Week 5 Reflection

The winter vacation has been over. One month of break from work was good, but still it was good to be back to school.

Four weeks have passed, and I am on the halfway until I finish this course. Tasks are getting more challenging and exciting at the same time. 

This week, there were four things to do.

1. Creating a rubric

2. Coming up with technology-relating changes to my class

3. Integrating PBL with rubrics and webquests

4. Creating a webquests(optional)

Although I have learned basic concepts of PBL and rubric from university, I actually have not used them yet. Through articles, I realized the importance of a rubric as a tool for giving students a guideline to actually achieve the objectives in PBL. Since students in Korea have been learning rather traditionally, learning in a way that they do not feel comfortable can cause a lot of stress which can lead students to low motivation. With rubrics students can estimate what they are supposed to do and how they are achieving the goal of the lesson. 

Web-quest was another interesting feature to learn. According to Eduspace.com, webquests "provide an authentic, technology-rich environment for problem solving, information processing, and collaboration. This inquiry-based approach to learning involves students in a wide range of activities that make good use of Internet-based resources." I haven't fully understood how to use a webquest, it surely is something that can get students involved into the class. 

Third task was to come up with technology-relating changes to my class that I described a week ago. My biggest issues were the number of students and not having enough time for individual feedback. I started to search the internet for tools to use to solve the problems which I am not using right now. I came up with Socrative.com and Nicenet.org. Socrative is a website in which teachers can create different types of quizzes or tests and get the results right away. It was so easy to use and also easy to explain. By using this, I think I can get to know how much students have progressed and in what area I should be more focused when teaching no matter how many students I have. 

Next tool was Nicenet.org. To give more individual feedback, I have to overcome the time limit in a school setting. 

I often run out of time because first, there are too many students, and second, time is running while students ask the same questions over and over due to their learning pace either in the classroom or outside school. I thought it would have been better if I created a discussion board(or forum) on the internet and students ask and answer. Besides, when using a board, students read my answers to questions of others.

In this course, I am currently using this website, but only as a trainee. I tried creating a class on Nicenet.org and received a code which students use when registering. Nicenet does not look very fancy, but I think when it comes to classroom setting, especially with a large number of students, simplicity is the most important. 

 

This week, I also learned a lot from other trainees. I try to keep adding the websites to Delicious.com and started to share some with my colleagues in Korea. I look forward to learning from enthusiastic teachers in this course.