Assignment 1
Introduction and Project Overview, Page 1
This project will teach the critical literacy skills necessary to effectively read and critically evaluate multi-modal, interactive web resources and new and emerging literacies (weblogs) Reference will be made to aspects of visual and media literacy and this will be applied as students endeavour to meet the linguistic, visual and spatial conventions and features of new communication technologies. (a travel blog, discussion forums and a synchronous event)
It will demonstrate integration of information and communication technologies to improve cultural, critical, media and visual literacy and to provide students with exposure to the texts and literacies of the multi-media age. Students will be required to access, evaluate, organise, problem solve and use information to create a travel blog. The project will draw on material from the four resources model of literacy across the curriculum, with specific emphasis on the student as:
- Text participant
- Text user
- Text analyst
The project will be based on a webquest titled, Journey to China’ and new literacies and multi-modal texts will be integrated into teaching and learning outcomes of this webquest.
Background
I wrote this webquest several years ago and it was first facilitated with a Year 7 group of Distance Education students. The webquest was first created within the structure of a LMS (Blackboard) as used by Education Queensland. Because of the evolving nature of the internet and progress in technologies, I have continued to adapt and add to to the original webquest. An example of this is the change in the assessment task and some other learning activities. The original assessment task required students to create a series of postcards highlighting how they ‘made the most of their visit to China’. Now the assessment task is focussed on new literacies and students are required to create a travel blog and provide a series of blog entries creating the story of how they made the most of their visit to China. Instead of creating a hand drawn map as part of the process stage of the webquest, students now use Google maps to explore the geographic and cultural features of China. I have now replaced the LMS created webquest, with a website which I created. The website makes use of multi-modal texts and allows greater flexibility and a more visually attractive product than a course written within the structures of a LMS.
At the time I developed the webquest, there was a school based move towards online learning and, in particular, a move towards developing online units that support higher order thinking skills. This webquest is based on the webquest model first developed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March.
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. (Bernie Dodge, Tom March, 1995)