Computer based instruction is a useful tool to enhance a lesson in the classroom. There are many different kinds of computer-based instruction. There are many different kinds of computer-based instruction. There are web quests, web pages, and StAIR projects. However, if you want to implement these tools outside the classroom there can be problems to overcome. In the school district in which I worked and live many of the families do not have access to a computer outside of school. Another problem is the computer literacy of your students or "digital immigrants" (Mark Prensky).
In order to get past some of these obstacles one has to make sure the computer based instruction is available or made available to all students. One also has to make sure that the instructional activities are appropriate to the learner. I am a secondary education teacher in History and Social Studies; here are a few webquests which I might use in my classroom.
Look Who's Footing the Bill
This webquest would be used in a Civics or Government classroom. The layout of the webquest is very appealing. There are links to each task in the webquest so as not to overwhelm a student with to much text. Now a student can take each step slowly.
Nicaragua
This webquest is very well written. The educational goals are clearly stated. Every step of the webquest is detailed and easy to comprehend. The draw back to this particular webquest is the amount of time it takes to complete. In school it may be difficult to get your classes into a computer lab to finish this webquest. Another draw back is a few of the link don't work, which makes me think that this webquest was not kept up to date.
There are lots of great computer based instructional activities out there just waiting to be used.
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"Computer Literacy of your students" - a great point to make. Another teacher and I have been introducing MOODLE to our Middle School students. We are both learning that there is a wide range of computer knowledge at this age group. What I mean to say is that there are kids at both ends of the spectrum when it comes to computers. You have those that can build you a computer and those that think the mouse is the thing that just ran across the floor. (No, our school doesn't have real mice in the computer lab.)
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, with any computer-based instruction, you are guaranteed to have a million questions asked about the assignment. In dealing with these obstacles, I've found that an enormous amount of patience is required.
I completely agree with the aspect of digital immigrants. I tend to assume that students know more about technology than me because they've been exposed to it since they were younger. Many of the students are digital natives, but they still are not up to date on some of the technologies that I use in my classroom.
ReplyDeleteLike you, most of my students do not have access to computers or the Internet at home, so it makes it difficult to ascertain what background knowledge they come to us with. In my class we did a webquest on the Scientific Method that was meant to take one or two days, but ended up taking over a week and a half! The problems my students faced was that almost none of them knew how to use even the simpliest aspects of Word, which caught me by surprise. Last year my students were experts at this and could add formatting with little or no assistence. Since my school has a very mobile student population, this year is very different than last. It was important to switch gears midstream and model the ins and outs of Word, showing them step by step how to create a document, spell check, add clip art, etc. I let my kids play around with it for a day and when they felt comfortable they moved on to the "science". Sometimes when using technology, the lesson does not always go quite the way you might have planned, but we adapt to our classes. adjust schedules and, as Ryan pointed out, have lots of patience.
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