Webquests.docx

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Nowadays, the importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) not only in our personal and professional lives, but also in the educational area, is unquestionable. ICT play a major role in the educational context, as they may be approached from different standpoints: as a course in order for students to get to know how these technologies work, as a methodological resource in the teaching and learning of other courses, and also as a management tool in educational centres or institutions, to mention but a few (see Cabero, 2000). Out of these three approaches, in this article we will only consider ICT as methodological resources in Language Teaching and Learning (LTL), which has experienced a substantial change due not only to the appearance of ICT but also to other changes in the teaching practice itself. Accordingly, students are no longer mere receivers of contents; instead, they can produce their own contents — hence becoming the focal point of their own learning process (Palomo et al., 2008: 13) thanks to the use of ICT and to the new methodological principles surrounding them (Roig, 2007: 223). It now seems that blackboards, textbooks and students’ workbooks are not the only source of knowledge any more. Indeed, more sophisticated resources, such as computers and interactive whiteboards, have come to the fore, and their popularity is widespread among educational centres following the support from educational authorities, who have funded such devices to promote the use of ICT both inside and outside the classroom. But besides these “physical” resources, there is a huge amount of applications and tools that have arisen in the field of ICT with the evolution of the Internet and that can be accessed anywhere and at any time. It is also easy to find online resources created by other language teachers and which are ready to be used in the classroom. These resources are usually stored in websites or, more recently, in blogs, which are of great interest for LTL and whose main pedagogical use is the possibility to create real contexts of communication by using synchronous and asynchronous tools, especially in the latter.

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English is the most commonly taught foreign language all over the world. As a result of this fact, materials designed for English language teaching has been increasing enormously. Besides course books and other written resources technology integrated language teaching provides many materials for language learners as well. Websites might be regarded as online teaching tools which can be very effective resources both for learners and teachers. However, if the website which is aimed to use as a resource was not designed in an efficient way, it might lead to wasting time. In addition, not well designed websites might include wrong guidance for language development. Taking the role of websites in language teaching into consideration this study focuses on the evaluation of websites designed for teaching English. For this aim, a questionnaire prepared for website evaluation was modified with the views of experts and results gotten from a group of students as the first step of ongoing project on the evaluation of language learning websites. Latest version of the questionnaire was given to totally 56 English language learners studying at the school of foreign languages. The learners stated how much they use the internet and the websites in their language learning and how find the websites they have been using. Learners also evaluated the websites of their own choice. Some suggestions were made with the help of the results Webquests: A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. Use in education Webquests can be a valuable addition to a collaborative classroom. One of the goals is to increase critical thinking by employing higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge. This is a goal of the American educational system's Common Core and many new American state standards for public education. Since most webquests are done in small collaborative groups, they can foster cooperative learning and collaborative activities. Students will often be assigned roles, allowing them to role-play in different positions, and learn how to deal with conflict within the group. Webquests can be a versatile tool for teaching students. They can be used to introduce new knowledge, to deepen knowledge, or to allow students to test hypotheses as part of a final interaction with knowledge. The integration of computers and the Internet also increase students’ competency with technology. By having specific task lists, students can stay on task. By having specific sources of information, students can focus on using resources to answer questions rather than vetting resources to use which is a different skill altogether. In inclusive classrooms (classrooms that have students of varying exceptionalities interacting such as learning disabled, language impaired, or giftedness) tasks can be differentiated to a skill level or collaborative groups for the same level of task. A skill level may have students with learning disabilities working on a basic task to meet the minimum standard of learning skills and gifted students pushing their task to the higher end of the learning skill. More commonly, groups are composed of learners of all skill levels and completing the same level of task. This is typically easier because the teacher is only creating one webquest, but can cause less student interaction from lower students and less learning from higher students.

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Limitations of WebQuests WebQuests are only one tool in a teacher's toolboxes. They are not appropriate to every learning goal. In particular, they are weak in teaching factual total recall, simple procedures, and definitions. WebQuests also usually require good reading skills, so are not appropriate to the youngest classrooms or to students with language and reading difficulties without accommodations. One might ask an adult to assist with the reading or use screen-reading technologies, such as Voiceover or Jaws. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is an application layer protocol that facilitates communication in the form of text. The chat process works on a client/server networking model. IRC clients are computer programs that users can install on their system or web based applications running either locally in the browser or on 3rd party server. These clients communicate with chat servers to transfer messages to other clients. IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat and data transfer, including file sharing. Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat that offers real-time text transmission over the Internet. A LAN messenger operates in a similar way over a local area network. Short messages are typically transmitted between two parties, when each user chooses to complete a thought and select "send". Some IM applications can use push technology to provide real-time text, which transmits messages character by character, as they are composed. More advanced instant messaging can add file transfer, clickable hyperlinks, Voice over IP, or video chat.