Teachers: Ditch the Excuses, Kids Come First!

I thought Bianca raised a key issue in her blog posting “Give Students a New Audience Everyday” from Judi Harris’ “Wherefore art thou telecollaboration?” about encouraging students to celebrate their work by using technology to communicate and share their ideas with the rest of the world. Bianca mentions statistics from Judi Harris’ article stating “that 75% of teachers believe that technology is valuable in education however only 35% of teachers use it in their classroom”. These fairly recent statistics took me by surprise and lead me to ponder over why exactly this was the case.

I didn’t have to ponder much longer as Bianca later mentions in her posting that the teachers who aren’t incorporating technology into their classrooms are using worn-out personal excuses such as “computer illiteracy, time, unreliable computers” and “lack of computers”. I would have to agree with Bianca that this is not time to be making excuses, and that she is completely right in saying that “there are so many fascinating and exciting activities” online that can help to “celebrate students’ work”. I, like Bianca, hope that teachers start realising sooner than later that we are living in a world basically run by technology, so in order ensure to engage in technological activities and ideally feel ready to face the real world.

The Benefits of WebQuests for Children

After completing my e-learning task on designing a WebQuest of my own with a partner, I was consequently left with a greater understanding of how teachers benefit from creating and using WebQuests. My uncertainties, however, lay in what the students gained from these online lesson plans. That was until I came across a website titled “Webquest – Benefits” which not only educated me on the benefits of WebQuests, but also the reasoning for why teachers need to teach technological skills to their students at school.

Within the article, David Thornburg, discusses the misunderstanding of many teachers, who believe that there is no need to incorporate technology into the classroom since kids already have access to technology in their homes. Thornburg states, however, that “while it is true that many of our kids have developed tremendous technological skills…it doesn’t mean that they have the research skills or the wisdom to know how to make meaning out of the stuff that they’re finding.” This is where the benefits of WebQuests comes in, as according to Dr. Bernie Dodge, these online lessons force kids “to make sense of what they are reading” in addition to learning how to work in groups, evaluating a multitude of resources and recognising and dealing with numerous perspectives on a specific topic.

So in short, WebQuests help to not only challenge children, but to teach them life long skills such as teamwork, and thus prepare them for success in the future.

Source: http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/crc/images/PAR72484.jpg