My Position Paper -- Group One - 2011 CEI course

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Date Posted: 11:00:28 03/30/11 Wed
Author: Vivi
Subject: My Position Paper

Position Paper
The use of WebQuest in my teaching practice

Nowadays were facing the digital era. Almost all the activities in a work place are mediated by computer. It can be seen everywhere you go, even on bakeries, restaurants, theaters and museums. In a school it should not be different, because computers are presented in the secretary, in the coordinator’s and principal’s officers, in the cyber rooms, and why not in the classroom?
Many teachers, especially in Brazil, still believe that students just learn in the classroom using their text books or going to the library looking for encyclopedias to do researches. Students are not allowed to use computers, I-pods and games in the classroom in order to not disperse their attention. In some schools those kinds of equipments are forbidden. According to Marc Prensky, today’s students grew up surrounded by these technologies development and everything they do is connected to computers, I-pods, cell phones, and all other toys and tools of digital age. They are called Digital Natives, and their process of learning has changed a lot from those of ten years ago. It is common to hear students asking for the meaning of words they have seen on video games, or expressions they have listened while watching sitcoms on TV and also on conversations on web chats with a foreign pal.
After Web 2.0 the information comes very fast, youngsters do not read newspapers and magazines anymore; they get all their information from the internet. They do not listen to radio, they do not buy CDS, books and films; they download them. Nowadays students cannot stay in the classroom for four hours just listening to their teachers or reading books or even doing exercises. Otherwise they will get bothered, frustrated and disobedient. They need more, as a dynamic class mediated by what they are used to. Prensky states that teachers have to adapt their materials creating computer games or activities even for the most serious issues.
WebQuest is a rich tool to be used in a class, where many subjects can be taught engaging students in a survey through the internet. Especially for second language teachers WebQuest is excellent to engage students to work in groups researching an issue which is relevant in their daily basis or to the learning of another subject connected to the language they are acquiring.
After all I have learned, I am surely convinced that WebQuest would totally help me to motivate my students engage in a class activity. However, as a Digital Immigrant, sometimes I think they would not be able to create a WebQuest and foster “more uploads”. In accordance with Prensky, Digital Immigrants are not used to those technologies but it does not mean they cannot be. I am willing to try to put it in practice, and of course it is going to require me much more effort than to my students, but I believe it will work very well.

REFERENCES:
PRENSKY, Marc. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. In: On the Horizon. NCB University Press, vol.9no.5, October2001.

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