It’s the way the digital immigrants speak and behave that show and appear their lack in using technology.

¨ Examples:-
Digital immigrant accents can be seen in many things like
Turning to the Internet for information second rather than first
Reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it.

 

D. According to the author, what is the biggest serious problem facing education today?

The biggest problem facing education today is that our digital immigrants instruction who speak an outdated language, are struggling to teach a population that speaks a new language.

 

E. “Should the Digital Natives learn the old way, or should their Digital Immigrants learn the new?”

Marc said that the old ways are inappropriate for the new generation of learners because their brain may already be different. For me both of them should learn other's way. Teachers should know technological terms and how to use technology and they should integrate and join it into the lessons as well as curriculum to match students' digital mind, but this doesn’t mean use technology all the time. Also, students should know at least the basic tradition ways of the teacher without using it. Learning process should mix between both ways.

 
F. What should the Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives?

Digital immigrant teacher are able to reach Digital native students if they have the willing to change and they should make some work and effort.

 

 

Delicious

The first time to use a various websites ..

Now I have my account in DELICIOUS

https://delicious.com/#samahghamdi


ENJOY everyone ♡ ♡ ♡

Reflecting in reading 3

Stephan Bax argues that, "Our aim should be to attain a state of `normalization' in which the technology is invisible and truly integrated"

First of all we should have an idea about (CALL) and (phases):

What is CALL?

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is succinctly defined in a seminal work by Levy (1997: p. 1) as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning"

 

Warschauer (1996) and Warschauer & Healey (1998) took a different approach. Rather than focusing on the typology of CALL, they identified three historical phases of CALL, classified according to their underlying pedagogical and methodological approaches:

1)      Behavioristic CALL: it depends on stimulus and response, computer instructs the students and the students learn from computer. The audio-lingual method was commonly used, and the students were provided with drills and practice.

2)      Communicative CALL: it focuses on communication rather than form and avoids drills. It's usually used language games, reading and text reconstruction.

3)      Integrative CALL: It based on multimedia computers and the Internet.

What is normalization?

According to Bax, normalization is the stage when the technology is invisible and even hard to recognize it. CALL has not reached that stage yet. In order to achieve normalization stage, computers should be used every day by language students and teacher as part of their lessons, but they won't be the center of the lesson, but they will play a part in almost all.

 

 

 

 

 

In Saudi Arabia classrooms, we can see a lot of differences in learning process. In the past, it was just a teacher faced the students most of the time to teach them specific curriculum and organized information in traditional and sometimes useless ways, but now we can observe something different.

Now days, education system have been changed and the teacher became more aware in using technology although there are some teachers who have lack knowledge in how to use it. Teachers are starting use some equipment which can assist them in learning process like: smart board, projects, computers..ect. In order to achieve and reach normalization, we have to start from the head of the education system. Ministry of education can assist in learning process by providing the schools and universities with the technological equipment and providing these institutions with qualified teachers who are able to deal with technology. Also, they can provide the teachers who have lack knowledge in using technology with some courses that teach them how to use it. Teacher should encourage the students to use technology in doing their works and the teacher's role is as a facilitator who guide the students how to explore the information until they can teach themselves without back to the teacher. The students should be able how to use technology in order to help them to improve learning.

Welcom

Welcom to my BLOG ..

This is my first post ,  I hope this BLOG will be useful and interesting :)