5th Week....Mid- course crisis !!

Dear Friends,

We have now reached the mid-way of the webskills journey. Because of some urgent personal compulsions, I couldn’t devote time to this course for a couple of days. As a result there’s so much still to be done and I am racing against time !!

I have been introduced to several new notions this week : Web quests , rubrics, alternative assessment, self-evaluation. The reading material, discussion posts and other remarks of my fellow participants have not only made these concepts a lot easier to follow but also helped to deepen our understanding of these crucial concepts.

Still there’s so much to read, so much to reflect and so much to prepare and eventually put all this into practice that at times I feel a bit bewildered on how to cope up with all these novel ideas that I’m being initiated into. It’s difficult to keep pace with the rest of the class, many of whom seem quite well-grounded in all these innovative methods. I’m thankful to all of you for the knowledge and insights that you are so generously sharing with us and especially Robert and Courtney for their invaluable contribution and pragmatic suggestions that I may be able to adopt in my own classes. I’ve gained theoretical knowledge about PBL, alternative assessment , rubrics etc. but I still need to work on the rubric assignment which I feel is quite a formidable task.

It took me a while to decide on the topic of my technology enhanced lesson plan. Robert ( as usual )was most helpful with his incisive comments. I’ve made a sketchy plan but I think to begin with it might suffice. Fortunately, I have some workshops coming up where I’ll be working with college students. I’ll try to test this plan and see how it works.

I do want to try and design a WebQuest but will I be able to accomplish that feat with finesse is as they say, the million dollar question !!

best regards

Shaila