Week#5 Project-Based Learning, WebQuests, and Rubrics

Day by day, I started to feel more confident and comfortable with the Blog page. I remember how intimidated I felt the first time I tried to create one.  I have learned how to add pictures and hyperlinks, videos and how to change the background and lay out. 

Project based learning provides a real opportunity for students to work collaboratively and pool their knowledge and metacognitive skills into a process that culminates in a project.   PBL is an alternative assessment tool that provides students with real learning opportunity to utilize and reveal their talents and creativity and develop to face the real world challenges and understand themselves and others around them.   It takes learning to a much higher level.   I have become a big advocate of it  and will certainly implement it in class.   

We as instructors have to leave our comfort zone and go the extra mile and challenge ourselves and the students and provide them with real learning opportunities to help them polish up their skills and find out what they like and what they are really good at and what they need to learn.   

Rubi Star is a very invaluable site and tech tool.   It is used to create assessment rubrics to evaluate  students' work and to set and communicate clear expectations about any given task which helps them live up to the desired performance ; it also gives students immediate feedback about their work.    I will certainly make use of this indispensible tool.

WebQuest is another powerful tech tool that helps teachers set up projects using materials and resources on the world wide web to help students analyze and synthesize information in order to create a project which helps them develop problem-solving and decision-making skills.   Here is the link to my first WebQuest: http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=285359

It was an optional activity, but I did it so that I would not lose this great learning opportunity.  I will defiantly make use of this tool in my future classes.

It was nice to have the guest speaker with us in class this week.   I read her comments on our posts and learned a lot from her valuable insights. 

I have not worked on my project plan yet except the weekly assignment tasks that take us a step every week towards completing the project plan.   I will spend some time this week reading more reports and working on a project plan.  However, I feel I have sore eyes and need to chill out a bit and take a break from the glare of my computer screen.   I have finished a bit early this week but feel I did not utilize my free-time effectively and I really need a break to enjoy family life.   

 This is all for now and look forward to another exciting week.