Tech Log Week 5

This has been the hardest week for me so far! Not because of this fantastic course, but also because of it. :-)

This week was (still is!) particularly intense and strenuous! I’m really looking forward for my vacation in a week’s time! :-) I had (still have) so many things to do that you can’t possibly imagine! I’m still alive, though… although I’m not sure about the kicking part! :-)

Our technological voyage brought us this week to the shores of PBL, Rubrics, Assessment and WebQuest land! What magnificent sights! The PRAW mountain range proved no praw, after all! :-) And, in spite of the altitude, the mountains were not that difficult to climb! ;-)

Designing PBL activities is my favorite hobby. Yes, I consider it a hobby and not work. I love designing and developing original, creative and meaningful projects, and so I have great fun throughout the whole process: creation, implementation and evaluation of the results. Somehow I can’t start working on a specific topic without having a clear idea of how to link it to students’ lives. Teaching something without making students realize the importance it will have for their future lives is absolutely intolerable for me. Of course, I learned this from experience. I will never forget what one of my students said, in my first year as a teacher, 20 years ago! He didn’t like going to school and English was a subject he found particularly difficult. He told me: “Well teacher, tell me what I need English for. I’m going to work in agriculture, as my parents, and I won’t need to speak English to the potatoes and cabbages.” (He said this in Portuguese, of course!) That was my first year teaching and I realized things had to change. Textbooks were not THAT important, we needed to give every student a valid reason to learn English. If we create a link between the subject and our students’ interests and lives they will find a purpose in learning English. Having them involved in decision-making is essential to make them more autonomous and this you can get by using PBL activities. You guide them but they’re the ones to choose the path they want to follow. And they feel so accomplished when people get to see their final product that it makes for all the work you have had.

So PBL is not new to me, but still I enjoyed reading these week’s articles. I got some more ideas to put to work. I particularly liked Susan Gaer’s activities and the way she brought the school community together!

One way of developing PBL activities is by using WebQuests. It is time-consuming to create, no doubt (I’m still struggling to create one!), but it’s the best way to have your students in charge of their own learning. You are the observer and not the “deliverer”. I have never used this resource before, for the reasons I mentioned in our discussion thread, but I’m trying to create a WebQuest now that I will use in the future. The most exciting is that you have everything there. The students know all the steps they have to follow and the expected results. They know exactly how their overall performance will be evaluated and so they are entitled to a choice – they can work more or less, according to the level they want to achieve. They are not mere recipients or spectators, they are in control and they share responsibilities. Alternative assessment methods – checklists or rubrics – are also an essential part of this whole process of making our students independent learners and I think we can conciliate traditional methods with alternative assessment. One thing does not exclude the other. I usually give my students one formal summative test each term (marks 1-5, as explained in the discussion) but then I have formative tests the rest of the term (this is not the usual method, I must say. I’m the only one in my school to do this, for example). So, they know exactly what is going to be assessed in the final test. It’s a way to make them study more regularly and at the same time have them realize if they understood everything; if not, they will have to revise the contents for the summative test. I always give them the necessary feedback, of course.

One thing I especially liked about this week was the fact that we had to think about possible solutions to the problems we identified last week. One small step in the completion of our future plan, a giant leap in the right direction. :-) And have you noticed that we’re reaching solutions in collaboration? This is a brilliant strategy! This e-course is really very well organized, structured and designed. Congratulations to Donna and all the teachers involved. We’re actually doing what our students need to do: identify our own problems (they are ours to be defined), but then find solutions with everybody’s help. We’re not working alone, as our students won’t. We have our instructor’s guidance and each other to rely on. That’s what we need to implement in our classes: we, as facilitators, and our students helping each other, in collaboration, and using all these wonderful technological resources we have been discovering or rediscovering.

So, our ship just reached the open sea and now we’re starting to have a glimpse of the wonderful world awaiting us.