Saturday, February 23, 2013

Online Teaching Experiences

A WebQuest would be an online experience that would be very beneficial to students learning Spanish.  A WebQuest guides students while they are online to discover information about a particular topic.  

I recently created my first WebQuest and I am so excited to use it in my classroom.  The WebQuest I created has students explore Spanish speaking countries and their typical eating habits and types of food.  It also has students create a restaurant skit and learn about World Hunger.

A WebQuest can help a language teacher cover a variety of content including communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities.  It can help students improve their communication skills interpersonally, interpretively and presentationally.  It is a great way for students to learn about different cultures using online resources.  They are able to explore great sites that have awesome information about the Spanish speaking world.  They are able to connect their Spanish skills and knowledge with that of other content areas, whether it be history, geography, science or math!  They are able to make comparisons not only between English and Spanish, but also between the lifestyles they live and those of other countries.  They are able to reach out into the community and find websites that offer Spanish resources.  Overall, it connects their learning with Spanish in a variety of beneficial and useful ways.  They can become GLOBAL LEARNERS!

Pedagogical strategies that might be used within a WebQuest are scaffolding, critical thinking, role-playing, group work, hands-on learning, active learning, and experiential learning.

One technology that I tried which was not very beneficial with language learners was creating an e-portfolio.  Partially it was difficult because students have different teachers throughout the year because we are on a trimester schedule.  It started off as a great idea because I had students use google sites to prepare their e-portfolios.  They created different sub-categories and even wrote in Spanish!  I found it difficult to keep all of the students on track, some were way ahead and some were way behind.  Overall, I had a challenge as a teacher because it was difficult to keep up consistently and perhaps it was difficult as a student because it is not their first language.  Any suggestions?

1 comment:

  1. Your WebQuest is pretty awesome! I can't wait to hear how it is received! Please keep us posted! I agree-online portfolio development can be challenging when you have several different teachers working together. It is really something that needs to be student driven and have a central location for development. Hopefully this will become easier as more technology becomes widely available and access is opened to more students.

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