Assignment 1 Rationale
A webquest requires that,
‘ most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. (Bernie Dodge, Tom March, 1995 )
Therefore, students need an understanding of how to access, use and critically evaluate web resources to achieve the outcomes of a webquest. In the past, this webquest was just ‘handed’ to students without any formal orientation and immersion in web based resources. I think that we had assumed that students would intrinsically know how to access and use multi-modal web resources. Past experience, however, has shown that this is not always the case.
My context is unique in that I teach students who are home learners and who come from a diversity of social backgrounds and circumstances. Students are not face to face, as in a regular classroom.
‘The school community is characterised by a very broad range of socio-economic backgrounds, lifestyles and levels of educational need of students’ (Cairns School of Distance Education, Annual report, 2008)
In terms of ICT integration, my school follows Education Qld Smart Classroom Strategy and places a high priority on the need for students to be digitally literate and for teachers to make ICTs integral to their practice.
The Cairns School of Distance Education has embraced technology and continues to explore and innovate within the challenges of a 300 000 sq km classroom’ (Cairns School of Distance Education, Annual Report, 2008)
Outcome choice has been heavily influenced by consideration of my student’s circumstances, learning needs, and school direction. It is not uncommon for students at my school to need to turn on a generator to power up their computer. Many students have very slow internet connections. Many students share one family computer. Computers used are frequently old and poorly maintained. The overall result of this is that many students do not have ‘on demand’ 24/7 access to reliable computers and the internet.
Consequently, many of our students are not the typical ‘digital native’ who are stereotyped as living lives immersed in technology,
‘surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age’ (Prensky 2001a, cited in ‘The digital natives debate’)
Many students struggle with online learning. Parental attitude and values also influence the adoption of new technologies and literacies related to that technology.Therefore the tasks embedded into this project is an attempt to educate parents to value the new literacies as they do the traditional literacies of print and paper.