GSU instructor will be teaching weblogs!
This Monday morning started out kind of slow. It’s an overcast day and I arrived at work with lots of things on my plate that I needed to complete. You know the kind of tasks you put off until you just have to do them. So I’ve been plodding away, wishing I could be working on my weblog group or something else as interesting when one of the GSU instructors popped in.
Nancy Schafer, one of the educational instructors from the Early Education department, came by to confirm the schedule for a class on WebQuests that I will be teaching to her students. Today I introduce the concept of WebQuests, give good examples, and set the stage for good classroom applications. Then I follow up in a couple of weeks to assist the students as they create their webquests. Now she has a large class of 40 so they are being split up for the following two sessions.
Here’s the great part! She has decided that she will teach weblogs to the other half of her class while I am teaching the WebQuest part. This all came about after I spent a little over an hour one evening a few weeks ago with Nancy teaching her how to use tBlog. It just happens to be one of the free weblogs software programs that we had introduced in our ESL/EFL weblog session. It is the program I used when I created Idioms Are Fun!
Those of you who teach weblogs know how hard it is to get people going on it, let alone decide to teach it! I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. It will be interesting to see how these students do with tBlog as compared to Manila. I know Manila offers a lot more but maybe quick and easy is the way to start.
Anyway, my mood has definitely improved. In fact, I have to not range out of control but a blue Monday has quickly turned into a red-letter day!
March 16th, 2004 at 11:51 am
Interesting…I was just doing an online search about webquests last night! I’ve made webquests before on Filamentality but, are there other online hosts for webquests? I want to make one for teachers to use that will support writing–working with dialogue, setting, characterization, etc. I’d like it to be easy to create, have some flexibility in layout, and have it stored for me? Am I asking too much? Do you know of any such sites?
March 16th, 2004 at 12:15 pm
Yes, go to teacherweb.com
It makes it very easy! Plus they are free. They also provide teacher web sites but those cost, something like $25 a year. Let me know if you need any help with it!