For my CIP I have chosen to do a webquest of sorts for my small group of girls that I teach for 8th grade confirmation. This webquest will include outside reading (or looking up bible verses on the Internet), video links, and websites. The final project or outcome of the webquest is for the group of girls to research and select a charity that is in need during the Christmas season. Then as a collective group we will listen to each of the girls "presentation" of their project and then select a charity to do a service project at before Christmas.
To complete the project I need to do some more research of my own and find some good links to use within the webquest. Also I am trying to decide if they will be on the "hunt" for something, if the quest will have a story line, or if it will be more of a guided project. I am also thinking about collaborating with the director of confirmation to see what tools he usually uses to teach this topic/lesson and see if I can design something that could possibly be used for all of the confirmation groups.
By doing this project I hope to learn different ways to integrate technology into the webquest while still having the learning get a significant amount of information/learning through completing it. I am also counting on being able to easily complete the webquest since I learned how to do this about 5 or 6 yrs ago in undergrad! I also want to try and use my podcasting skills within the webquest!
I feel that I can connect the learning from this project to what I will be doing in the classroom as this project is like a trial run. I can try out several different things and see what works and what doesn't. I also will learn from my small group of girls what parts they enjoyed, had trouble with or what they disliked by receiving feedback more quickly than I would in the classroom. By trying different items in the project I will also become more familiar with the tech tools that we learned in this class. (BTW-random note...we are watching the state football playoffs and they are using Google Earth to show where a city is in MI and then zooming in to show their high school!)
In the future I hope to be able to more easily integrate the tech tools that we learned through this class into my curriculum focusing on the fact that the subject matter comes first and then the technology should be there to enhance the learning experience. I have also learned that it is important to have a plan in place before you just take your class to the computer lab. In my classroom in the future we will be planning out our Internet searches before we go to the computer lab to make the time in the lab more efficient. From this project I am learning that no matter how thorough or self explanitory you make your webquest or lesson you can't just assume your students know exactly what is expected of them. So its important to show examples and go through the directions before the students get on the computer. They may have questions or come across problems that I had not anticipated.
I am excited to use what I have learned from this class and this project in my future classroom. Also to use it as a sub. I was thinking about recording some stories read by my as a podcast to play for my students when I sub if they need to listen to a story to kill some time at the end of the day (I even bought some portable Black Friday cheap speakers for this purpose!).
