Blogging

So today I'm blogging about blogging, just wanted to type that because it seemed odd...Anyway to the point, so far I like this part of the class and its opened my eyes to entire world I knew very little about. I thought at first it would be a hassle not only to write my own blog to keep up with and comment on others. But I think, especially with the Webquest, it was almost reassuring to find out others were having the same difficulties I was.

Now that I have had some practice with this, albeit very limited, I have been looking for ways to include this in some way to my classroom. I would like at some point to launch a history blog, to get my students using the internet and get them using it the right way, at least in terms of history assignments. I would also envision it as a place to re-cap a week of lessons and provide a place for a student who may have missed classes to get assignments and important information.

I think the blog can be used extremely effectively to help reinforce class instruction. It really does give you an open forum for opinion and response beyond the classroom.

Webquest 2

I have been working for what seems like weeks on the Webquest project and I think I've gotten the idea. Several times during this I began to wonder if the planning of this project is more trouble then its worth. There are definitely more conventional ways to get across the point of the lesson I am working on and while I do understand the need for integration of the Internet, I am not sure this is the best way to go about it. I have never used or planned a Webquest before and would assume that like anything, you simply need to practice at it, and eventually you will get the hang of it. As I posted earlier the hardest part of all of this has been trying to figure out what kind of assignments are actually useful in the Webquest format. Again, the toughest lesson I have had to learn is that not everything can be a Webquest. In many ways this has become rather frustrating as I did not expect to have as much trouble as I did with this just getting started. Once the assignment was setup however, the project did move rather freely and easily. I think the real key is moving beyond what is normally expected to be learned in a classroom about a given subject. It is easy to forget what is available on the internet, and really there is nothing that is not available.