it's getting to an end

Well, hard to believe, but the semester is almost over. That went so fast!

Last session we got done with the evaluation of our webquests. Nassim and I also presented our webquest about the bonfire. Working with the evaluation sheet took a really long time. It's was quite hard to really read through all the webquests and see whether they achieved the different aims of the categories or not.

Later on we decided to just go through the last webquests really fast that we had time to learn about the Mind Manager Program, with which you can make mind maps on the computer very easily. I thought it was a very good program.

webquest evaluation

Today we went on with the presentations of our webquests. Group2, 3 and 4 presented.

Group 2 had a webquest for a 5th grade about going to the zoo and finding out information about animals living in the zoo. I really liked this webquest because it was a nice layout with nice colours and pictures, but it had also good tasks which were appropriate for that age group.

Group 3 had a webquest about planing a trip to London for a 7th grade. There were good tasks for which the class was divided into groups.

Group 4 had a webquest about Hollywood for an 8th grade. I must confess that I don't quite remember what the students had to do. :) The evaluation took a long time, after the three groups presented the time was already over.

technical difficulties

In the last session we were actually supposed to present our webquests. Nassim and I were asked to present ours at first, but we soon discovered that we hadn't saved our webquest as a html file and also that our links weren't working well.

So we got back to work and tried to find out how to solve our problems with the technical terms. And we still have problems with our links to get back on top of the page when pressing the button "top". Well, I hope we can figure it out somehow. Next tuesday we will again have a chance to present our webquests.

Another group presented their webquest about aborigines and we each got an evaluation sheet with which we had to evaluate the webquest of that group. Getting through the sheet I saw all the mistakes we had made in our webquest and all the weaknesses. It would have been good to know about all those things beforehand.

webquests, the third

On tuesday Nassim and I went on with our webquest. Our webquest will be for a sixth grade and they will have to find out about bonfires and their traditions and will have to plan and organize a bonfire in which the other sixth graders will be invited in.
We didn't do any thing else besides preparing our webquest.

going on with Webquests

In the previous class we learned more about webquests and then we started working on our own webquests. Nassim and I were in one team and we decided to make a webquests for a 6th grade about bonfires.
In this Webquests the students will have to plan a bonfire night for all the sixth graders of their school. They are supposed to find out what the history of bonfires is and for what kind of events it is done in the US and the UK.

WEBQUESTS

Today we learned about webquests. First there were question marks all over our heads.... I think... at least that goes for me. But then Mr. Raith told us more about it and when we started to work on a webquest task, the ??? went away.

It was interesting to be in the group and work on the task in your specific role, which everyone got. The opinions about the webquests at which we looked were quite different but it was good to get to know other perspectives.

Today's session

This morning we learned that today we would have our last chat with our croation partners. But before chatting with our partners Mr. Raith gave us a presentation on e-mail projects in school. He told us what kind of topics could be discussed in e-mail projects and where to find partners for such a project.

There are several websites which concentrate on e-mail projects and offer an amount of other schools or classes who would like to get in contact via e-mail with another school or class. We heard about the coordination which is necessary for starting an e-mail project. The teacher who wants to do such a project needs to be prepared very well and needs to be in contact with the other teacher before starting.

We then talked about the different phases within an e-mail project. The phases are:

- Preparation: coordination between the partner teachers, schedule, tasks
- Phase 1: Introduction, exchange of personal information, photos
- Phase 2: First exchange of information concerning the topic, questions, research
- Phase 3: Detailed exchange based on research, negotiating attitudes, otherness
- Phase 4: Comparison, further questions and answers, negotiating meaning, processing information
- Phase 5: Analysis, summary of results, working on product, farewell letters

We also compared them to our experiences through the project with our croation partners.

Later on Nassim and I had our last chat with Matija. It seemed like we were all in a hurry and we really got a lot of information about our lesson plans across. And today there weren't any bad misunderstandings or so. I thought it was a really good chat.