Peggy's podcast

1) How can teachers take advantage of the popularity of blogs and podcasts? Come up with at least 3 ways.
I think blogs and podcasts are a sort of version of expressed digital-personal thoughts. No more than that. We should not overestimate or underestimate the facts of technology. If we underestimate the power of technology such as blogs and podcasts we will miss many advantages and opportunities in our life. Contrary, if we overestimate the technology and its features we will be slave of the technology and we will afraid to go further technological steps. Moreover, we will be confused to distinguish right and wrong information supplied by the technology. Teachers can utilize blogs or podcasts while teaching. Blogs and podcasts which contain enormous information that we can teach to our students. The only problem the teachers must be aware of the credibility of blogs and podcasts. Any credible information is useful. For example we can use a podcast prepared by a Nobel winner economist in the classroom or we can bring a traveler’s blog to our classroom and teach geography and world cultures to our students using the blog owner’s point of views, pictures and experiences. We can also ask to our students to prepare their own blogs and podcasts. Teachers and students may utilize classroom blogs or podcasts if they cannot come to the school. However, I see some level of dangers. If students and teachers heavily rely on podcasts and blogs the real classroom activity can diminish and teacher/student relationships become estranged.

2) Do you agree with Keen that Web 2.0 is worse than you think? Explain?
In some extent I agree with Keen but mostly I do not agree with him. I guess he is talking about confusion of digital information because of its enormous size, I call it “digital information pollution or digital pollution” or maybe he thinks that the technology is out of control. Maybe too much personalization is another reason but at least the digital era gives opportunity to everybody to express their opinion. I should call it “global digitalized democracy or global digital citizenship.” At least the technology raises global citizenship awareness. However, I think Web 2.0 is just a step in the immense digital age. Keen should be ready for more advanced technology than Web 2.0 in a decade I believe. I think categorizing and filtering the vast information in Web 2.0 is the single most important problem. Probably we need “a digital business bureau” which can help us to check the credibility of information in the Web 2.0

3) How would you define the “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” and how would you prepare your students for it?

The crowd phenomenon can be good or bad. There is too much information available over the internet and sometimes it’s hard to say which information is correct. As professor Marcy showed us in the classroom some websites have bias or purposefully manipulate the truth. A positive wisdom of crowd phenomenon helped to create a useful encyclopedia Web page such as “Wikipedia” or “Yahoo answers.” A negative wisdom of crowd phenomenon creates hate pages, gives deceptive information or tries to manipulate the truth. The teachers must be aware of that kind of pages available over the internet and make sure the page is credible while teaching it to the students. Unfortunately, a collective wisdom is not constructive all the time, in the internet many ill organized destructive pages waiting to poison individuals who do not have enough information how to use the web properly. Teaching our children and students how to use the web and get credible, safe information must be the first step in the education system I believe.

In Tom March’s article, “The Learning Power of Webquests”, March lists three examples of WebQuests that fall short from his definition of true WebQuest which he defines as: an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet. (Dodge, 1995). The three activities he describes seems to be a just a form of getting information or “learning input” as March describes and really requires no metacognitio, transformative learning, or group processes and according to the definition and March, WebQuests should experience a more in-depth application of the information they gather. Scaffolding, a method of teaching teachers have been using for quite some time would no longer be applicable to students if their assignments merely require “copying and pasting and/or presenting”, they’re really not learning anything in this way but as March suggests, the right WebQuests will still stimulate student thinking and continue the process of scaffolding. Also a disadvantage of the three assignments that are bad examples of WebQuest assignments, is that they do not include any open-ended questions for the students and again they would just be “copying and pasting.” Open-ended questions allows for students to do more internet research and come up with their own answers by comparing, exploring, and applying information from several internet sources.

I’ve always loved reading and one of my joys as a teacher would be to introduce great novels and authors to my students such as The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Great Gastby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. If I had to choose one of the WebQuest assignments it would have to be The Grapes of Wrath. The students were required to personalize the major events experienced by the people who survived the Dust Bowl and critically think about what they would do in that situation. Students are also required to think about and compare what type of action the government took then and now. This assignment implements cooperative learning as a strategy which is helpful because it promotes students to have conversations with their peers and discuss or debate the events that took place. Another attribute to this assignment would be the use of music and pictures. Many times, teacher overlook the fact that some student learn better visually and what better source of a wide range of pictures than the internet. Students are also not learning the work of one of the great American authors, but they are also able to apply or learn their knowledge of history into the assignment. I chose to use this WebQuest because John Steinbeck has written many different novels, some of which are required in high school curriculum and so this will allow students to compare the different works of John Steinbeck either in the same class, or other classes (I wouldn’t have my students read more than one novel by the same author, I plan on introducing a wide range of authors to my students).

Web 2.0 is a new and innovative way of communicating and teaching. One thing to note, technology is constantly changing or improving, and so as future educators our students will be more up to date than the teacher which is often the case. Instead of shying aware from computer use and dodging every opportunity to use it, teachers should stay updated on technology and implement it into the classrooms.

Growing up, my high school English teacher would have us free write in our journal every day. As an English major, I enjoyed all aspects of writing so it wasn’t difficult for me; I already had a passion for it. Not all student s are as passionate or love writing though and that’s where the teacher comes in to introduce new ways for students to write or get their thoughts out. One way teachers can make use of blogs for their student is to have them create their own free blog account. With MySpace and Facebook so popular these days, students would be thrilled to have an opportunity to do this in class. Students would still be able to accessorize their page however they wanted and they would also be able to communicate with their classmates on their blog. The blog may not have to be used as a form of communication either, it can simply be used as a replacement of the traditional method of journal writing in a journal. Teachers can assign free writing via blog and with the teacher having access to their blog addresses, assessment of the activity wouldn’t be difficult.

Podcasting can be used as an effective method for teaching a language. Teachers can have student s find a pen-pal to communicate with via computer. The student is therefore given the opportunity to practice language with a more authentic audience. This also allows the teacher to meet certain ESL Standards. “Podacasting” is also something that would be quite exciting for students to experience. Just because there is fun involved in this process does not mean learning stops in any way, shape or form. “Podcasting” gives students an opportunity to experience something other than bookwork.

Lastly, blogging and podcasting is an excellent way for teacher to effectively communicate with students. In a classroom with low student attendance, these methods may be used as a way for students to catch up, of course the teacher actually teaching may be the best method but as a hypothetical situation if a student is absent, the teacher has no time to re-teach everything that was taught the previous day so what usually happens is the teacher simply gives the student the assignment and holds the student accountable for knowing how to complete the assignment. With blogging and the podcast, teachers can use this as an additional method of communication in common situations like these.

I agree with Keen’s arguments that Web 2.0 does have some dangers to it. One danger of Web 2.0 is that the credibility of the source is not always trustworthy. It’s difficult to trust sources these days and sometimes it takes research of the source to know whether it’s credible or not and sometimes that’s difficult also. Although there are negative aspects of Web 2.0, it makes society a little more careful and even smarter.

Wisdom of the crowd phenomena can be both negative and positive. Teachers must warn students of the dangers of believing everything they see online or read. However, I still believe that people are smarter and even if any negativity comes out of the wisdom of the crowd phenomena, people will use it as a learning experience.

PODCAST #2
Let’s talk about WebQuests. Tom March tells us that educators and students are not using this educational technology the way they should, saying we aren’t using them to their full potential. This is probably true, but I would like to point out that at least people are using them! Looking back on material we have already covered in class we know that experts say most teachers are behind the tech curve- either because they don’t know how to use it or don’t want to (again- probably because they don’t know how to use it). So for the moment, isn’t it good enough that teachers are at least designing WebQuests and students are doing them? As my grandmother always said, “Good enough isn’t.”
A good way to think about the potential of WebQuests is to think about digestion. The way they are being used according to March would be that students are consuming the information they find on a subject then regurgitating it for their teacher onto a PowerPoint, poster, etc. They never get the nutritional value of the information. What a WebQuest should be is eating a large, tasty feast of information, digesting it to obtain all the nutrients and vitamins…really synthesizing the information, and finally expelling it in a natural way that proves the student has accomplished something with their end product. Bowel movements aside, the student must synthesize the information in the WebQuest to really learn and understand it… not just cut and paste (literally or technologically) information from the internet onto their presentation.
In searching for a WebQuest on Dr. Bernie Hodge’s WebQuest.org, I will say this: Either he doesn’t list anything interesting to me, or he has very few topics to search through. I searched a dozen words that had to do with Chicano studies, Anne Frank, piano, travel, baseball. Somehow, travel in Henderson, Nevada came up under travel (four other options were available) and the baseball search gave me “the 1960’s”. I was not impressed with my options.
Henderson, Nevada won out over the 60’s, though, because having worked extensively with the 5th grade target audience of this particular content, I was interested to see how this would be worked into curriculum. Also, could it really be engaging for 5th graders. Let’s be honest, travel to Henderson doesn’t sound like a really exciting travel destination unless you are spending the majority of your trip a few miles down in the road gambling and eating $1.99 prime rib.
Fast forward to completing a thorough review of the WebQuest that is supposed to help you convince the entire family to visit Henderson… and guess what? Still have no desire spend my vacation there! But I enjoyed the WebQuest if only for the sheer implausibility of it all… getting a teenage girl excited about this location for a family vacation is clearly not realistic. I do like that students were encouraged to write the mayor and create a Venn diagram comparing Henderson to Las Vegas and their hometown. That would be very interesting to see! I can see this only being interesting for students who either live in Henderson and want to learn more about their community, or students who want to visit Henderson some day. That was just a joke. No one really wants to go to Henderson! Anyway, I would use this format in my own classroom but have it set up to inspire students to want to travel or learn about history. For example, plan a trip along the Silk route, or the Pioneer trail, or even modern day cultural meccas. For the record, I love San Bernardino, but would never require a student to do a WebQuest on it, because chances are they would rather complete a project of this size on somewhere they want to visit. That would be far more inspiring in the long run.
As a side note, I still have the travel project (not on a WebQuest- but the same project sans technology) I made for my high school Spanish 2 class. When I attended that teacher’s retirement party recently I was thrilled to present my project to her again but this time show her how many places I had actually been to since then. As a teacher, I was reminded of the impact my lessons can make. As a student, I was glad to see the teacher that inspired me so proud.

Hopefully this one works better than the first...

Script for Podcast #1 Response by Rachel Garvin
I’d like to talk about Professor Marcy’s lecture and respond to her questions and what we though about web 2.0 and the popularity of blogs and podcasts and the dangers that go along with web 2.0.
First of all, how can teachers take advantage of these blogs and podcasts and the popularity of creating these at this point in time. First of all I would say this is an easy way to teacher to help their students create something that is easy to share with parents to show progress, for evidence in an IEP or for a counselor. It is also something to show how great they have done to a bigger forum- if it is promoting it to the school, to their classmates, etc. They can actually advertise their project or what they have created or written. I love that this technology equalizes everyone and we ALL have the opportunity to share our opinion, our products, ourselves. While we are creating these blogs and podcasts, we are also archiving history. This means something to me since I have cassette tape recordings of myself as a 1st grader reading And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street by Dr Seuss. That is something that I treasure, and will love to share with my children one day when they are enjoying the same book. I’m not going to say that my children are going to sit down and enjoy listening to my Masters program podcasts, but I do think most parent and children enjoy looking back at what they created in the past. That is of even more importance when the person who wrote, recorded, read, or appeared in the media is not around anymore. What an opportunity teachers have to help create digital “scrapbooks”!
I also appreciate the opportunity that technology in our classroom gives us to empower our students. Our student may not have access to this technology at home and it becomes our responsibility to show them how to use it and get comfortable with it. This will prepare them for high school and college where use of technology is required to complete many projects. At my target teaching level of elementary school, this will be an impressive tool for them to have in their pocket, and that, once again, the playing field has been leveled and they are able to compete just the same as everyone else- even those people from much higher socio-economic levels.
Thirdly, I like having to power of the podcasts and blogs to teach in way Professor Marcy is able to, for distance education, but with a little twist. I don’t mean just signing up for an online class at the college. I mean more of a tool for a child who is learning English as a second language and would benefit from hearing the material covered once again after school. Maybe for the child who misses the lesson because of an unruly neighbor, a pullout program, or was just absent that day. These students can go home and review the lesson again or see it for the first time on the teacher’s website… they have an opportunity to experience what they missed out on in class. I also can see how this would benefit younger students in a home hospital program, like my little sister was. The blog and podcast teaching method should not just be limited to college students, but instead used for any student that can’t be in the normal classroom for whatever reason. This would be a great supplement to tutors, and also for parents that end up having to homeschool in subject they are not as familiar with.
I agree with Keen, moving onto the second part of my response, that is it dangerous. I feel this way because I sat in a 5th grade classroom for about 3 weeks and had the privilege of taking these little darlings to the library/computer lab. I realized that even with all the filters the school district had put in to block nasty websites, the district was not able to prevent these 5th grade boys from typing in “boobs”, “underwear”, or “kissing.” You would be surprised what gets past those filters when the kids searched for images on Google. I know that part of preventing this comes down to classroom management, but event the best teacher is going to have curious students that are going to try to test the boundaries of propriety. It is not just the kid looking up the offensive term, but also his neighbor who looks over to check it out and later repeats what he saw UNDER MY CARE in school that day. That part of web 2.0 frightens me as a teacher in the future and currently as a sub. It is great to have freedom, but at the same time it can be kind of scary if you are a kid and can’t totally protect yourself.
That moves straight into the third and final portion of my response. The “wisdom of the crowd,” and speaking of 5th graders, sometimes the crowd is not who you should listen to. It is very easy to assume because something is on the internet it must be true. I loved the assignment where we checked out several websites that we later found out were fake/misleading/hateful. They seemed pretty legit to begin with, but we saw from out research and what Professor Marcy pointed out that they were not reputable websites. In fact, I was even concerned about being on the MLK/white pride site since I know that big brother is always watching. Students wanting to check the validity of a website should absolutely fact check with their teacher- especially the young students. They should also be encouraged to head down to the library and research using the book there. I know that technology is amazing, but I also LOVE books. I would feel sad if our students were basing all their knowledge and research on Googling a topic and never sat down in front of a book. My biggest resources for preparing my students for internet research in projects would be to limit their resources to a couple from the internet and a couple from the library or somewhere else. They should still have to confirm and fact check with the teacher, though. Not that teachers know everything, but they do know a whole lot!

In Tom March’s article, “The Learning Power of Webquests”, March lists three examples of WebQuests that fall short from his definition of true WebQuest which he defines as: an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet. (Dodge, 1995). The three activities he describes seems to be a just a form of getting information or “learning input” as March describes and really requires no metacognitio, transformative learning, or group processes and according to the definition and March, WebQuests should experience a more in-depth application of the information they gather. Scaffolding, a method of teaching teachers have been using for quite some time would no longer be applicable to students if their assignments merely require “copying and pasting and/or presenting”, they’re really not learning anything in this way but as March suggests, the right WebQuests will still stimulate student thinking and continue the process of scaffolding. Also a disadvantage of the three assignments that are bad examples of WebQuest assignments, is that they do not include any open-ended questions for the students and again they would just be “copying and pasting.” Open-ended questions allows for students to do more internet research and come up with their own answers by comparing, exploring, and applying information from several internet sources.

I’ve always loved reading and one of my joys as a teacher would be to introduce great novels and authors to my students such as The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Great Gastby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. If I had to choose one of the WebQuest assignments it would have to be The Grapes of Wrath. The students were required to personalize the major events experienced by the people who survived the Dust Bowl and critically think about what they would do in that situation. Students are also required to think about and compare what type of action the government took then and now. This assignment implements cooperative learning as a strategy which is helpful because it promotes students to have conversations with their peers and discuss or debate the events that took place. Another attribute to this assignment would be the use of music and pictures. Many times, teacher overlook the fact that some student learn better visually and what better source of a wide range of pictures than the internet. Students are also not learning the work of one of the great American authors, but they are also able to apply or learn their knowledge of history into the assignment. I chose to use this WebQuest because John Steinbeck has written many different novels, some of which are required in high school curriculum and so this will allow students to compare the different works of John Steinbeck either in the same class, or other classes (I wouldn’t have my students read more than one novel by the same author, I plan on introducing a wide range of authors to my students).

Web 2.0 is a new and innovative way of communicating and teaching. One thing to note, technology is constantly changing or improving, and so as future educators our students will be more up to date than the teacher which is often the case. Instead of shying aware from computer use and dodging every opportunity to use it, teachers should stay updated on technology and implement it into the classrooms.

Growing up, my high school English teacher would have us free write in our journal every day. As an English major, I enjoyed all aspects of writing so it wasn’t difficult for me; I already had a passion for it. Not all student s are as passionate or love writing though and that’s where the teacher comes in to introduce new ways for students to write or get their thoughts out. One way teachers can make use of blogs for their student is to have them create their own free blog account. With MySpace and Facebook so popular these days, students would be thrilled to have an opportunity to do this in class. Students would still be able to accessorize their page however they wanted and they would also be able to communicate with their classmates on their blog. The blog may not have to be used as a form of communication either, it can simply be used as a replacement of the traditional method of journal writing in a journal. Teachers can assign free writing via blog and with the teacher having access to their blog addresses, assessment of the activity wouldn’t be difficult.

Podcasting can be used as an effective method for teaching a language. Teachers can have student s find a pen-pal to communicate with via computer. The student is therefore given the opportunity to practice language with a more authentic audience. This also allows the teacher to meet certain ESL Standards. “Podacasting” is also something that would be quite exciting for students to experience. Just because there is fun involved in this process does not mean learning stops in any way, shape or form. “Podcasting” gives students an opportunity to experience something other than bookwork.

Lastly, blogging and podcasting is an excellent way for teacher to effectively communicate with students. In a classroom with low student attendance, these methods may be used as a way for students to catch up, of course the teacher actually teaching may be the best method but as a hypothetical situation if a student is absent, the teacher has no time to re-teach everything that was taught the previous day so what usually happens is the teacher simply gives the student the assignment and holds the student accountable for knowing how to complete the assignment. With blogging and the podcast, teachers can use this as an additional method of communication in common situations like these.

I agree with Keen’s arguments that Web 2.0 does have some dangers to it. One danger of Web 2.0 is that the credibility of the source is not always trustworthy. It’s difficult to trust sources these days and sometimes it takes research of the source to know whether it’s credible or not and sometimes that’s difficult also. Although there are negative aspects of Web 2.0, it makes society a little more careful and even smarter.

Wisdom of the crowd phenomena can be both negative and positive. Teachers must warn students of the dangers of believing everything they see online or read. However, I still believe that people are smarter and even if any negativity comes out of the wisdom of the crowd phenomena, people will use it as a learning experience.

Natasha Koelkebeck
Podcast 1

Web 2.0 has many uses in the ESL classroom. Podcasts and Blogs can be used to increase the language output and input of English learners. Podcasts are useful because students can figure out what they want to say, practice it and then Podcast it for their classmates to view. An assignment for a Podcast could be for a student to give an autobiographical account of their life and their goals for learning English and other students would have to comment on this. They could write a biography of one student’s life or ask questions of that person’s life or compare and contrast the life of various classmates.
Additionally, students could act as travel reporters or travel agents. As travel reporters, students could visit different sites in the city and Podcast about their experience. They could also act as travel agents and speak about the reasons people should travel to their native country. The other students would listen to their Podcast and either choose which country they would like to visit or add information about the country or sites in the city.
Blogs can be used as journals. Students could be required to write daily about their language learning experience. This may seem like a lot of writing, but the more practice the better. Classmates could be required to comment on each other’s life. This is good practice because this is practice writing about things that most people talk about, their life.
As Keen states, I agree that the Web 2.0 can be worse than we think. Though, Web 2.0 is a thing. It is not good or bad. Depending on what people do with it, will make it good or bad. As with all things, people will find evil ways to use it. Many things that people have created have caused harm to humans. I hope that more people use Web 2.0 for the benefit of good than to cause harm.
The Web 2.0 can be used for greatness. It allows language learners to collaborate around the world. English learners can speak with other language learners or they can communicate with native speakers. The Web 2.0 can also allow language learners to be critical thinkers because they must examine web sites and determine if the information is accurate. Web 2.0 helps students to be critical thinkers because there is an abundance of information on the Internet that learners must navigate through to reach their desired outcomes. A problem with Web 2.0 is that if it learns what we search and then leads us to more of the same, it might”...super inflate our importance and surround us with things we already think. In this way, Web 2.0 would not increase our world knowledge. It would reinforce what most humans already think, that their way is the right and only way to be.
The “Wisdom of the Crowd” phenomena or the idea that if everyone thinks it, it must be correct already pervades our society. A person cannot believe what they read or hear. A critical thinker must research the facts for themselves. The problem is most people are too busy working to be critical thinkers. As a person on this planet, this challenge is faced everyday. Should one go with the crowd or down the path less traveled? Hopefully, the Web 2.0 will make people more critical of the system we currently live in. If not, it is not the fault of Web 2.0, it is the result of carefully designed plan of those in power telling the masses what to believe, so everyone believes it.

Transcript of Podcast 1

1. Teachers can harness their students’ interest in and use of technology in at least three ways. First, by podcasting their lectures. Podcasting lectures allows students to listen again and again and eliminates the necessity of one-time, rapid note-taking, since the lecture can be rewound and listened to as many times as the student needs to. A pod-cast lecture responded to online creates a safer, more relaxed environment for language learners, especially the shy ones. By presenting the lecture in a format that doesn’t demand instant response or reaction, less-confident students can respond at their own pace. A pod-cast lecture also eliminates or reduces social-context cues such as gender, race, and status, and non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and body language, and so students may feel less-intimidated in responding to the lecture online. If teachers post their lectures online from their home or office computer, it eliminates the need for him/her to carry loads of lecture notes to class every session. So podcasting has benefits , not only for the student, but also for the instructor.
Aside from instructors posting their lectures online via podcast, teachers can also ask that students podcast certain assignments. This will give students experience in podcasting, familiarizing them with the new technology as well as listening practice (if there is an instructor podcast they must preview before podcasting themselves), writing practice in writing a rough draft of their podcast, and speaking practice in delivering the finished product.
Professor Marcy states that when she first started teaching, journaling was popular, but then fell out of popularity, perhaps due to number of student journals to read and grade , and students not seeing the value. But now, students are blogging anyways via the internet and using other self-publishing venues, so why not channel what students are already doing and harness it toward effective teaching of language? If students are doing something they enjoy doing anyways, this lowers the affective filter, and relaxed students are more likely to be more productive, happy students.

2. Yes, I agree with Keane that Web 2.0 is worse than we think. Call me a luddite, but we should be careful about not just the technologies, which themselves are neutral, but who’s behind posting on the internet. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but people often tend to act like sheep when it comes to information they are fed. 1) They believe whatever the majority are going along with; 2) mistake opinion for fact; 3) they allow clever marketing to dictate their own consumer tastes to them.
We saw the beginnings of this back in the 1950’s when Vance Packard’s The Subtle Persuaders was published, and people’s eyes were opened to the subtlety of subliminal messages in advertising.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s movies by Oliver Stone, most notably JFK, blurred the distinction between fact and opinion, and many people bought into a conspiracy theory re the assassination of JFK as a result.
Why should Web 2.0 be any different?
3. Just like we should often question the wisdom of common sense, I believe we should question the wisdom of the “crowd phenomenon.” One person’s common sense is another’s urban myth or legend. Just because everyone believes x, y, and z does not make those variables “true.” The internet has become a vast clearinghouse of opinions disguised as “fact” or “truth.” People put up websites and pass them off as authoritative, when in fact they are only one fringe group’s opinion, or even one personality-disordered individual’s hypothesis.
I would prepare a beginning ESL class for the crowd phenomenon in the following ways: I would show them easily-recognizable pictures, such as the crowd chasing Frankenstein’s monster to illustrate mass hysteria in action, and lesser known artist’s renditions of the death of Socrates (due to Athenian civil authorities thinking he was corrupting the youth of his day), and the trial and execution of Jesus to illustrate a kangaroo court that was the outcome of fallacious thinking on the part of the Jewish authorities. I would explain that, granted, these are extreme examples, but they are examples nonetheless, of the crowd phenomenon gone bad in the worst possible way.
For a more advanced class, I would take them to sites on the internet that blurred fact and opinion, or passed opinion off as fact, or postings that everybody might initially agree with until further research. The website on urban legends Snopes.com might be instructive here because it gives multiple examples of things that many people believe that have been debunked by careful research.

A real Web Quest is, according to Tom March, a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding (March, 2003). A good Web Quest should be able to develop students’ critical thinking skills, and provoke initiative their participation in the learning process. The Web Quest is a tool for students to produce their output, which is resulted from learning. When they produce the output, it is expected to reflect their comprehension about the lesson, and to present the transformed knowledge which is taken place when learners accept the learning on their own process.
However, production does not in and of itself promote learning (Egbert, 2005). The purpose of language learning includes being able to produce creative output. Thus, Web Quests can be a very useful tool for teachers to encourage students to pull out their creative production through critical thinking process. It means students go through all the steps of learning, from knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, to evaluation.
From this point of view, the three examples March showed in his article can’t be the real Web Quest with the factors mentioned above. Although the examples have contents to learn to some extent, it merely asks students to search for information and move it from the browser to their product without cognition of the learning. Students don’t need to express their own independent opinions, and it can’t be said the production itself is original.
I could see a number of real Web Quests that meets some of factors which are needed to improve students’ critical thinking skills. One of the factors they have in common is ‘provoking questions’. Students are asked to apply the lesson to their life through critical thinking-provoking questions. Questions are presented through the task to drive students to personalize the learning and this process consolidates the effect of learning. The second feature I found from the real Web Quest is evaluation. It is explained in two ways; students, by themselves, need to evaluate overflowing resources from the web to make a use of it to produce a creative job. It requires them to think critically to distinguish valid information to them and useless one. Another evaluation is self/peer evaluation about the job. The good Web Quest provides students appropriate guidance to help them reflect the learning through a rubric with integrated questions, or simple direct questions to evaluate themselves or peers. Real Web Quests also have relevant tasks, and it is designed to be accomplished by cooperative working. Additionally, many of good Web Quests have educational topics which give instructive lessons to students rather than just interesting, fun content.
One of the best Web Quests I thought is ‘Ghostchasers across the Carolinas’ by Ruby Jones, Joe Poletti, and Carrie Kirby. The subject area is English / Language art, and the target grade is 3~5. This Web Quest has features above such as improving awareness of students’ own thinking patterns, personalization of the lesson, and self/peer evaluation process. The most distinctive feature that I liked is clear stating of goals and objectives. Each section of the task has specific objective statements with the target learning strategies. Additionally, the whole task activities involve every aspect of language learning which are writing, reading, listening, and speaking. Furthermore, some of activities of the task are related to social communication. Students are asked to perform a survey 15 people outside the classroom regarding to the task, and interview community folks to complete a writing task. I would use this Web Quest in my future class especially for the purpose of social communication. Students have more opportunities to expose themselves to the community where they are. Most of students in Korea need to have more socialization not only in the classroom but also outside the school. Since the current curriculum of the school in Korea is not designed to expand students’ learning enough toward the outside of school, I believe this kind of activity will make a lot of difference.

Before I read March’s article, I was one of those who hadn’t heard of WebQuests, nor had any idea about them. However, as I read the article all the way through, I found myself intrigued by the fascinating features of WebQuests. To put it simply, WebQuests entail all the best learning strategies in their tasks and processes.
When it comes to question #1, at first glance, the three examples don’t seem much different from other WebQuests. However, my first impression changed when I got a better idea of what real WebQuests should involve. I found that something is missing from what a WebQuest is required to contain.
In the first example, the students just put existing materials and information together that each person collects. The second example has the same problem. As March stated, in the three example WebQuests, the critical thinking doesn’t take place in learners’ heads. In other words, a WebQuest allows learners to go through the thinking and reproducing process in a way of facilitating meaningful learning.
With the requirements of a good WebQuest in mind, I visited and evaluated dozens of WebQuest sites. I was trying to find the one that I’d like to use for my target students. At the same time, as a ESL learner, I chose WebQuests on the topic that interested me and made me learn more about it. They are also beautifully designed and look more professional and easy to use.
Once I decided to explore more web pages, I evaluated how it is implemented to contribute to the academic objectives or the authentic learning. After comparing sites, I found that what the good WebQuests have in common is that they are somewhat informative. I was attracted to the WebQuests that contained more information related to the subject area. Moreover, they contain the well organized task procedure to engage learners and get involved actively; another reason is that the design caught my eyes.
Drawing on my examination of WebQuests, I came to the conclusion that if the various aspects of WebQuests don’t appeal to students in terms of topic, objectives, and tasks, then the WebQuest isn’t very good. Besides, the most important element of a good WebQuest is that it contain easy to follow tasks so that students will be guided towards a designated final product or objective.
There’s one more think that I think is important as the requirement of good WebQuests. As stated in the article, WebQuests stem from the pursuit of learner-centered learning and critical thinking. Learners are unconsciously developing their high order thinking process while accomplishing the tasks which make up the WebQuests. This, however, is not all that is required of a good WebQuest. While I’m not entirely certain that learners should be made aware that they are using their thinking skills, it is important that learners gain a sense of satisfaction from their accomplishment of the tasks required by a WebQuest. This will promote the motivation to learn through WebQuests.
Before I wrap up this response, I would like to introduce my favorite WebQuest. It is “Geometry in Real Life”, a WebQuest designed for 9th Grade Math. First of all, I’m interested in mathematics, which is usually considered as the most difficult subject to learn and teach. Sometimes students even consider mathematics to be unnecessary in real life, except for the basic calculation skills. I think this WebQuest invites learners to be a bit more interested in geometry. Moreover, the activity of the presentation might be very useful in preparing them for higher education and future career.

I never know there is a thing called “WebQuest” until I read the article and listen to the podcast from Peggy. After knowing it, I think it would be a great tool for both teachers and students. But unfortunately, I think WebQuest can not be used in the high school in Taiwan because of the education system there. But it would be a great tool for teachers and students in University. According to Tom March, he defined a WebQuest as an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet. Therefore, the three examples he mentioned in the article fall short because although those activities may involve some reasonable degree of learning, they are not WebQuests because the information in each activity can go from the browser to the product without altering-or even entering-the learner’s understanding. The students can just copy the answer and paste it on the worksheet. The information doesn’t undergoes an important transformation within learner’s themselves. Also, as Tom March mentioned in the article, a real WebQuest should contain the following elements:
1. It is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wild Web.
2. An authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of an open-ended question.
3. It is a development of individual expertise.
4. It is a participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding.
Therefore, Tom March thinks those three activities fall short of WebQuests.
A good WebQuest should be easy for learners’ to read. It should be well-organized. The direction should be clear for learners’ to follow. The task should be well-introduced so the learns’ won’t confused about the goal of the task.
I searched the topic about music/arts in all grades of students. There is one WebQuest that I like the most. It is about asking students to imagine that they were in 17th century, and they have to invite some important people to come to dinner. Being able to finish this task, students have to do the research about 17th century first. They have to find out what kind of music can be used in the 17th century, who they are going to invite, what food they want to serve…etc. After that, they have to discuss it with the team member and act it out in front the class. This is a good WebQuest for me because it requires students to get the information first and organized it than share it with the team member. The information did actually undergoes an important transformation within students’ themselves. If the teacher introduces the topic about 17th century by giving the lecture, it would be boring. But letting students to find out what 17th century like by using this kind of WebQuest, the students would feel more motivate and interesting about the topic.

The idea of a webquest was not completely foreign to me before reading the article by Tom March. I have googled them before but now that I have learned what a webquest is and have done some “shopping around” for webquests, I am excited to design one of my own. I also would absolutely love the opportunity to actually use one in my own classroom. The challenge for me is that I teach very young students and I would have to be extremely creative in designing something for use by 4 and 5 year olds.
March laid out some very definite examples of what a webquest should or should not consist of. He felt that webquests needed to provide students the resources necessary to involve them in critical thinking. Simply requiring students to take a virtual trip across the United States, collect facts about a species, or create some form of guide for a zoo was not adhering to the purpose of a real webquest. Web related activities do not equal a webquest. According to March, a real webquest is a scaffolded process in which students partake in meaningful life-relatable excursions that require students to use the Internet and engages them in problem solving and finding answers to open-ended questions.
For example, the webquest Class Trip to the Continents was a weak webquest. It merely required students to look up data an assigned continent and create a class poster for an oral presentation. March explained that a true webquest activates student’s higher level thinking skills when they are asked to evaluate the given information instead of simply just restating encyclopedia facts. Another similar webquest is Ghostchasers Across the Carolinas. While it is an interesting topic and the layout and presentation of the webquest is inviting, I did not find any open-ended questions. It appeared to be a mainly a research and digital pen-pal exercise. The webquest Learning from Lighthouses had a straightforward layout and did pose questions that required the students to internalize the information researched however, unless you are a student in that area then the intrinsic motivation factor is missing for me.
As I scrolled through WebQuest.org looking at submissions, my main focus was to look for webquests that I could actually use in my kindergarten classroom. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any webquests for my grade or even the grade span of K-2. I was able to find only one webquest in science that was interesting, fun and straightforward. It was called Sharks-What’s on the menu? by Patricia Link. The task was to learn about the habitat and diet of sharks so that you can convince the shark not to eat you while providing the shark other alternatives. The rubric was fun and kid friendly. The site included many resources and I felt the task was meaningful to students. It compared the ocean to kids and their backyards and posed the question of what can you do to take care of your own backyard?
What I look for in webquests are fun and standards-based topics that grab my attention with their format and layout. In this educational era, every lesson has to be standards-based and sometimes that does not equal fun. By creating webquest, a teacher can bring the fun back into the classroom. The Internet provides students with great audio, images, and video but it can be a dangerous and time consuming task to have students research information. A webquest provides the right amount of scaffold needed for the students to produce creative works of research. It is very easy to overwhelm students and having the tasks, rubrics, and resources available in one area can make a daunting assignment fun and manageable.

Tom March’s article on webquests was very informative to me. I must admit that I really had no idea what a webquest was before reading the article and viewing some webquest examples. I had heard the tem but I had no real knowledge about what it was and after quickly educating myself a bit on the topic, I realized that my idea of a webquest and what it is in actuality couldn’t have been farther apart.
March chose 3 webquest examples that he did not feel measured up to what a true webquest is. March felt that these 3 webquest ideas fell into the category of basic regurgitation of information by the students. They were in essence, topical research projects where no alteration of the original information was needed. He also felt that the true understanding of the material by the students could not be accurately measured by the tasks assigned. I felt that March explained his feelings best when he said that there were 2 questions to answer when creating a good webquest. The first was, “Can the information be copied and pasted?” and the second was, “Did the students create something new?”
March went on to say that “real webquests” use essential resources, include authentic tasks, are motivating to students, and contain open-ended questions. He also said that as students worked in a group setting, they had the opportunity to become experts in a particular area. March believes that great webquests challenge students to make predictions, solve real-world problems and argue options.
In exploring webquests, I found both great and not so great alike. I found 2 that really appealed to me. I searched under the subjects of English and language arts for the grades 3-5. I teach kindergarten currently, and I did search in many subjects for webquests in grades K-2 but did not have success in finding any. The 2 webquests that impressed me most did so for several reasons. They were entitled, “Welcome to Henderson” and “Class Trip to the Continents.” I enjoyed them immediately because they dealt with exploring other parts of the country and the world. I teach students who are financially disadvantaged and don’t often have the opportunity to travel so these 2 webquests grabbed my attention because they were a way for students to do some cyber traveling.
The things these webquest had in common that were positives for me were:
• They were colorful and inviting
• They were kid friendly
• The directions were clear
• Rubrics were included so expectations were known up front
• There were extra credit options available
• Resources were included for student use
• A “Teacher Page” was included
The webquests had high interest topics for students and required a lot of creativity to keep students motivated to complete the tasks assigned. The assigned tasks were much more than simply researching other places, they challenged students to think outside their comfort zones and be truly original. I also really liked that students were required to present orally with their groups so that the learning could be shared with the entire class. This alone is very motivating to me, and I believe it would be for young students as well. Kids are always interested to know what their classmates have done.
The webquest I could see myself actually using in the classroom would be the one entitled, “Welcome to Henderson.” I would change the name to, “Welcome to San Bernardino” but the essence of the webquest would be the same. The reason I LOVED it was that it was a twist on and old idea of creating a travel brochure for a certain place. It required the students to create a brochure for the town they lived in but they needed to take into account who the brochure was specifically for. The vacationing family was introduced by telling their names, ages, interests, and dislikes. The challenge came in finding activities that would interest the whole family. I particularly enjoyed this and I feel that the students would as well. They would be taking what they learned and applying it to a real life situation that they could actually apply to their own family vacation some day. It put a great personal spin on an old favorite and provided lots of opportunity for creativity.

Because those examples are not real WebQuests, but only “superficial resemblances to real WebQuests in that students use Internet resources to produce a technology-enhanced product”. Firstly, “real WebQuests facilitate meaningful use of the Web for educational ends”. Those activities use webs only for WebQuests, but not for the learning power, and webs are only claptraps that “students could achieve their learning as effectively without”. Secondly, “in a real WebQuest, newly acquired information undergoes an important transformation within learners themselves”. In those examples, what students need to do is to copy what they want from webs and paste them into assignments whose requirements of students’ transformations are only searches and compilations. Those examples are “mere Web-based activities”, but not real WebQuests “using powerful learning strategies”.
The best WebQuests had in common: 1. An authentic task: the task of the best WebQuests is on a specific, attractive theme or topic which students are very excited to do and can connect with the real life. 2. An open-ended question: the core of every great WebQuest is an open-ended question that sets a well-defined objective to encourage learners to review their pre-knowledge and to stimulate their learning motivations for further explorations. 3. A scaffolded learning structure: The best WebQuests provide a scaffolded learning structure that conducts learners to perform at more expert levels of investigation and creative thinking by using pre-knowledge. It breaks a dauntingly large, complex assignment into several single processes which students can deal with and make some challenging attempts. 4. Many meaningful resources: the resources in the best WebQuests supply many links to convenient accesses of useful and active information in multimedia, interactive, contextualized and varied perspectives on the World Wide Web, which motivate learners’ excitements and let learners gather information more effectively and faster by supplying multifarious resources for different levels and learning styles. In that way, learners can allocate more time for investigation and analysis. 5. Mutual participations: students in the best WebQuests work together with teachers or groups via joint productive activities. 6. Effective assessments: Effective assessments in the best WebQuests objectively and detailedly evaluate students’ performance and efforts not only in assignments but also in activities, including effective peer assessments and self assessments.
7. Contextualization between instruction and students’ real life: This is my favorite benefit of the best WebQuests and also the biggest learning motivation for learners. The focus of the best WebQuests is to let students use their pre-knowledge to constructively solve authentic questions, which makes lessons more meaningful. Students never like to learn only for books, but they can gain specific learning by connecting the knowledge with their real life which provides the best way to use what they learn in the authentic goal and task. Teachers should ask themselves after choosing a topic or a theme: Could the topic or the theme produce a resonance in the class? If the answer is no, they must reduce the distance with students. If the answer is yes, then they have a good beginning for a great WebQuest. I think a good WebQuest must know what students care about, what they think is useful, what they like to talk about, what they are excited with and what can touch their hearts and prompt their further thinking that is also the final objective of activities in the best WebQuests. For example, pressure in the younger generation; if you were a president; what kind of parents would you be? What do you wish to change if you could return the time? Do you dream to be a pop star? Teachers could also develop students’ both the target language and literacy of other subjects across the curriculum, such as etiquette in western dinners, protect against earthquake, how to keep a dog or a cat. I think teachers must always put themselves in students’ place and then they will find the meaning of WebQuest.
[1] March , Tom. The Learning Power of WebQuests. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from http://tommarch.com/writings/wq_power.php

According to March “a real WebQuest is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students' investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding. The best WebQuests inspire students to see richer thematic relationships, to contribute to the real world of learning, and to reflect on their own metacognitive processes. WebQuests are designed to use learners’ time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners’ thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.”

Tom March gives three examples of what a WebQuest is not; the first is a group of students planning a trip across the United States, the second is an activity where students are to collect information on endangered species and then make a poster, the third is creating promotional items of an exotic animal at a local zoo. These three examples are not good WebQuest because “Although the above activities may involve some reasonable degree of learning, they are not WebQuests because the information in each activity can go from the browser to the product without altering—or even entering—the learner's understanding.” As stated by March.

While looking through the different examples of WebQuest I found that they all have something in common they are giving students an opportunity to not only learn new information, but to also “transform” that information by performing a task with that new information. Allowing them to internalize what they have learned. Students have an opportunity to take different roles that allow them to work in groups to complete a task. It creates authentic learning opportunities for students and keeps them interested and motivated to continue on with the different tasks. It gives students an opportunity to see how what they are learning is connected to the real world.

The WebQuest that I really liked and know that would be great to use in my classroom is Let’s Travel the Biomes of the World! By Jennifer Mooney,Lathrop Street Elementary. In this WebQuest students will have an opportunity to travel the world and visit the biomes of the world. Students are to collect data on the biome of their interest, take that information and create a PowerPoint, a diorama and an article. They will work in groups and make a presentation to the whole class to share their findings and interests of the specific biome. What I find so great about this WebQuest is that students get to explore and identify what they find so interesting of a biome. I feel that it gives students the means by which to learn about something that they might very well already live in or could probably visit in the future. The links provide a lot of useful information that the students can use for their presentation and promotion of the biome of their choice. This WebQuest could be used in my classroom to teach students about the world which we live in and to show them that there is more out there than what they see outside their window. As much as I would like for all of my students to have access to such tools and technology I have to be realistic and accept that they might not be as lucky as others. I work and plan on staying in a low income area, where my students don’t have the same opportunities or access to such tools as other areas of our country. But I hope that by giving students an opportunity in my classroom to use these tools I will be facilitating their exposure to the world. And using a WebQuest in the classroom is a great way to get students to be active learners and be part of the learning process of others. I know that I will try my best to use this great tool in my classroom.

Web 2.0 is incredible technology with incredible value for today’s society.
Teachers can take advantage of the popularity of blogs and podcasts in many different ways. The most obvious one to me is, teachers can record and post their lectures as podcasts. This will allow students who were absent to access the lecture and it enables students to review the lecture as many times as is necessary for understanding. For language learning this has exceptional value. When learning a new language, we often need to hear the same thing repeated several times. Podcasts empower the student to be able to go back and listen as many times as is necessary to really understand what is being said. It enables the learner to hear the target language repeatedly until understanding is reached. I was asking some young college students if their professors were using technology in their classrooms. My one friend who is a nursing student said all her lectures are available as podcasts and she listens to them repeatedly to help her study for her exams. So podcasting clearly has value for any subject, not just language learning.
Blogs can prove to be a more current and therefore more interesting and valuable way to practice writing. Like journaling of the past, blogging creates opportunities for written expression but blogging gives more access to the students writing. First of all, the teacher does not have to lug many notebooks home to read, he or she can simply log into their computer to read their student’s blogs. Secondly, the rest of the class can read and respond to each other’s blogs. This makes this more of an authentic task and creates interaction with other students. If classmates must also read and respond to the blog it then creates a receptive activity too. Podcasts can be used in the same way too. The advantage to the podcast for language learning is that classmates get to hear their fellow students speaking in the target language as well as having to express themselves orally in the same language. To me, this meets so many of the ESL standards. It allows the students to be flexible in their timing, promotes feedback, it is focused on language use not just language study, employs the use of different media, and encourages meaningful language use just name a few.
Another way that teachers can take advantage of this technology is for their own knowledge and assistance. There are many blogs and podcasts out there that have great lesson ideas and other helps for teachers. Posting blogs and podcasts creates a worldwide community of teachers that can learn from and teach each other as well as sharing their resources. Let’s face it, teaching is difficult and requires a lot of time. The more help we can get from each other, the better all of our teaching can be.
Keen says, and I quote, “The consequences of Web 2.0 are inherently dangerous for the vitality of culture and the arts.” And “Web 2.0 technology personalizes culture so that it reflects ourselves rather than the world around us.” I do not agree with Keen. Culture and the arts are affected by excellence in artistic ability. Web 2.0 allows more people’s creative excellence to be seen and possibly recognized. Excellence can be achieved by any individual anywhere on the planet. Web 2.0 lets more of society participate and therefore can advance culture and the arts not destroy it as Keen would have us believe. On his other point, aren’t we, as individuals, part of what makes culture? So, in a sense, culture reflects who we are in the world. Everything we do influences culture. Web 2.0 let’s more of us as individuals influence that culture not just those whom main stream media chooses to cover.
Web 2.0 is a natural progression of technology. It is the next step in adapting the world wide web into our lives. It brings the world closer together and allows for so many great possibilities in interacting with others in the world and is a great outlet for people’s creativity. With any new technology that comes into our world, new dangers are added too. We must be careful and discerning with what we view and what we post.
We must learn to question the wisdom of the crowd phenomenon. I would define this phenomenon as, believing in the accuracy of information just because many others believe it to be true. “If they all believe it, it has to be true.” Because so many people are interacting on the Web, we get bombarded with the opinions and information from many different people and sources. Sometimes the combined, similar opinions of others can appear to be truth because there are so many people saying the same thing. In ancient times, the wisdom of the crowd would have said that the world was flat. Just because the crowd said it and most believed it, did not make it true. On the other hand, the wisdom of the crowd can be a positive thing because it does not make us dependent on one individual “expert” for information. With many people collaborating we can often get a more accurate picture of an issue. What we have to do is to think for ourselves and teach our students to do the same. Group thinking or the crowd phenomenon is something we need to be aware of and cautious with. Students need to be taught how to evaluate information from any source for its validity and then, decide its relevance for their lives. We can’t believe everything we read or hear. Just because it is said and believed by many does not make it true.

According to March, “A real WebQuest is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students' investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding. (March, The Learning Power of WebQuests, 2004)

March gives several examples of bad WebQuests What makes them bad according to him is that “the information in each activity can go from the browser to the product without altering—or even entering—the learner's understanding.”
Activities that are just gathering information using the computer such as filling out worksheets or making a puzzle on-line are making use of technology but are not WebQuests. While these activities might be included in a WebQuest, they do not challenge the learner to take what they’ve learned and apply it to anything new. I love the question that he presents as “Is this activity something that could be done without the computer?” If this is true then it’s not using the Web to its’ fullest advantage. I think there is still some value in these kinds of activities in the classroom. It helps students become familiar with the computer, it can accomplish tasks more quickly and the students often enjoy these types of activities more than a pen and paper assignment but, they are not Webquests.

In looking at several WebQuests on-line this week, I found many that were good but also many that were not so good. The ones that were not good did not ask the students to do anything with the information they learned. They were really just research papers that were done using the World Wide Web instead of a library. A few of them I looked at were difficult to understand or difficult to navigate. The good ones start with this kind of research and then have the students make something new out of it. Students take on roles with different perspectives, think about a subject in a different way and have to create something with this new information. It challenges what they know and makes the learning exciting and relevant.
One of the WebQuests I found was called Fantastic Flag Company. Students are applying for a job at this company. Ms. Awayougo wants to hire them to write a booklet to be included in the package when somebody buys her flags. This booklet is to have three parts: The Pledge of Allegiance, Flag facts and Flag Etiquette as well as a cover. The students should be divided into four groups to complete these sections. The process included specific questions that Ms. Awayougo wanted included in the booklet and great links and information websites to help them answer these questions. It also includes great graphic organizers to help the students in this process. One activity the students had to complete was to rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance in their own words so that an elementary student could understand. Before doing this they had to read the original and look up the underlined words in an on-line dictionary. The students had to take the worksheets that were provided and answer the questions on them but then had to take that information and recreate it into a format that would work for their booklet.
What I loved about this Webquest was that it provided great scaffolding for the student’s learning. It asked for some specific information but also set up the graphic organizers etc. to help them complete these tasks. It broke the process down into manageable steps while making it interesting and exciting for the students. It was simple enough for students as young as third grade but interesting enough that older, even adult language learning students would find it fun, and not too overwhelming. The other thing I loved about this webquest for English language learners was it also taught the students some American history and culture. This would allow them to learn not only the language skills involved in the process but also some History and culture along with it. I think that in order to become a U.S. citizen you must know most of these flag facts to pass the required test. This would help our students who are planning to take this test in the future. This Webquest was simple enough to be used in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing classes that I work in at our local school. It would be a perfect activity for them that they could do that would challenge their reading and writing abilities but not overwhelm them so much that they would feel unsuccessful. The translation of the Pledge of Allegiance would give meaning to what they sign every morning in their classroom and would teach the 5th grade students some of their History standards as well.
Another Webquest that I found that was really cool was one called A President to Lead Them All. It is based on the question that if we could have only one past President to rule our country for the rest of time, who would be the best man for the job? Students had to divide into teams of two and choose a President to research. After researching their President they had to create a poster with information about this President (kind of like a campaign poster) and also write a persuasive essay on why their President would be the best candidate for the job. I liked this because it is so much more than a typical Presidential research paper. They did have to learn this information but they also had to analyze what they learned and decide what their President’s best qualities were and whether or not these qualities would make them a good President for us today and for the rest of time. It required them to really think about the information they gathered not just gather it and regurgitate it. This has so many great applications in the classroom and so many fun activities that could spin off from the original assignment. The students could have to debate as their candidate and have an actual election. They could predict what the changes would be in our country if we really only had one more leader and what those would be depending on who our President was. The possibilities are huge and I will definitely be passing these Webquest ideas on to the teachers I know and using them in my classroom in the future!

I like the way Tom March defines a webquest as an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet (Dodge, 1995). He further elaborates it as a scaffolded learning structure and an authentic task to motivate student learning. I think that the principle of webquest fits in its definition closely, for benefits of utilizing webquest are numerable. According to his article, webquest motivates students by utilizing real world and up-to-date resources on the web, transforms information by exercising higher order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis and evaluation, and solves problems by utilizing their different areas of expertise.

The article presents three examples of webquests that March feels are bad examples because those questions do not elicit the thought provoking processes nor require critical thinking skills. By a team of students merely being responsible for budgeting, locating, booking, and organizing, they are not given authentic tasks that require high order thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating the tasks. In the second and third scenarios, by merely collecting facts, creating poster, and sharing it lack the processes that transform newly acquired information into a more sophisticated knowledge. Therefore, the three examples are deficient in authenticity and higher order thinking skills.
I can see why teachers want to integrate webquest into their teaching method. There are clearly many benefits for using webquest in order to enhance student learning, for it offers practical and fun way to stimulate student learning by having them explore topics and activities that interest to them. I agree with March that webquest provides a way to integrate sound learning strategies with effective use of the web. Unlikely many research paper tasks, it seems that webquest does not require a cut and paste method by simply transporting information from one space to another, for it activates pre-existing knowledge or accumulation information to problem-solving activities that require the use of critical and higher thinking skills.

In order to facilitate learning, teachers can provide the accessibility for their students so that they can have extra information and activities by simply applying their learned skills to the new application by further expanding their knowledge. As a teacher, I must explore the sites first for legitimacy and reliability of the curriculum. However, I will not use webquest’ lessons as my primary sources of instructional curriculum, but I will use them as a supplementary material. Right now, teachers for K-12 are subject to use standards-based curriculum to implement their instructions. When I skimmed and scanned through the curriculum matrix for a 3-5 elementary category, none had stated for CA standards or CA framework. I wish that educators for K-12 are more conscious about the standards-based curriculum since teachers, schools and districts are responsible for the outcome of standards-based learning. However, I found most of the lesson plans practical and useful, for many comprehension questions, charts, graphs, and exercises at each stage and a more comprehensive evaluation at the end of the curriculum. I also agree with March that webquest provides authentic tasks that motivate students’ willingness to expand effort in their pursuit of learning, for the tasks provide some autonomy by learners responding to the exercises, evaluating their own activities, and leaving students with a sense of satisfaction in their accomplishment.

The lesson plan that I like the most is “Sharks-What's on the Menu?” for grades 5-8 Science and Language Arts created by Patricia Link. She has awesome and colorful pictures that are visually stimulated, and instruction and procedures are easy for students to follow. She also provides many websites that are resourceful and useful for students to explore about their related learning, which gives them some autonomy of their own learning. Therefore, I would say that her lesson fits in March’s definition of webquest, for she uses an authentic task that motivates learners and a scaffolded learning structure that makes students internalize more advanced intellectual skills through ongoing practice by utilizing high order thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating to perform the task.

In his article, “The Learning Power of WebQuests,” Tom March analyzes three examples that lack the components of a good WebQuest. He explains that these types of WebQuests fail by reinforcing higher-level thinking skills and inquiry-oriented learning activities. A good WebQuest should include all Bloom’s Taxonomy levels beginning with basic knowledge to applying, analyzing, and evaluating. Challenging students to combine information and using creativity to support their views.

The first example is planning a trip WebQuest where a team of students are required to plan a trip to another country and develop an itinerary. The tasks are divided equally among the group and every student is responsible to investigate, organize and present the information to the rest of the group and finally to the whole class. I was able to find more than 20 WebQuests similar to this one about planning trips to Mexico and to the United States. Although these activities promote collaborative work and research, the task is not promoting critical thinking skills that meet the criterion for good WebQuests.

The second example of a bad WebQuest, is another popular assignment where students are required to collect facts about endangered species and create posters to be presented to their classmates. According to March this type of activities may look like real WebQuests because students are required to use the internet for their research but are far away from what a real WebQuest should be.

His last example is about creating a diorama. Students are required to gather information about a new exhibit on an exotic animal at the local zoo. These types of activities allow students to look up specific information and collect facts to be presented to their classmates via Power Point Presentations. I think there is some validity in these skills because students learn, memorize and summarize basic information but we must challenge them to move up to higher level thinking skills. In other words, a good WebQuest is more than just students using the internet to research a topic in order to produce a power point presentation.

According to March the above-mentioned activities are not real WebQuests because they don’t reinforce higher-level critical thinking skills. What I notice about the three examples is the lack of authenticity and meaning. They don’t motivate students to put real effort into their learning because the tasks are not relevant to them. A good WebQuest should captivate student’s attention and curiosity in order to be meaningful and successful. Students should have some degree of autonomy in choosing a topic that will inspire and motivate them to fully engage in the task.
A real WebQuest according to March should include the following strategies:
 A scaffolded Learning Structure
 Use of Essential Internet Resources
 Authentic Tasks That Motivate student’s investigation
 Open-Ended Questions
 Development of Individual Expertise
 Participation in a Group Process
To be effective, WebQuests should be well-elaborated and authentic learning tasks. It has to be meaningful and relevant so it will captivate the student’s attention so they will find it motivating. WebQuests must always support authentic student learning and expose them to higher level thinking skills such as judgment, application, and evaluation. March states that good WebQuests should assist students in the process of developing as independent and expert learners.

I evaluated several WebQuest and only a few met the criteria of good WebQuests. I notice that Good WebQuests have the following organization in common:
 A clear purpose stating the intended use and its importance
 A clear introduction
 A genuine task
 A well organized process
 A list of resources
 Evaluation information with links to the scoring rubric
 Conclusion

I found well-organized WebQuests easy to read and follow. They included interesting graphics with appealing font and background. The information was clear and easy to access. Good WebQuests that captured my attention were the ones that required me to get involved and come up with a solution relevant to my personal experience. The topics that caught my attention were those that meant something to me and related to my interests. I was intrigued with several WebQuests about the peace process in the Middle East that compelled me to follow all the links and spend hours reading the information provided. The way the task was presented, motivated me to search deeper and evaluate the information presented.

The most interesting WebQuest that I found is called “Challenge, Intrigue, and Perspective: Process to Peace” (Webquest.org) I found the title provoking and the fact that is called, Process to Peace challenged me to explore the authenticity of the task. In this WebQuest students learn about the Arab-Israeli conflict and how since the end of World War II, it has been a central issue to the whole world. The process starts with a quote from Victor Hugo: “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.” Peace is a topic that is relevant to all of us and everyone should be involved in the search for peace in the world. I felt motivated to complete this WebQuest to learn more about the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East and to explore the diplomatic protocol of the peace process. In this particular WebQuest the learner is challenged to use critical thinking skills to come up with a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. Students are exposed to United Nations resolutions and international laws and explore what it takes to become a diplomat at the United Nations.
I would definitely use these types of WebQuests in my classroom since it challenges the student to learn to negotiate, and integrate ideas that create a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. Students are required to analyze, and evaluate the situation and be part of the peace process. All these valuable skills can be applied to real life conflicts students experience daily and that makes the time invested in this WebQuest worthwhile. I explored many WebQuests that fall short of the real goal of good WebQuests and were just good activities that required the use of Internet resources and final power point presentations.

In his article “The Learning Power of WebQuests,” Tom March uses Bernie Dodge’s concept of a WebQuest to explain that it is an inquiry-based activity where learners interact with the information on the Internet (as cited in March, 2003). However, the three examples cited in March’s article fall short as real WebQuests because they simply encourage students to research facts instead of creating answers on their own. In the WebQuest Newsletter titled “Down with topical research reports,” Bernie Dodge states that topical research reports do not require any deeper thinking than reading and summarizing. Although they are essential skills, they are not what a real WebQuest should be.

According to March, the attributes of a real WebQuest are different from mere Web-based activities. A real WebQuest helps students scaffold learning structures so that they can build sound learning strategies to link essential online resources with their authentic tasks. Authentic tasks in a real WebQuest enhance students’ motivation because the tasks are designed to increase students’ curiosity and involvement by encouraging them to constantly ask themselves to think and seek out their own solutions. During this process, students are asked to problem-solve to open-ended questions. To reach their own solutions, students have to gather each member of their group’s expertise and come up with creative ideas. While they are performing this process, they are required to reach a consensus about their own solutions to the questions. Therefore, it is a cooperative process, and helps students develop interpersonal communication skills. Then, their ideas and solutions can be applied to the real world. This is the point where their learning becomes transformative: Meaning-making and making relevance to the real world!

While I was browsing WebQuests, I saw what could be categorized as mere Web-based activities, which were not much different from the three examples in March’s article. However, the WebQuests that I thought were real included scaffolding, analysis, synthesis, judgment, and creativity for problem-solving as Bernie Dodge defined. They not only asked for students’ information summarizing skills, but also required creative and critical approaches to open-ended questions, which enable students to incorporate the strategies into the real world problems.

One WebQuest I’d like to describe further is “Zero Tolerance WebQuest,” which is dealing with the topic of bullying from schoolyards to computer chatrooms. The main task students have to perform is to create a one minute public service announcement that can help to reduce the incidence of bullying in their community by learning about it both in the past and in the present. It consists of three parts: Exploring the topic of bullying, surveying their school community, and creating a public service announcement. The roles of the students include a producer-director, a script writer, a costuming/properties coordinator, and an audio/visual expert. What I like about this WebQuest is that it deals with a relevant topic to students’ real lives. What students have to do is to share their public announcement with a real audience and receive authentic feedback. At the end of the task, they are asked to reflect on their learning, which helps their own metacognitive processes. In addition, I like the evaluation. It evaluates students’ knowledge and understanding, thinking, communication, and application. For example, the categories in the application section are: Application of knowledge and skills, transfer of knowledge and skills, and making connections within and between contexts.

This WebQuest is the kind that I’d like to use in my classroom because it enables students to transfer their knowledge and skills to the real world so that learning is meaningful and relevant to their lives. With authentic tasks, students can become more responsible for their learning and increase learner autonomy. I think that is the most desirable outcome that most educators expect from students.

In the article, “The Learning Power of Webquests,” Tom March provides three examples of bad WebQuests. March feels that these examples are bad because they fall short of the purpose of a WebQuest. The examples fall short for the reason that in these examples students can simply copy and paste their assignments straight off of the Internet. March wants students to develop their critical thinking skills. After reading this entire article, I think the goals of WebQuest are to have students conduct research on the Internet and then be able interpret, comprehend, and evaluate the information they have obtained on the Internet. Once students obtain and understand the information they have gathered for the assignment, they need to take that information to create and complete their projects.

On the official WebQuest website I found several good WebQuests. These WebQuests provided students with explanation of the assignment, step-by-step instructions, Internet resources, rubrics, and of course references. What I like about these WebQuest is that students are provided with specific websites to conduct their research for the assignment. Students are not expected to know where to start their research and/or their assignment. In addition, students are also provided with several different examples of how to construct their assignment. I like these WebQuests because students will not get confused; all of the information and important materials are provide for the students on the WebQuest. Even though, these WebQuests provide all of the important materials for completing these assignments, these assignment cause students to work on their critical thinking abilities. In order for students to create a unique project, using the same websites as their classmates, students are going to need to use their critical thinking skills.

The one WebQuest I really enjoyed looking at is one where students plan two vacations called “Viva Las Vegas/New York City.” Students need to plan two vacations: one to Las Vegas and one to New York. The ultimate goal for this WebQuest is for students to compare and contrast these two cities to find out which city would be the best city to travel to, for the class. I think this WebQuest would be good to use as an in-class assignment to prepare students to do a similar assignment (just with different locations), on their own. I could use this WebQuest in-class and then have students use this as an example for a homework assignment. Also, I could use this WebQuest for teaching the future tense, traveling, transportation, and/or obtaining information about a city, state, or country.
This homework assignment should not be too difficult for students. When students have had the experience of completing this WebQuest in-class then students will be prepared to do a similar assignment on their own. Students will already know what websites to search and obtain information about how to plan a vacation. As a homework assignment, I can have students plan a trip to two different cities (students can choose cities in different English speaking countries or cities in different parts of an English speaking country they have already traveled to), choose which trip would be best for them, and present it to the class. This assignment can also be a good way to get students to be more creative in class.

A lot of students stick with traditional means of presenting an assignment. With this project students can create skits, travel newsletters, travel brochures, PowerPoint presentations and/or the like and present their final projects to the class. After students have presented their assignments in class, I can create another lesson based on their presentations. I can have students discuss which vacations they would and would not like to go on along with their classmates. By having students discuss their presentations in class, students will be able to practice the vocabulary and grammar they have learned by creating these presentations. I could even take the class on a little mini vacation.

As a class, we could vote on which vacation was the best planned vacation. Then, depending on what part of a country the city is located, the entire class can go to a themed restaurant. For example, if the best-planned vacation was to London, England, the class could go to a local restaurant that serves traditional British food. I would make reservations at this restaurant and ask Management if students could practice using what they have learned from class with the staff at the restaurant. If Management agrees, students will obtain valuable experience using the vocabulary from these lessons.

The following discussion is going to talk about Valerie Canchola’s answers to Professor Marcy’s questions from her Podcast One. So, let’s take a look at Valerie’s answers.

Language teachers can take advantage of using blogs and podcasts in their classes and lectures. There are three ways that I can think of to use a blog and/or a podcast for language class. First, language teachers can create blogs where students can obtain and work on: homework assignments, in-class assignments, Internet assignments, lessons, grammar pointers, and helpful Internet resources. Teachers can post material on their blogs that will benefit students’ learning. For example, teachers can post links to free Internet language programs, class lecture notes, and any class assignments.

Second, podcasts can provide students with different examples of speech. Most students typically are only accustomed to hearing their instructor speak in the language they are learning. Providing students with assignments where they need to listen to a podcast about something they are learning in class, will be beneficial for students. Students will have the opportunity to listen to another individual talk in the language they are learning.

Third, teachers can create podcasts of their lectures and post a link on their blog to the podcast. A podcast of the lecture is a really good idea. If the teacher or any student is unable to attend class one day, students can go to the instructor’s blog then to the podcast and listen to the lecture for that specific day. In addition, if students are confused or need more time for an explanation on any of the material that was discussed during the lecture, students can listen to the podcast for that specific class lecture.

When it comes to agreeing with Keen on his view of Web 2.0, I have two answers. In a way I do not and I do agree with what Keen says about Web 2.0. First, I do not agree with Keen for several reasons. The Internet provides all individuals with plenty of free programs that will assist people in creating, learning, and obtaining information. Web 2.0 can be really beneficial for students who are learning a new language. Free Internet programs provide plenty of language practice for students. The Internet also, provides student with blogs, wikis, and video sharing sites. These types of sites provide students with more reading and listening opportunities. Instructors can create lessons, homework assignments, and/or presentation assignments around using these sites.

Second, I agree with Keen for several reasons. When it comes to using the Internet, every single person in the entire world needs to be very careful. No matter how much information people put out over the Internet about themselves, there is always the possibility that another individual can potentially steal another person’s identity. Instructors really need to show students how to use any new programs students are not familiar with. In almost every case, instructor are going to need to do some training with students on how to use blogs, wikis, and video and picture sharing sites. These sites are the type of sites that every individual needs to be careful with.

From my short exposure to “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” (from Professor Marcy’s Podcast One), “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” happens when an individual goes to several hundred websites regarding a specific subject that person is going to receive the same exact information. I think that “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” is the universal Internet knowledge about anything and everything information that people have access to on the Internet. One of the best way to prepare students about “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” is to inform students of what information they can and cannot trust. In most cases, students can trust news websites, scholarly sites, school sites, and sites that are created by professional organizations. To insure that students have a clear understanding of what sites they can and cannot trust, a brief training session (where the instructor show specific examples of different types of websites) should be provided to students.

In my first year of teaching high school science, I was assigned a class that had already “run out” three teachers. The students informed me of this fact on my first day of school. They were quite proud of their accomplishment. I quickly learned how they were able to accomplish it, but I was determined to stick around. Everyday was a tug-o-war. I started being strict, almost military drill sergeant level. It took months and many bottles of aspirin, but finally my methods worked. The class was well disciplined and I got them to do the assignments I gave them. But I had failed as a teacher. They weren’t interested in learning and clearly demonstrated it with the quality of work they turned in. Out of ideas, I threw away the textbook and started giving them assignments that were authentic and purposeful, and required them to think. I showed them that these thinking skills were not just for science, but for the things they would need in their daily life. When they saw the need to do the assignments, the tug-o-war ended. The discipline problem disappeared and the students started doing their work because they wanted to. They started to learn. Therefore, I agree with Tom March that webquests should have the following qualities: analysis, synthesis, judgment, creativity, or problem- solving, ideally in the form of a task that is authentic, a smaller version of something adults do. There are several reasons I agree with this definition of a webquests: first, critical thinking allows students to solve every kind of problem, not only the one presented by the teacher; second, students are more interested in learning when they see that there’s a higher purpose to acquiring information; and last, students are better behaved because they are usually engrossed in their work. The activities in March’s essay that are considered bad because they lack some or all of the qualities described above. For example, in the activity in which a team of students plans a trip across the United States and presents its itinerary on PowerPoint slides, the critical thinking component is lacking. Students aren’t required to make decisions based on limiting factors such as a preset budget, number of days available for the journey, car condition, or weather conditions. However, there are good webquests available online. Not only do these activities embody the true meaning of webquests, but they share other qualities as well. They immediately garner attention with the right amount of graphics and quickly explain the purpose of the activities. The directions are clear with engaging verbs that propel students to perform them. The good webquests are organized. But the most important commonality is that these webquests require students to apply the newly found information in authentic conditions and present it in creative ways.
One webquest that has these qualities is titled “The Moving Image in the Art Classroom.” In this webquest, students use the Internet to learn about social issues, how to make a short film as well as how to edit it, and finally make a short film to present their opinion about a social issue. Immediately, students can see the purpose of this project. Getting to use cool filmmaking equipment as well as express themselves in a creative medium will surely keep their attention. For students who may need other avenues of expression, this would certainly entice them to participate. The critical thinking component is obvious. Students can’t make a movie about a social issue without first cogitating moral, political, ethical ramifications.
I would use this webquest in my adult English class for many purposes. On the simplest level, I would teach verbs to enable students to use the camera equipment and video editing software. On a higher level, I would use it to teach students about social issues plaguing America. I think the most difficult skill to teach is giving opinions. This skill isn’t just about language, it’s about culture. Many cultures aren’t comfortable giving opinions even if they have the language ability to do so. That is why I think this webquest is excellent for exploring social issues. My students can safely say what’s on their minds without direct confrontation.
This kind of webquest can be adapted to all levels and the students don’t have to use it to express their opinion about social issues; it can be about almost anything.
Actually, for my final project, I will create a webquest in a similar style. I had thought about doing something similar when I applied to this program. I already have an MFA in film and television so this would be a perfect continuation of my interest and experience.

WebQuest is a wonderful new thing in English learning. There also have some new techniques for English learning in China, such as PowerPoint, audio, and video. Computer and the Internet have become a necessary part in a Chinese student’s life. But to use the WebQuest in class has never happened in China. So, using WebQuest in an English learning class is a very new thing for me. I think it will be a useful thing in English learning in China.
In Tom March’s article, he gave three examples of bad WebQuest. The first example is a team of students plans a trip across the United States and presents its itinerary on PowerPoint slides. One student might be responsible for budgeting, one for locating tourist attractions along the way, and one for booking accommodations and organizing meals. The second example of a bad WebQuest is learners collect facts about and images of endangered species and create a poster to share what they have learned. The last example is students create a brochure, a diorama, and an audio guide for a new exhibit on an exotic animal at a local zoo. These three examples are all just use the WebQuest in a low level. Using WebQuest in English learning doesn’t mean just to get information from the Internet, but also think about what we find in the Internet and do some analysis and summary. All the people in above examples just find, copy, and paste. So the WebQuest becomes lower use for learning.
So, I think a great WebQuest must let student do something by themselves. Not only just to find information, but also let student form some good habits of thinking, like evaluation, synthesis, and analysis and so on. And in the same time, I think a good WebQuest must rout up people’s interest. So the topic of the WebQuest can be some popular subjects of the daily life. A student must be fond of something first, and then they would like to think on this thing.
For example, when I looked around some WebQuests in the website. I found a very interesting WebQuest called “find a need and fill it”. This WebQuest is an exercise in creative problem solving developed independently. Adults can use it to help improve their own life circumstances, to solve real life problems in their immediate community. Students will learn the value of community involvement as they set about finding and filling needs in their community. This WebQuest met the conditions of a good WebQuest I mentioned above. It let student try to find and solve some questions in their real life. It’s useful for learning and can rout up the students’ interests.

With March offering three bad examples of WebQuests and looking through databases such as QuestGarden, I feel as if I have a better understanding of what a real Web Quest is! I first need to answer what I think a bad one is:
A poor WebQuest exercise or lesson involves instruction of a topic. The learner then is able to go on or offline and collect data or information. The poor WebQuest truly stops around this point. From here, poor project and opportunity for exemplary projects branch out.
On the poor end of the branch, the student is able to apply a cutting and pasting method. Students gather information and cut. They then organize and repast and TADA! They’ve now finished their own project. In a cutting and pasting method, the student can answer the question by typing the question into Google and lifting it. It is not good enough to just stop a project here. Through this lesson, students may be practicing formatting and collecting information skills; however, they’re not practicing much of any higher level thinking skills such as applying the information that they’ve just gathered into a new situation.
When reviewing various WebQuests, I found some common characteristics that good WebQuests did have in common:
First, they had interesting and captivating titles paired with clear and helpful instructions. Good ones did not stop here.
All were in an organized fashion of Introduction, Task, Process, evaluation, conclusion, and credits.
Introductions briefly summarized the background story and the mission.
Tasks delved deeper into the mission, presenting the actual objective, and the roles.
Process explains each task in detail, each role in detail, where or how to find information.
***The big key point here is that here the students are directed to use their new information from their process or roles to develop an answer to a new application.
Evaluation usually consisted of a rubric in a matrix style.
The Conclusion was a finalization of the project announcing and summing up what you should have accomplished. Many good WebQuests also involve students, as groups, to share their findings with an audience. Each group probably came up with a unique response to their authentic learning tasks. This task is open ended.
Often, there were credits or references of resources to use.
The WebQuest that I absolutely loved was called “Organ System Odyssey.” This is a fifth grade small group project designed to complement the informative children’s literature of the Magic School Bus series. Students will create travel brochures of experiencing the systems as their authentic task, possibly replacing the author’s story of the book.
Each of the three tasks designed requires trips to different internal body systems. Groups of five are split into three jobs of students sent to different sites and then come together after gathering information from various sites to create two tasks.
The Task page presents an organized list of what students should look to find.
The true task:
The students had the opportunity to recreate the story of the journey that the Magic School Bus takes in a trip through a body. They complete this in a brochure creation to explain what would happen, what one would see, and in what order.
To sum it up, what I really enjoyed was the clarity and completeness of this project, including the teacher page. This included complete and active descriptions and resources – standards included!
http://questgarden.com/83/90/8/090625092310/index.htm

The response of question one is that all of them lack the important part in the WebQuests, so they are bad examples. In these examples, it seems that students use internet resources to produce a technology-enhanced product. Bernie Dodge states that "WebQuests lend themselves particularly well to topics that require higher-level thinking and tasks with many possible and results." Higher-level thinking and tasks with many possible and results are indispensable in the WebQuests. These examples are only about getting information, and the process is the basic part in WebQuests. A real WebQuest is a scaffolding learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students' investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding.

I think the best WebQuest that have in common must be a real life problem, because it would be interesting and you will really understand what’s happening. The thing that is popular can be discussed with other people. I read several topics of WebQuests on the Zunal website. I found the topic that I am interested in is happening in my real life, for example, sounds of West Africa, Spanish artists documentation, etc. I am not interested in these topics. If the topics are changed to sounds of Taiwan or Chinese artists documentation, I would like to read them, because I am Chinese. Therefore, the topic is the best important in the WebQuests. The topic must inspire students’ passion and interest. If the topic does not inspire students’ passion and interest, students would be perfunctory.

Global warming is becoming an important issue in recent years. Most people have already been impacted. Climate change and glacier melting are influencing everyone. I searched the key word on the website, and there were many WebQuests connected with this topic. There are two WebQuests that I love so much. They both have very wonderful pictures. I believe People are visual animals, so good pictures are another way that can make people to pay attention to, in addition to good topics. Their processes are good to expose what is happening and what we should know. It is easier to help learners collect information. After that, learners will recognize the effects global warming is having on our environment and become aware of what the future of our planet will be like if the current global warming trend continues, and how learners can help to reduce activities that contribute to global warming. Now that learners know all about global warming it is time to put what you know into practice!

One of the WebQuests that is of particular interest to me is “eat your way healthy”. In this WebQuest you have to create what the menu is in your restaurant, but you have to concert several parts. I am so interested in this. Before you design your menu you have to read and research how many categories of food, how much budget you have, and how many calories are inside. Through this WebQuest learners will realize and learn what food is healthy and how much food they can eat.

March has some original and excellent ideas for WebQuests. As stated at the beginning, his idea was to create a system that students could use to develop their critical thinking skills. And if students are simply cutting and pasting things they find on an internet site, no real learning is taking place. For example, if a teacher gives out a WebQuest assignment on mountains, there should be a holistic aspect. Simply telling the learner to find various mountains, gain information on these mountains or plan a trip to the mountains with a group of other students doesn’t create a need for the WebQuest to exist. While the students may have learned some facts, discovered a new region of the world, and used cooperative learning, they were not using critical thought. A more critical mountain assignment would be to implement a factor that makes the students use logic to figure out another larger problem. One technique March suggests is to take a global problem, such as the destruction of the rain forests, and use it locally. Students can do research on various environmental impacts and then determine how the same destructive influences may affect their own community – such as how a political decision to create a new strip mall may be destroying a sand dune ecosystem.

This is a very important skill, in my opinion, for learners to learn today. The internet bombards us with all kinds of information. Students and teachers need to be able to discern for themselves an appropriate action to take and to learn to make decisions. For example, I’ve recently written a theatrical play. After doing some research on the internet, it seems there are several ways to get a play produced. Some writers raise the money themselves, some form their own theater companies, and some submit and are selected by existing theatrical organizations. By developing a critical thinking skill, I can look at the facts and give my best evidence based guess. Of course, it may not turn out as I plan, life rarely does. I will, however, be taking action based on my own thoughts and actions – not simply doing what I’m told.

In a successful WebQuest, according to March, the student should feel a sense of autonomy and self satisfaction. A good WebQuest also has open ended questions and often contains contradicting facts which makes the student figure things out. The students should begin with a general knowledge background. They gather information from many sources and then can narrow the knowledge so that the student becomes an expert in one area. This avoids stereotyping and assumptions. WebQuests also promote cooperative activities.

The best WebQuests seem to have in common many of the above points. Most also seem to have a professional look to them. Sun Woman’s Search for a Home is a good example. Sun Woman, an ancient Native American from another era, has lost her way and cannot decide where to live. Students must first do research on Sun Woman’s time period and the Native American people in California. Then, using clues, they must decide which tribe she is from and show the evidence of this decision. Finally, they must convince Sun Woman to live in the best area for her based on their findings. Each student must first look at all the tribes, then become and expert one. Then use cooperative learning to make decisions. And finally they must use language to persuade.

One thing about WebQuests that makes me nervous is the over use of the internet. As a digital immigrant, I find myself – after my assignments – exhausted – not mentally, but just sick of the computer. Normally, I download free books and read texts online as I drink tea before I go to bed. Lately, because of my two online classes, my desire is to get away from the computer as soon as I’m done. While I have achieved such wonderful things as creating a Power Point (the sense of autonomy was outstanding. The first thing I said to myself this morning was, ‘Wow. I made a Power Point!’), I do miss using the internet for simply learning for the love of learning. I have to wonder. If all of learners’ assignments are computer based, will this take away from some of the pleasures of simple curiosity the internet provides? Maybe an idea about WebQuests might be to incorporate at least one factor that is not internet based, such as personal interviews, feeling the textures of items or the use of smell in research. This could provide much needed use of other senses than sight and hearing.

Among all of the advanced computer-based learning materials available, WebQuests is definitely one of the most popular applications for both teachers and learners. It is not simply because using WebQuests is cool and interactive when compared to the traditional teacher-oriented lessons. The reason for its popularity is due to the fact that by providing authentic problems and tasks, which students can connect them with their own lives, WebQuests actually motivates learners to think, be involved and evolve their own critical thinking skills. As a note of caution, however, users of WebQuests have to pay attention when they visit websites for activities because they are a fair amount of knock-off, want-to be-WebQuests, which look like WebQuests, but they are decidedly a ruse. In his article, “The Learning Power of WebQuests,” Tom March lists three examples of those so-called WebQuests. They appear to be reasonable learning activities. The students collect information by using internet resources to create brochures, posters, or travel planners. However, in these processes, the learners don’t necessarily think critically or actively all that well. As March states, “the real purpose of WebQuests should be that the learner can combine authentic task with Internet resources in order to develop critical thinking skills.” Taking one of the examples of so-called WebQuests listed in the article, it asks students to collect facts about images of endangered species and create a poster to share what they have. It may appear to be creative student-centered activity; however, it doesn’t inspire students to find out the deep relationship between their discoveries and their real world. The goal of the activity is simply collecting information, and the students can finish the task using their pre-existing knowledge without forcing them to think outside their own self-imposed experience bubbles. In order to be real WebQuests that maximize its contribution to the students’ overall learning process, they should offer students problem-solving activities rather than just gathering-information activity, and encourage students to ask questions, so that the learners are able to develop new concepts, which requires critical thinking skills, and which, in turn, can take their understandings of complex concepts to the next level. Take one scenario as an example: Maybe students have to gather information dealing with the melting and terrific shrinking of the northern polar icecap in order to be aware of more hidden environmental issues. However, the thinking and understanding of how to recycle our everyday garbage, and just as well, how to use our non-renewable energy sources more efficiently is far more important than just gathering information.
Before I took this class, I had never used WebQuests for either aiding in my learning process as a student or for my teaching as an instructor, so exploring WebQuests was a very thought-provoking experience. Some of the pseudo-applications were totally missing the real purpose of the WebQuests learning activities, and ended up devolving into nothing more than hunter-gatherer-information activities, which doesn’t require critical thinking to any significant degree. The one positive element that can be said to be common among good WebQuests is that all of them have authentic tasks in the activities. Those tasks were related to the learners’ real lives, so the attention can be easily harnessed and controlled for deeper student participation. Also, some good WebQuests had materials where the students had the ability to use the knowledge and skills that they acquired through the process of the activities after the task was completed. In Zunal.com, I found a very practical WebQuests activity. The title of the aforementioned activity is called “Writing an Essay.” Just like the title explicitly defines, the activity is about using various learning strategies for the process of composing and writing essays. On the surface, it looks very simple, but if I take a closer look, the activity is a really well-established WebQuests that allows students to contribute to the real world of an academic environment. In the first process, the students began by brainstorming, involving themselves in compelling discussions about hot potato social issues, such as, if wealth brings happiness to person’s life or not. There are five tasks total for the learners to complete in order for them to know how to write an academic essay. By completing these tasks, the students will make greater inroads to further developing their academic writing skills for their disparate future educational aspirations. The only small criticism I have about this WebQuests activity is that, other than the brainstorming discussion with their partners, the students are too solely being focused on doing individualized tasks without the aid of group involvement. One great benefits of using the real WebQuests is that it can often be done as a team projects, extending and deepening the complexity of the task as hand. By doing group projects, the learners receive a shared sense of goals, and the projects create deeper acts of cohesion between the students themselves. The students also build a world outside of their experience bubbles, so they can learn different perspectives in the process, evaluate their own learning acts, and give feedback with each other. Of course, the process of writing essays in the real academic world is generally done by one student, so there is no significant need for having group work in these activities. Yet, collaboration allows for an initial exposure to parts of writing that some students don’t immediately recognize on their own. Overall, I think this is a very good example of how a WebQuests can borrow the best attributes of the original application system because it deals with authentic tasks for the learners, and they can use the skills they acquired for more advanced levels.
All in all, WebQuests has the fortunate result of persuading me to use this in my own future classrooms with students already invested in the wild culture of Web 2.0.

After seeing so many references to webquests in articles on education, it was useful to have these perspectives on what defines a webquest, and what makes one exceptional. These quests appear to be the quintessential cognitive learning tool-- collaborative, creative, and partly user-driven-- and they are winning a larger place in school curricula.

In response to question 1, I also initially focused on educational value of the three activities cited early in March's article. An audio guide to an exotic animal exhibit? Planning and budgeting a trip across the United States? These sound like interesting activities with an authentic component-- and they are. However, when I read on, I could see March's point. These activities are viable, but they are not webquests because they lack the factor of “transformation--” that is, a webquest must trigger enough curiosity and effort on the part of both the individual student and his or her team that the information is not simply collected but transformed. March offered a good illustration of this principle later in his article, when he gave the example of the project on the U.S. States. March noted that the traditional research-a-state project is now assigned as a sort of pseudo-webquest, with student teams responsible for researching a state's key industries, topography, etc., and producing a PowerPoint or the like. This is the same project I did as a kid back in the 1970's, only with Wikipedia and PowerPoint instead of the World Book Encyclopedia and posterboard. He explains that students could instead do a webquest in which they must grapple with a question like which state is the best prepared for success in the 21st century, and what does “success” mean in this context. The cognitive work involved isn't in the same league.

After reviewing one webquest after another on www.webquests.org, hoping to find one with the transformative power March suggests, I was ready to write that the results were disappointing. Most of the webquests I saw were multimedia versions of traditional group projects-- better than the old ways, in that they involve more creative media and better research options-- but not qualitatively different. I did find a few I would use after all, although none meets March's standards. (I visited the Best Webquests site noted in the March article, but the webquests in it are not accessible. I would have liked to see some of them, to evaluate the qualities March himself liked.)

My runners up:

Sign On This Band! (Africa, Music, 9th Grade). This wasn't transformative stuff-- mostly data gathering-- but it did call for some role-playing as a record label employee which would likely appeal to young learners, and it was likely to build appreciation for lesser-known African musical groups while reinforcing music-class learning.

The Declaration of Independence and Political Activism (Social Science, high school). This webquest encouraged self-tranformation, although it lacked real synergy on the part of the group. Students would definitely learn about political activism among the Founding Fathers of the United States, and activism among later figures of their own selection, but the quest also charged them with developing their own sense of political involvement.

My favorite was Muckraker Magazine (Social Science, 8th grade). This project on the Progressive Era in U.S. History was nicely presented and offered intriguing roles, each matched to one or more of the multiple intelligences (e.g., logical-mathematical). The team was charged with creating a magazine to capture the spirit of reform through graphics and news angles which exposed the problems and accomplishments of the times. Political cartoons were a key component, along with written articles and solid research. There was enough depth to this project that students are likely to draw parallels with our own times, transforming creative learning about history into new thinking about real problems. I found the prescriptions for group work excellent; plenty of work went into the concept and design of this webquest. There was also a rubric provided for evaluation. While it was created for 8th graders, with a bit of adjustment this could be used with older students, and if I'm in a teaching situation where I can use this kind of content, I'll surely be pulling up “Muckraker Magazine.”

Find Muckraker Magazine at http://www.westirondequoit.org/dake/Keefe/Progressive%20Newsletter/index.htm

According to March, a properly designed WebQuest should combine “authentic tasks with Internet resources to develop critical thinking skills.” The first example of a bad WebQuest that March presented at first appears to be a good classroom activity since trip planning across the United States is considered an authentic task. Furthermore, the assignment gives each student on the team a specific role so that contribution from everyone is necessary to complete the project. Although this WebQuest successfully incorporates conditions for optimal learning and supports collaboration, it fails to promote the development of critical thinking skills. This assignment merely requires students to compile the information they have found online rather than supporting higher-level thinking such as problem-solving and analysis. The second example presented by March is also a poorly designed WebQuest because the assignment fails to support higher-level thinking. Instead of analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating, the students are basically asked to regurgitate the information they found online about endangered species. Moreover, a simple research project on endangered species is not considered an authentic task. The assignment in the third WebQuest similarly does not support higher-level thinking since students could easily copy and paste information they find online. Such assignments are completed without much thought, and as a consequence the information supposedly learned from these assignments will be quickly forgotten.

After viewing many WebQuests, I have found that effective WebQuests all have the commonality of engaging students in critical thinking and problem solving. Good WebQuests require students to go beyond knowing and comprehending so that students think at the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels. For example, a bad WebQuest would instruct students to find information on the causes of global warming, while a good Webquest would ask students to come up with possible solutions and evaluate their efficacy in the real world. Another characteristic that most good WebQuests share is that big tasks are broken down into manageable smaller tasks. This allows students to accomplish something they otherwise would not be able to complete on their own. For instance, an assignment for creating a business plan would provide templates for each component of the plan such as goals, products or services, marketing, management, and finance. Another attribute that great WebQuests share is creating roles for students to choose from when the project is to be completed as a group. This ensures that all students are participating and contributing to the project. Lastly, one the most important characteristics that all effective WebQuests share, is that the tasks are authentic.

One of the WebQuests that is of particular interest to me is the digital camera selection WebQuest. In this Webquest, students compare three different cameras within their budget based on the criteria they have created and ranked in importance. With that information, the students are required to create a spreadsheet as well as a recommendation report to convince the management that hired them for this task, to purchase a particular brand and model of digital camera. This WebQuest engages students in an authentic task that is meaningful and interesting because they can apply what they learned in this digital camera selection WebQuest to other big-ticket items such as TVs, computers, and cars. Since the students are responsible for creating the criteria for choosing digital cameras, they are thinking at the synthesis level. In addition, the students have to assess the importance of the criteria they have created, so they are also engaged in higher-level thinking. Not only does the WebQuest supports thinking at the level of evaluation, it also involves thinking at the analysis level since students have to compare various cameras to find the best one. One of the advantages of this WebQuest is that it is quite versatile, so it can be adapted to any kind of comparison shopping students will encounter in real life. If I were to use this in my classroom, I would change this WebQuest to car selection and include a presentation requirement at the end for students to share their choices with the class.

To begin with, it was something interesting yet challenging to dig and search more about WebQuests. As I’m new here in the U.S. and I’m introduced to new ways and strategies of teaching, I found it a pretty new way of forming a lesson plan than the very traditional way of what I was used to in the past when I taught for three years. I wish I would have known about this great tool at that time.
According to Wikipedia a WebQuest, as implied by the name, is an inquiry based on-line learning activity. During this activity students work in groups, dividing assignments among each other, so that everyone participates in a group assigned role. The objective of the activity is to promote transformative learning outcomes, accomplished through the reading, analysis and synthesis of web based information. Web quests invented by Bernie Dodge and his colleague Tom March at San Diego State University in 1995.
According to Dodge’s original publication a Web Quest is” an inquiry-oriented activity in interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with video conferencing” (Dodge, 1995a)

In 1995 Professor Bernie Dodge established the use of WebQuests in the classrooms. But as time passed, it changed from its main objective as March argues. March thinks it’s good to produce WebQuests and justifiable to use them in school. He criticizes that most schools are not on the right way and that it is important to look after new challenges and temporal adequate tasks in the new Web.2.0. The WebQuests have to be of firm scaffolding and be motivating and the Web 2.0 also offers all these to its users. Students can expand their group-work abilities as well as work individual. The tasks are not just copying and paste as it was in the past but real thinking and understanding. March says that they need to have a choice, which will improve their learning. They should also have fun and be active in their working progress and have an own learning target.
In the Web 2.0 is a new platform where can be found blogs, podcasts, and wikis, which March thinks have, more advantages than disadvantages. They grew fast and become quite popular so that most people use them. I agree with March that the World Wide Web and with it the educational possibilities have changes. It is a good chance to adapt the web to the school system so students can improve their abilities. They have to be able to write, present, and be creative and all these methods can be learned while working with WebQuests.

A good WebQuest should have a nice design which is conform to the content, but more important is to have a good, well and clearly arranged structure. Dodge created a plan on how a WebQuest should be built and which criteria should be included.
1. Introduction: the teacher gives the students an introduction about the specific
WebQuest and the topic.
2. Task: the student can read about his/her given activities. The task can be anything
like writing an article on a certain theme, solving a question, summaries of present
facts.
3. Process: It shows the learner the way one should do to accomplish the task. There
has to be a clear outline to reveal the exact steps.
4. Evaluation: it displays how the student work will be evaluated, and what points
he/she has to take into account.
5. Resources: the most important and useful material links or books are found here.
6. Conclusion: the learners can see what they have learned and what they know now.

I would like to give an example of a WebQuest activity that I like, in fact several of them; however, since I’m studying about WebQuests I found the following interesting. It’s entitled a webQuest on WebQuest. There are several things I observed and made me aware of what a WebQuest is. One, the introduction directed me clearly to the learning objectives. Second, the task states clearly what I will do and what I will get by the end of the lesson. Third, the process is simple and involves a lot of interaction. Moreover, the group activities involved was dependant on each other and linked in away both gave the clear picture of what WebQuests are. Further more, I found out the good ones are for mainly for learning not for directed teaching. In them students are active. The students advance their research skills by internet research. To find information was easy as the sources were provided. A lot of group work and sharing of results.

In that example, I believe the Task is an important element of a good WebQuest. There are many ways to task someone. For example, retelling tasks where students reproduce something they read in the internet, but they have to use their own words. Design tasks where students design, revise or plan something. This way the students have to know a lot about the theme or product before acting. It’s a very creative and more individual. Analytical tasks where students occupy themselves with the relation between given topics and facts.

All these tasks will be examined by the teacher so they will create a meditative atmosphere among learners. A positive task would be giving the freedom to students to focus on one point they are interested in. the task provides a clear goal. Learners get more elicit with tasks and thinking. Students can get used to using the internet. Searching skills are developed. New authentic and different tasks.
In the examples that March presented in his article, March found that some tasks are not challenging but probably boring. The answers for these tasks can be found too quickly. The information and activities involved is just a matter of copy and paste. They are not integrating the main idea of the WebQuest which is not only gathering data but to synthesize and evaluate them to suit the topic intended. By March’s argument we probably can evaluate what would be an authentic task that can motivate according to him: Does the activity get student’s attention? Is it relevant to their needs, and interests? Does the task inspire learners’ confidence in achieving success? Would completing the activity leave students with a sense of satisfaction in their accomplishment?

In Tom March’s article, he goes over three examples of bad WebQuests. The first example he gives is a team of students plans a trip across the United States and presents its itinerary on PowerPoint slides. One student might be responsible for budgeting, one for locating tourist attractions along the way, and one for booking accommodations and organizing meals. The second example of a bad WebQuest is learners collect facts about and images of endangered species and create a poster to share what they have learned. The last example is students create a brochure, a diorama, and an audio guide for a new exhibit on an exotic animal at a local zoo. Looking at all three activities, they all fall short on Bloom’s Taxonomy. The six stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy are: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The higher up you go the higher order the thinking. We want our students to be able to Evaluate, Synthesize and Analyze. The problem with all three WebQuests is that they do not require any higher order thinking of our students. All three just require memorizing verbatim information, which any student can easily accomplish with copy and paste but they do not think about what they are doing. There is no problem solving, no argument nor hypothesis; the student is not fully engaged because the assignment does not require it. All three lack an introductory question that would then have an active learning component that builds on students’ critical thinking skills. We want our students to be able to make decisions and support views, combine information into a new, unique product and to be able to examine components. The three WebQuests do not meet those basic requirements.

Looking at all the different WebQuests, there are many examples of good and bad assignments. First of all, just like with any other medium, the pages should be easy to read. On many WebQuests that I found they had horrible neon font and my eyes had a hard time reading the words on the pages. The best WebQuests were easy to read and well organized for easy access to information. Call me a Digital Native, but I also thought the best pages had plenty of good graphics. If you put together an assignment about geography there should be some excellent pictures of the area or country you are studying. However, more important than the organization was the content of the WebQuest. The best WebQuests had higher order thinking that is found on the top blocks of Bloom’s Taxonomy. They required the students to take their knowledge and apply it to their own lives while making decisions on certain key issues.

The best WebQuest that I found and absolutely loved is called Never Again! Again? The first thing that drew my attention was one of my favorite quotes, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” by Edmund Burke. My first impression of this site was very positive because it had excellent graphics and was easy to navigate. I thought the introduction was very thought provoking and it started with this quotation, “"first they arrested the communists, but I was not a communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the social democrats, but I was not a social democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists, and I did nothing because I was not one. Then they came for the Jews and the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me, and there was no one left to do anything about it." ~ Rev. Martin Niemolle, Nazi prison survivor. The introductory paragraph states: As we study the motivations at each of the eight stages of genocide, we will determine what we can do at each stage to stop this vicious cycle of killings and prevent any future slaughters and mass killings. We will examine our U.S. Foreign Policy and the policies of the United Nations. We will examine history and examine ourselves. We will determine what actions we must take so that when we say, "Never Again!" we really do mean "NEVER AGAIN!" From my first impression, I thought this was an excellent authentic task and would be interesting to almost all students. Genocide has occurred in every corner of the earth with thousands of different ethnicities so there should be something that can be related to every student, no matter what their background is. The second thing I noticed was the eight stages of genocide, which were very informative and educational. This information would be applicable to anyone anywhere in the world and be meaningful outside of the classroom. This assignment can be used in a number of different subjects and not just in history class. It gave a very helpful list of genocides of the 20th century. The only drawback I saw was that it failed to mention the Communistic genocide that took place behind the Iron Curtain in the Baltic States and the former USSR. However, the task was the best one I have seen so far: to prevent more genocides from happening. Students had to gather information about previous genocides and then compare that with current world conflicts and analyze where in the eight stages, the current conflict was. I thought this was a great example of critical thinking in an outstanding authentic task. Last, students have to write a persuasive letter offering a solution to one of four choices, which included the Secretary of State, a Congressman or Senator, and the press. The conclusion also gave students more ideas on how they could contribute positively to the world beyond the assignment. Overall, I thought this was an outstanding assignment because it had students come up with possible solutions to combat future genocides before they occurred. It not only prepared students to engage in critical thinking but it also taught them how to be responsible citizens of the world.

Never Again! Again? http://drb.lifestreamcenter.net/Lessons/genocide/

As Prensky explains in Digital Natives;Digital Immigrants, teachers of all disciplines face the challenge of teaching a new type of student he refers to as “Digital Natives.” These students have been raised with technology. The influence of technology, according to Prensky, has created a huge discontinuity between these “Digital Natives” and the older generation of “Digital Immigrants.” So profound has the effect of technology been on “Digital Natives” that their brains process information differently on a physiological level. When addressing these physiological and cognitive differences, Prensky states that one thing that has been lost to “Digital Natives” is their ability to reflect and critically think. He goes on state that for instructors, “one of the most interesting challenges and opportunities in teaching Digital Natives is to figure out and invent ways to include reflection and critical thinking in the learning.” The message to instructors is thus to use technology to reach “Digital Natives” without sacrificing crucial critical thinking skills.

This same message is reiterated in March’s article, “The Learning Power of WebQuests.” March explains that many WebQuests fall short of reinforcing higher-level critical thinking skills because they don’t take students through the higher rungs of Blooms Taxonomy, like synthesizing and evaluating. While an activity like finding information about endangered animals, and then giving a presentation on the information, might be interesting for some students, it fails March’s litmus test for effective learning. According to March, a good WebQuest must:

1.use a scaffolding approach that takes students through the higher levels of critical thinking.
2.use essential internet sources
3.be authentic and interesting in order to motivate learners
4.ask an open ended question
5.promote autonomy by allowing students to “master required knowledge and then pursue different levels of individual expertise.”
6.“be transformative by requiring students to develop a substantively new concept and product. It should not merely provide a new compilation of information or an original” mishmash of unprocessed facts.”
7.be metacognitive in teaching the process for research and knowledge acquisition

Dodge, in his article, “5 Rules for Writing a Great WebQuest," adds to this list that it must also teach good interpersonal skills.

Based on these standards, I went to zunal.com to search for Webquests that would help me prepare the students at the vocational college I teach at for “real life.” Most of the students I teach are newly graduated nineteen year olds who must learn to do such things as find a job and live on their own. I saw many WebQuests that were “how to . . . ” references, such as “How to Write a Resume” or “How to Look for a Job.” These WebQuests lacked the critical thinking component as March warned. One WebQuest I found that did stretch students to higher-level thinking was “Welcome to the Real World.” What first caught my attention was the title and great illustration.
In this WebQuest, students must use critical thinking strategies to find a job, find a place to live, and plan a budget. These strategies were laid out in a clear, logical sequence. Also included in this WebQuest was a great assessment rubric so students could know how they did on the task. Since such tasks as finding a job reflect real life challenges, this WebQuest was very authentic. The follow up questions, like “What would you do if you lost your job and could not find another one for two months? How could you prepare for this happening?” also force students to think more critically and create a sense of responsibility in them. In life, problems happen. To be an adult is to find solutions to those problems and act responsibly. Teaching an Osaka version of this WebQuest would definitely benefit students.

The WebQuest “Reality Check Challenge” added the complexity of finding a roommate and negotiating things with that roommate to the challenge of finding a job and place to live. In addition to having the same benefits as “Welcome to the Real World,” this WebQuest also included templates that help students be aware of their learning process. Many of my Study Abroad students will have the experience of living with a roommate when they go abroad next year. I want to prepare them the best I can for this challenge because living with a roommate is not common in Japan. The life skills, critical thinking skills, and negotiation skills they can learn from this WebQuest would not only help them next year, but would also be transferable to other areas of their lives, like work.

In short, a good WebQuest will not make students dependent on technology as the escalator video implies. It will actually make them more autonomous by fostering critical thinking skills. In this day and age, “facts” and “references” are quickly outdated. Critical thinking skills, however, are never out dated. As the saying goes. “Give a man a fish, and he will eat for one meal. Teach a man how to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Welcome to the Real World: http://zunal.com/process.php?user=32444
Reality Check Challenge: http://zunal.com/process.php?user=32444

A hot item in the computer-assisted learning toolbox is the WebQuest. More and more teachers are realizing the benefits of such an activity, but not all teachers are using it quite as intended by its creators. According to the article by Tom March, too many WebQuests these days are simply falling short of their true potential. He talks about how WebQuests should not just be a fact finding mission culminating in a PowerPoint summary, but should serve to utilize higher-order thinking and real-life problem solving.

While exploring my WebQuests, I too had encountered many WebQuests which fit the examples that March had presented in his article. I typed in some countries for my first go at searching WebQuests and the few hits I received were about planning an itinerary in the country or finding out supplementary facts about a reading assignment related to the country. I also felt as March did that although the quests did involve learning, "the information in each activity can go from the browser to the product without altering-or even entering-the learner's understanding." That single quote from March's article sums up what I believe is wrong as well. In these cases, the web was certainly used as a tool to acquire facts or some information, but not true understanding.

What I believe the best websites had in common was a real life problem to be solved. These problems could have multiple solutions, or perhaps no real solution at all. The problems presented were multi-faceted rather than clean-cut. Students would have to investigate different variables and actually work with the information rather than simply re-present it in a few slides. The first WebQuest I came across that I thought held promise was accessed via the Zunal website. As I scrolled through the WebQuests on the home page, I could pass up many of them because I knew they were simply fact scavenger hunts. The WebQuest I clicked on was "Pollution and Water by Ms. Pohl."

This WebQuest could have also been simply a fact-finding mission about the causes of water pollution, but it was not. Of course, students would have to initially find out information about pollution as well as why it is bad and what caused it, but this built the foundation for their true mission - to find out a solution and present it to City Hall. While this is probably an easy task for a college student, this WebQuest seems to be age-appropriate for elementary or even junior high school students. Given a set of circumstances, they were to find information, analyze their information, and propose a solution based upon the information. Rather than simply present what they found, they had to use the information they found and come up with an answer all their own.

A second WebQuest I would like to talk about, and perhaps the one I think I would find most interesting for myself, is one I found on QuestGarden called "The Jury is Out! U.S. War Crimes Tribunal." It is a WebQuest in which students learn about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and decide whether or not America did the right thing. It not only has students research about the incident and World War II, but also compares these actions to actions of others in recent history as well as the after-effects of radiation. Students are exposed to this information in text, video, and pictures. I believe that this would be a very powerful WebQuest to use because students will have to tackle an issue that is much debated. There is no pre-determined right or wrong answer - students just need to be able to gather, understand, and present enough information to argue their side. This also requires an understanding thorough enough to anticipate and counter statements made by the opposistion. By bringing the information and understanding gleaned from this exercise into a class courtroom, it also provides students with an interactive way to demonstrate their understanding.

So, in conclusion, WebQuests are powerful tools, but only if they are truly utilized to their full potential. Many people set up a WebQuest, but really, they are only using the format of a WebQuest in order to gather and scatter facts. Truly powerful WebQuests involve not just hunting for facts, but understanding, analyzing, evaluating, and applying them in new and interesting ways.

Alright, let’s talk about WebQuests. The term webquest has—for many people—become a watered down word meaning “to search the Internet.” However, after you finish reading the blog page from the creator of WebQuests, Bernie Dodge, and the article from one of his colleagues, Tom March, on the Learning Power of WebQuests, as well as Chapter 8 in the Internet textbook, you should have a pretty good idea of what a WebQuest is.

Mills in the Internet textbook describes them as inquiry-oriented cooperative learning activities. They are inquiry-oriented because good ones are designed to answer questions, not reinforce what students all ready know. They are cooperative—if properly designed—because the subjects are broad, complex and often, controversial, so according to Mills, no one student is expected to become an expert in every area.

WebQuests are meant to motivate students by breaking authentic problems and tasks into small and manageable steps.

They are also meant to walk instructors through good lesson format: introduce the idea (knowledge), share a description of the task (comprehension), present the step by step process that will complete the task (application, analysis, synthesis—if written correctly), help students evaluate themselves, the process and their team members (evaluation), and a conclusion that allows the class to reflect upon the learning process.

In March’s article, he presents three examples of WebQuests that he feels are bad examples. Why? I mean when I read the examples they sounded like OK Internet activities. But March feels they fall short of WebQuests. Why is that? That’s question # 1.

I want you to explore 10 to 20 different WebQuests from the website: www.webquest.org. On the lefthand side, there is a “Find WebQuests” button. Then you will be taken to a page where you can search by topic on the top part of the page, or you can go down to the “Curriculum Grade Level Matrix.” Choose a subject, choose a grade, and then click search matrix.

You will need to take notes. You may want to use some kind of graphical organizer to help you compare and contrast the different WebQuests. Since your final assignment is to create your own WebQuest, this is your chance to figure out what makes a good WebQuest. As you are looking at the WebQuests, think about what you have read, but also think about what appeals to you. Which WebQuests successfully motivate you to complete the task? What is it about them that keeps you interested.

Then in your reply to this podcast, in addition to answering question #1, tell me in your own words what the best WebQuests had in common. Then choose one of themto describe and explain how you might use this in your classroom and what you LOVE about it. Don’t choose one that you can’t be passionate about.

WEB 2.0 AND LANGUAGE PRODUCTION

Have you heard of Web 2.0? This is the so-called second generation of the Internet. It includes blogs, wikis, podcasting, photo sharing sites, like “Flickr,” and video sharing sites, like “YouTube”, to name the most famous of the components. It allows everyone to be a published author. It flattens social hierarchies because you don’t have to be rich or famous to collaborate with people around the world. You don’t have to wait to be discovered, you can promote yourself by publishing a blog or a homemade video on YouTube. Andrew Keen is a critic of Web 2.0, even though he has his own blogging and podcasting sites. This is how he describes Web 2.0: “Web 2.0 ‘empowers’ our creativity, it ‘democratizes’ media, it ‘levels the playing field’ between experts and amateurs.” I like this description and it sounds like a good thing to me. However, Keen argues that this is harmful to society in his article Web 2.0: The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think (2006).

Some Dangers To Be Aware Of
I agree that there are some danger points we need to be aware of and help our students be prepared for. We’ve been talking about critical evaluation, and that’s the main defense against the problems that Keen foresees.

There is an overwhelming amount of information available. It is possible for the good or true information to be drowned out by the bad or false information. It is possible for readers to mistake opinion for fact especially since some blogs are run by news agencies. We need to prepare our students to not fall easily into the “wisdom of the crowd phenomena.” Even if 100 blogs say the same thing, it does not make it true. The “crowd” is not always wise.

Besides equalization and creativity, Web 2.0 is about personalization. Keen argues that we might be heading towards too much personalization.

Web 2.0 technology personalizes culture so that it reflects ourselves rather than the world around us. Blogs personalize media content so that all we read are our own thoughts. Online stores personalize our preferences, thus feeding back to us our own taste. Google personalizes searches so that all we see are advertisements for products and services we already use (Keen, 2006).

Great for Language Production
On the positive side, Web 2.0 gives instructors wonderful tools to use in getting students to produce the target language.

Have you heard of “i + 1” where “i” equals “comprehensible input” and “+ 1” means “one level higher than their current stage of linguistic competence”? This is known as Krashen’s Input Theory. It’s a great theory and it’s very important. I met Krashen once at the Los Angeles CATESOL conference. He has learned numerous languages mostly by reading, so it’s easy to see why input is so important to him. However, I personally agree with Swain’s Pushed Output Theory. She agrees that comprehensible input and lots of it is important. But she suggests that we don’t really learn a language until we can output in that language. And, she notes that language learners are often reluctant to produce in the target language, so they must be “pushed” at times.
I believe the secret is to push the students for production without letting them know they are being pushed. This is where Web 2.0 comes in.

Journaling
When I first started teaching, “journaling” was popular. If you were are reading or writing teacher, you would have your students write in a journal at least once a week. Sometimes in response to specific questions, sometimes just telling about any experiences they had using the language. For example, maybe they went to McDonalds and they were able to order without pointing at the pictures. They could journal about that. If you were a speaking teacher, then you would require that they recorded their journal on cassette tapes. Then you would collect a couple dozen tapes that you would have to listen to on your weekend.
Journaling was important because it forced students to be reflective about their learning. But, it largely disappeared over the years due to the difficulties of collecting stacks of notebooks or cassette tapes, the time commitment required for the instructor to grade them, and the complaints from the students because it took too much of their time and they didn’t see the value.

Well, journaling is back, but not because teachers are assigning it. Nope, it’s back in the form of written blogs and oral podcasts. It’s back because individuals find the new technology fun and intriguing. It’s back because we enjoy the creativity.

OK, folks, here are your questions. First, how can teachers take advantage of the popularity of blogs and podcasts. Come up with at least 3 ways. Second, do you agree with Keen that Web 2.0 is worse than you think. Explain your answer. Third and last, how would you define the “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” and how would you prepare your students for it. By the way, “wisdom of the crowd” is not always a bad thing.

Alright. I look forward to learning from you.

"Franz Kafka toiled in obscurity and died penniless. If only he'd had a website . . . ." (Poets and Writers Magazine, January 2006, back cover advertisement).

I’d like to talk about Professor Marcy’s lecture and respond to her questions and what we though about web 2.0 and the popularity of blogs and podcasts and the dangers that go along with web 2.0.
First of all, how can teachers take advantage of these blogs and podcasts and the popularity of creating these at this point in time. First of all I would say this is an easy way to teacher to help their students create something that is easy to share with parents to show progress, for evidence in an IEP or for a counselor. It is also something to show how great they have done to a bigger forum- if it is promoting it to the school, to their classmates, etc. They can actually advertise their project or what they have created or written. I love that this technology equalizes everyone and we ALL have the opportunity to share our opinion, our products, ourselves. While we are creating these blogs and podcasts, we are also archiving history. This means something to me since I have cassette tape recordings of myself as a 1st grader reading And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street by Dr Seuss. That is something that I treasure, and will love to share with my children one day when they are enjoying the same book. I’m not going to say that my children are going to sit down and enjoy listening to my Masters program podcasts, but I do think most parent and children enjoy looking back at what they created in the past. That is of even more importance when the person who wrote, recorded, read, or appeared in the media is not around anymore. What an opportunity teachers have to help create digital “scrapbooks”!
I also appreciate the opportunity that technology in our classroom gives us to empower our students. Our student may not have access to this technology at home and it becomes our responsibility to show them how to use it and get comfortable with it. This will prepare them for high school and college where use of technology is required to complete many projects. At my target teaching level of elementary school, this will be an impressive tool for them to have in their pocket, and that, once again, the playing field has been leveled and they are able to compete just the same as everyone else- even those people from much higher socio-economic levels.
Thirdly, I like having to power of the podcasts and blogs to teach in way Professor Marcy is able to, for distance education, but with a little twist. I don’t mean just signing up for an online class at the college. I mean more of a tool for a child who is learning English as a second language and would benefit from hearing the material covered once again after school. Maybe for the child who misses the lesson because of an unruly neighbor, a pullout program, or was just absent that day. These students can go home and review the lesson again or see it for the first time on the teacher’s website… they have an opportunity to experience what they missed out on in class. I also can see how this would benefit younger students in a home hospital program, like my little sister was. The blog and podcast teaching method should not just be limited to college students, but instead used for any student that can’t be in the normal classroom for whatever reason. This would be a great supplement to tutors, and also for parents that end up having to homeschool in subject they are not as familiar with.
I agree with Keen, moving onto the second part of my response, that is it dangerous. I feel this way because I sat in a 5th grade classroom for about 3 weeks and had the privilege of taking these little darlings to the library/computer lab. I realized that even with all the filters the school district had put in to block nasty websites, the district was not able to prevent these 5th grade boys from typing in “boobs”, “underwear”, or “kissing.” You would be surprised what gets past those filters when the kids searched for images on Google. I know that part of preventing this comes down to classroom management, but event the best teacher is going to have curious students that are going to try to test the boundaries of propriety. It is not just the kid looking up the offensive term, but also his neighbor who looks over to check it out and later repeats what he saw UNDER MY CARE in school that day. That part of web 2.0 frightens me as a teacher in the future and currently as a sub. It is great to have freedom, but at the same time it can be kind of scary if you are a kid and can’t totally protect yourself.
That moves straight into the third and final portion of my response. The “wisdom of the crowd,” and speaking of 5th graders, sometimes the crowd is not who you should listen to. It is very easy to assume because something is on the internet it must be true. I loved the assignment where we checked out several websites that we later found out were fake/misleading/hateful. They seemed pretty legit to begin with, but we saw from out research and what Professor Marcy pointed out that they were not reputable websites. In fact, I was even concerned about being on the MLK/white pride site since I know that big brother is always watching. Students wanting to check the validity of a website should absolutely fact check with their teacher- especially the young students. They should also be encouraged to head down to the library and research using the book there. I know that technology is amazing, but I also LOVE books. I would feel sad if our students were basing all their knowledge and research on Googling a topic and never sat down in front of a book. My biggest resources for preparing my students for internet research in projects would be to limit their resources to a couple from the internet and a couple from the library or somewhere else. They should still have to confirm and fact check with the teacher, though. Not that teachers know everything, but they do know a whole lot!

In his article, “The Learning Power of WebQuests,” Tom March discusses the importance of activities that incorporate authentic tasks from Internet resources. The goals of WebQuests are to promote critical thinking skills. Meaningful Webquests rely upon scaffolding approaches to learning. Students work collaboratively and approach a subject from different perspectives (political, economic, social, or environmental, for example) and then begin the process of creating personal meaning from the information. When designed correctly, students employ higher order thinking skills to expand a concept or product. Great WebQuests often begin as open-ended questions so that individuals working collaboratively arrive at a better understanding of the materials they are studying. According to March, “the best WebQuests inspire students to see richer thematic relationships, to contribute to the real world of learning, and to reflect on their own meta-cognitive processes” (March, p. 2).

There are, unfortunately, a number of so-called WebQuests that do nothing more than ask students to regurgitate facts culled from the Internet. According to Tom March, if there is no learning scaffolding learning, no tasks that promote critical thinking skills, and no open-ended question, a project cannot be termed a true WebQuest. March describes several collaborative school projects that fall into this category: a planned trip across the United States, a poster with facts and images of endangered species, and a presentation about an exotic zoo animal. In each of these examples, there exists no need to call upon prior knowledge, construct personal meaning, or create a new concept or product. Students are only required to present facts.

For learning to be effective, it must the authentic; this means that learning must be relevant to the lives of the learners. It must address their interests and needs and, ideally, have real-world applications.

The best websites integrate “thematic relationships.” If an association can be made between ethnic violence in Iraq, for example, and ethnic tensions in some U.S. inner cities, learners feel more connections to the material under study. When students can witness first-hand the results of learning (via service learning projects and school/work programs, for example), learning becomes more meaningful. Ultimately, well-designed WebQuests should result in learners becoming more aware of their own “meta-cognitive processes.” When this happens, learners become more attuned to their individual learning styles and patterns. The result: more independent and creative thinkers.

After reviewing a multitude of WebQuests, the ones that attracted me the most were those that were, first, visually appealing. After capturing my attention through the visuals, what held my attention was those Webquests that required me to approach learning from a unique perspective. Questions were posed that challenged me to think on a deeper level about the material presented.

One of my favorite WebQuests is called “It’s Your World, We’re Just Living In It” (QuestGarden.com). Designed for a sixth-grade reading level or above— intermediate/advanced English learners—the assignment is to create a Plan for Survival in a universe of one’s unique creation. The Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon, and seven other deities will serve as guides in this creation. (Interestingly, this WebQuest was inspired by a survival activity for a UCLA MBA program.) The beginning part of this assignment requires that students—working in groups—gather the information and confirm the accuracy. The second part asks students to uniformly agree—using strategies of persuasion and compromise—on the best choices of deities as guides for the new, soon-to-be-created universe. Finally, students must invent a new god who will assist in their survival in this alternate universe.

I have always loved Greek myths and legends, in part because Cassandra (my name) was a tragic figure in Greek mythology. Greek myths explain the nature of the world and it’s creation, and also provides an understanding of religious beliefs during the times of the ancients. Because I find the stories of the Greek gods and goddesses so compelling—with their myriad tales of intrigue, vengeance and redemption—I love this WebQuest. The lesson invites participants to use their imagination and thinking skills to arrive at a solution to the challenge of creating an alternate universe. The project is fun, creative, and invites problem-solving skills. What could be more appealing?

1. How can teachers take advantage of the popularity of blog and podcasts?
A. When a teacher gives a writing assignment and discovers an exceptionally written one, the teacher may encourage the student to publish it in the blog so that his or her work can be seen by others. I am certain that the student will be very proud of what he or she has accomplished. Also If a student has a great talent in singing and acting, teachers can encourage him or her to make a segment and post it to blogs or YouTube, and then the student’s video can be seen by many people and if he or she wants feedback, the viewers will give positive ones along with negatives ones too.
B. YouTube is immensely popular among young people. Since YouTube has videos with many different genres and styles of writing and many of the young people are YouTube fans, a teacher can select several good ones to teach about different literacy writings. Using podcast can an excellent tool for students, for it accommodates multiple intelligence with different styles of learning by stimulating 5 senses. Professor Marcy lectured last week that computer technology keeps the activity focused on language and content objectives, so that teachers can maximize students’ learning.
C. Another advantage of using podcast is that teachers can record content readings for elementary ELD students or lectures for ESL students to podcast and make it available for them, who have problems following reading and lectures due to their lock of listening skills. By doing so, teachers provide them with a structured autonomy and authentic tasks.
2. Do you agree with Keen that Web 2.0 is worse than you think?
I guess young people and even some aged people are vulnerable to mass opinion because they are not able to selectively filter out about what they have read or rationalize their preformed opinion. Therefore, I think Keen has legitimate concerns about bad and false information that has generated in public arena. I will be an elementary school teacher in the future, therefore, this subject really concerns me. As a teacher, I have a responsibility to protect my student from biased, prejudiced, and counterfeit information. I think that the education is the key to guard my students. The activity Professor Marcy had us do in pairs really open my eyes. I will implement the same activity for my students so that they will be able to distinguish the reliable information from untrustworthy one. By teaching them with these skills, the students become critical thinkers both in academics and social.
3. Define the “wisdom of the crowd” is not always a bad thing.
When I was young and when I did something wrong that was not morally and ethically correct, my mother would ask me, “If others fall off the cliff, would you do it too?” Therefore, I have been taught that the “wisdom of the crowd” is always a bad thing. However, some people think that public opinion has been a powerful tool in shaping our history and culture, and democracy as we know now has not been possible by it. I think the phrase, “wisdom of the crowd” has the advantage when we use it as useful information to educate people, and however, mass opinion also entails the disadvantage when it causes social unrest and panic.

I believe that teachers can and should take advantage of the popularity of blogs and pod casts, especially in motivating middle school and high school who are probably already comfortable and experienced with Web 2.0.

Many students already blog, be it on myspace, wordpress, or any other of the many similar programs available. Students may be more motivated to complete an assignment if they are given the option of submitting it electronically. This alternative method may seem more appealing to students who are constituently online in their spare time and who are more comfortable with typing assignments out on the computer than they are writing them out on paper. Teachers could require that students post their homework assignments on blogs as opposed to turning in hard copies.

Teachers could also record their lectures as pod casts and make them available for students to listen to after the material is already covered in class. Even if the teacher already posts information from class in PowerPoint presentations online, he/she should still represent the material in an audio form for students who have not mastered reading skills. This would be especially helpful to adult ESL students who may not be able to regularly attend class because of other commitments (work, family, etc…), but do not wish to get behind in class. It may also be beneficial to high school students who do not fully comprehend the lectures the first time and need some extra support and guidance from the teacher. Having the lectures available online may motivate students to take the initiative to seek the extra help they need, once factors such as embarrassment, time restraints, and such are eliminated.

The act of publishing one’s work and making it available to an authentic audience is a great motivation for students to create output in the L2. Having students create blogs and pod casts that they know will be available to everyone in the world (including native speakers), not just the teacher, is an affective tool in ELD teaching. Projects should be published online to broaden the audience and foster enthusiasm among students.

While I do agree that there are some dangers in Web 2.0, I do not agree with Keen that it is worse than we think because I believe that the positive contributions it offers outweigh the negative. Equalization and personalization aren’t entirely bad, anyways. Web 2.0 is very empowering, and many people need that empowerment (especially ELLs) to take the initial step in becoming computer literate and using technology as a medium for learning.

“Don’t believe everything that you’ve read”. We’ve all heard the saying before, yet for some reason, when words are published on paper or online, it seems as though they possess some kind of authority and underlying truth. The Crowd Phenomena makes sense… if it says it, it must be true. However, this is NOT the case (as we saw in class last week). ANYONE can post ANYTHING online, which can lead to much confusion throughout the general population. Students must be warned of the potential dangers of the freedom everyone has in publishing ideas, opinions, and even lies online, and then disguising them as facts. The activity we did in class last week from the website about the explores was a perfect example of how to warn students of the internet’s potential ability to promote information that isn’t always accurate. Also, students should be informed of the difference between websites that end in .edu and .gov verses .com, .org, and .net. Despite the Crowd Phenomena, students are wise enough to be able to make good decisions on what they will and will not believe from the internet.

I think web 2.0 is a very helpful and useful tool for the teachers because computers play an important role in the world nowadays and most of the students spend a lot of time using the internet. Except for talking to students in person, teachers now can have other ways to keep in touch with their students. The three ways that a teacher can take advantage of the popularity of blogs and podcasts are as the following:
1. When it comes to speaking or listening, the podcasts allow students to do the homework or exercise again and again as long as they have the computer with them. Take the CALL class for example, the professor recorded the lecture and posts it on the blackboard, if students have problems about the homework and lecture, we can watch the video again and again until we understand the content. For some students who are afraid to ask questions in front of the classmates, it is very helpful for them because they can listen to the lecture as many times as they want and they can use the blogs to ask the question and teachers can answer to that on the blog.
2. I think another advantage of web 2.0 is that an intimacy grew up between teachers and students. Students can share their daily life with teachers. For me, I feel closer with the teacher if I knew that he/she is using the blog or facebook or something else like we did. I would think the teacher is more open-mined and I am willing to share my personal story with the teacher.
3. For EFL students, podcasts can be a very useful tool for them. It is not easy to learn a new language. It requires a lot of practice. When students want to practice the speaking, they can use the podcasts to record their talking. Then they can hear their own voice to see if they need to improve the pronunciation.

I have to say that I disagreed with Keen’s opinion about the web 2.0. For me, it is such a wonderful tool that it saves a lot of time for the teachers and students. Except for the paper homework and test, teacher can use the podcasts to give the test and homework. It saves not only times and also good for our environments. The less paper we use, the more trees are saved. It is really good for the earth.

I think “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” means that people would rather believe a group of people with the same idea than one expert’s idea. This could be a bad thing sometimes. For example, people would get mail from other friends said if you forward this mail to more than 10 people; then some companies will donate money to the charity. How do we know if it is real or not? But most of us saw that people are doing it and they would think it’s real and start to forward the mail to more people. As a teacher, I think we have to tell students what on the internet is not always true. Students have to make your own judgments.

Teachers now have some new methods to teach language. They can teach their students through blogs and podcasts on line.
Teachers may have their own blogs or podcasts. They can put something important on it. For example, some lecture sheets, power points for the class, record or video of the class. If a student didn’t catch up with what teacher say in the class. They can login the teacher’s blog or podcast to find something they missed in the class. Teacher also can let students build their own blogs. Students can get some assignments in teachers’ blogs, and do these tasks on their own blogs. Students also can write some articles about their daily lives, such as a description of a trip, some feelings for one thing, etc. teachers may login students’ spaces to know their students from these articles instantly. Teachers must know what their students think about, and meet the needs of their students, and then the teaching will be successful.

I think web2.0 is a very useful thing for us, especially in language learning as I mentioned above. Compare with the web1.0, web2.0 multiplies some communication elements. We can share our feelings and ideas with the others. We can communicate with whoever we want if only they have Internet. All of things have both positive and negative aspects. As an open space, there’re also some inaccurate or unhealthy information in the Internet. As a teacher, we can let our students open their eyes to the world through the Internet, and in the same time, tell them what information can and cannot be trust, to use the Internet in the right way. We also appeal a clean Internet to the society.

I think “wisdom of the crowd phenomena” is a very universal phenomenon in our daily lives, not only in Internet. It will become true when you hear one hundred people say it’s right even if this information is wrong. The same things happen in Internet. You won’t trust it when you see something odd in one blog, but if there are one hundred blogs say that the “something odd” is true, maybe you will confuse what you insist on. As a teacher, we should prepare our students for it. Instead of telling them which one can and cannot be trust, I think I should teach them some methods to separate the sheep from the goats themselves when they get some information in Internet.

I agree with Peggy's Podcast One that we are at a fortunate time: Web 2.0 technologies are maturing to the point that they are widely available, practical tools to use in the service of language learning.

A teacher of English to speakers of other languages could take advantage of blogs, podcasts, and related technology to practice discrete language skills, expand communication, learn content, and enhance technology skills. I would think these assignments would be highly popular with secondary school and young adult learners, since most are already comfortable with Web 2.0 functions.
A few ideas for teaching learners from middle school to adulthood include:

- Podcast Karaoke. In this activity, learners record a podcast of themselves singing a favorite song, accompanied by a photo and a text readout of the song's lyrics. Students can visit each other's podcasts and comment on their favorites. Objectives for this exercise would include pronunciation and comprehension, and to learn more about the target country's musical culture. Learners would interact with one another and have the fun and satisfaction of completing an authentic task.
- Blog Power: The instructor directs groups or a small class to choose an issue of current concern (such as global warming or minority language rights). Each group starts a blog at a major blog site, and each day members of the group scan news media for information or debates about their topic. They then prepare the information for posting on the blog. Since this is an authentic task, some students may even receive comments on their blog entries from people outside the class. This exercise would cover objectives in writing, researching, content learning, and technology learning. Teachers could also use this opportunity to discuss the varied quality and authority of websites.
- Wiki Dictionary. Class members are responsible for creating a wiki and adding a number of words and definitions each day/session. Students add words from their reading or vocabulary research, properly spelled and with their phonetic pronunciation (or an audiofile, if desired), and perhaps a photograph or illustration. Words may be focused on a particular area, such as travel words or business vocabulary, if the teacher or class prefer. This exercise is primarily a vocabulary builder, and students later can keep access to it for their own use.

I do agree with Andrew Keen that Web 2.0 is dangerous, but so was the printing press, and for similar reasons. Both shifted power from experts to laymen, and both brought problems as well as great possibilities. Dangerous or not, decentralized digital voices are here to stay.

For my part, I value the newfound ability of people to speak freely, associate as they wish, and follow their own conscience on the Web. At the same time, I fully agree with Keen on the matter of overpersonalization. Everything is “all about me,” and not just on the Web. I saw at the Post Office the other day that patrons can now have their own digital photographs made into valid postage. Does a snapshot of my cat really belong on the front of an envelope, instead of Carl Sandburg or Martin Luther King or Thomas Jefferson? On Web 2.0, the opportunities for digital navel-gazing are endless, if you have the bandwidth for them. With Twitter and Facebook, I can dwell in a mutual admiration sphere with my own contacts instead of using the power of the Internet to access new ideas and faraway people. This cultural trend feeds narcissism, and nourishes the belief that just “being ourselves” is enough. Self-esteem is lovely, but I worry too much of it will remove the impulse to struggle for individual and social progress.

Keen definitely makes few friends in his article for the Standard, calling open standard advocate Larry Lessig an “intellectual property Communist” and making the much discussed comments on the egalitarianism of Web 2.0 technologies: “It suggests that everyone--even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us--can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves.” I would venture that most people under 30 would take it for granted that this is the way it should be, and many older people would likewise have minimal sympathy for a monopoly of expert elites.

There is a lot of rubbish out there in cyberspace, and the “wisdom of the crowd” phenomenon is one I plan to talk about with my own children, to help them develop an independent skepticism of the information they encounter on the Web. Teachers who encourage their students to use Web 2.0 technologies are handing the learners a powerful tool, but along with it the teacher must give students the safety know-how to wield it properly. Wisdom of the crowd refers to the conclusion an amorphous group comes to about a matter, and in these Internet days it is much more visible than in the recent past. A 2004 book by economist James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations, received much attention for developing this idea. The author opened with a passage from British intellectual Francis Galton, who was surprised that a crowd at a county fair was better at guessing the weight of an ox, when their individual opinions were averaged, than were local experts.

Sometimes, of course, common wisdom is wrong but well-intentioned (old wives' tales and much of the feed material for the Mythbusters television program), sometimes it's wrong and unintentionally harmful (like stock-market panics), and sometimes it's wrong and malicious (such as population segments who propagate the belief that the current U.S. president is not a citizen, etc.) Teachers need to explore all types of commonly held beliefs with their students, and show them examples of websites whose content is biased, faulty, or not meant to be taken seriously. There is no quality check on the Web, or as one classmate pointed out, no Better Business Bureau standard for websites. The same freedom which allows anyone to publish free of control by elites also brings us dilettantes, crackpots and malefactors, but students can learn to distinguish them if the habit is inculcated in them.

The Internet has spawned Web 2.0 and with it many technological innovations. One of the many popular features is blogs and podcasts. Teachers can take advantage of these web functionalities in several ways.
In the past, it was common for teachers to ask their students to keep journals. With Web 2.0, blogs and podcasts replace journals and allow students to express themselves in a variety of formats. Teachers can take advantage of blogs to give students opportunities to express their thoughts and opinions through the written word. Teachers can use podcasts to give students an audio format to do the same things.
Another way teachers can use blogs is for exchange of ideas between students without the teacher’s participation. Through blogs, students can ask questions and receive a variety of answers from other classmates. This is a useful in many ways. Students can ask questions that they didn’t have time for or couldn’t ask in class. This gives students who are too shy to speak in class a chance for their voice to be heard. In addition, class time can be use for other tasks such as learning concepts.
Blogs and podcasts are also good metagcognition tools. By reading the blogs of classmates, a student can compare and contrasts his ideas with those offered by other members of the class, understand his mistakes, and take steps to correct them.
With the myriad of options for teachers, it’s hard to imagine Web 2.0 being something “worse than you think,” as described by Andrew Keen. He compares the new era of the Internet to the Siren’s song, which will doom us. He doesn’t believe that the world will be a better place with the amateur auteur being on the same level as professionals with connections to big studios capable of financing, producing, and distributing big budget “blow-them-ups.” He questions the ability of such Web 2.0 features such as blogs and podcasts to deliver more ideas. For him, such vehicles of expression are reflective of ourselves and not an expression of ourselves. We are not sharing with the world, but sharing with ourselves. Web 2.0 isn’t about “personalization” but about “narcissim.”
Andrew Keen certainly provides a good counterpoint to those proclaiming the greatness of Web 2.0 and its ability to “level the playing field” and “democratize” the production and distribution of products of creative expression. Even though the Internet has been around many years, it’s still a relatively new medium we use to communicate through, learn from, and teach with. As with anything new, I believe we should be proceed with caution before being called away by its song.
However, I can’t agree wholeheartedly with Keen’s skepticism. “Personalization” to Keen is a bad thing. To some extent his fears are warranted, but there are those students who need to have an outlet such as blogs and podcasts to share their thoughts and opinions. As a teacher, I’ve seen too many students who couldn’t speak out in class because fear of group participation or required more time to formulate their ideas.
I believe with the proper education, students can be taught to use blogs as a way to learn more about other people and the world around us. For example, in a teaching class for the master’s in education program at CSUSB, students are forced to look at the blogs of other students, learn from them, and make comments.
As a teacher, I’ve used podcasts as a teaching as well as a metagcognition tool. In one lesson, students were asked to make a podcast. Students were encourage to listen to the class’s podcasts, make a list of spoken mistakes, and compare them to their own mistakes. In another lesson, students had to teach the class grammar activities to fix the common mistakes.
These are some of the examples in which I believe Web 2.0 has been used constructively. Should teachers be cautious and weigh the pros and the cons before becoming enthralled with it’s song? Yes. However, I don’t think it’s “worse than you think.”
The “wisdom of the crowd” suggests Web 2.0 is full of potential and can “level the playing field.” Ideas that are propagated and supported by the populous on the Internet can have a cascading effect and force net users to accept an idea as true and possibly factual. It’s hard not to be swept away by the “crowd phenomena” and refute something that many people believe in. Students can be protected from such phenomena if they are taught critical thinking skills, given confidence so they hold steadfast to their convictions and beliefs, and shown examples in which the “crowd” was wrong and evidence to suggests it happens on a regular basis.

Since many students and teachers are familiar with blogs and podcasts, I believe they are a great start to incorporating technology into the classroom with minimal anxiety. Both media offer students a creative, individualized forum in which they can authentically communicate with a wide audience. As Egbert explains, authenticity is whatever the student deems useful for using outside of class. Blogs and podcasts fit this definition of authentic because the media itself is mainstream and uses everyday language to reach everyone. Learning to use these media is a skill that can be immediately transferred to outside of the classroom. As a mainstream media, blogs and podcasts take the formality and anxiety out of the classroom, thus creating a more relaxed class atmosphere. Motivation is also increased through these media for two reasons. One reason is because topics can be kept current. Another reason is because learners want to put out their best effort since their work will be published for many to see.

The fact that the publishing of their work levels the playing field between amateur and expert and democratizes such media, as Keen states, is actually a plus. As it stands, ESL student often lack a voice because of the numerous linguistic, cultural, and racial barriers they face. Utilizing such media gives learners a voice and communicates to them that they have something worth saying that others want to hear. This desire to communicate is the first step towards learning any language. In the case of EFL learners, I can say from experience that in Japan there is intense pressure to follow the group. There is a saying in Japan that, “the nail that stands up will be hammered down.” Rather than supporting “the wisdom of the crowd,” or conventional thinking, these media actually allow divergent views to be expressed and offer a forum for applying critical thinking skills and conducting follow up discussions. Utilizing such a forum is a crucial part of our job as educators. More important than the teaching of English skills is the teaching of crucial critical thinking skills and discussion skills that learners can apply to all aspects of their lives.

The ways instructors can apply blogs and podcasts in the classroom are numerous. At the school I am currently working at, students chose books from the grader reader series. If students wrote follow up blogs based on the text, the instructor would be able to assess how much the student was comprehending and how well they were able to express their understanding. Other students who had read the same text would be able to have a discussion with that student. Students who hadn`t read that text yet might become interested in the text and decide to read it. Since both the blogs and comments would be written by students, the reading level would be appropriate. As Professor Marcy states in the lecture, the biggest component to learning reading skills is the doing of it. It’s the “Matthew Effect” by which students either use their reading skills or lose their reading skills. By incorporating blogs in the classroom, students read and write more.

In the writing classroom, blogs could be used as a kind of portfolio assessment where students can see how much they have progressed and gain feedback from classmates. Using blogs can also balance the more formal language and expressions used in writing textbooks, thus increasing students pragmatic competence. Such facets of language as idioms and slang are also important to learn and use correctly. Grammar can be taught contextually through blogs in line with Krashin’s theory of Second Language Acquisition. Blogs also help students practice the typing skills they need for real life writing tasks and writing tasks on such exams as TOEFL.

In the listening/speaking classroom, podcasts can allow students who are shy to work more on their fluency and create more equal talk time among students in the case of teacher bias. As in the case with blogs, podcasts insure that there is listening level appropriateness since they are created by fellow classmates. Podcasts also allow students to evaluate such things as pronunciation. Just as with blogs, podcasts also help students practice the skills they need for real life speaking/listening tasks and speaking / listening tasks on such exams as TOEFL.

While blogs and podcasts provide many benefits to the classroom, it is important to remember that with this technology comes responsibility. As the lecture on professional development states, technology should not be used as a baby sitter and needs to be monitored. The use of technology should have a clear purpose and reinforce critical thinking skills. If it satisfies these criteria, it can be an excellent supplement to a class.