PBL and Web Quests

Week 5 brought  a lot of exciting materials about PBL and Web Quests, because it’s my favourite way of working with teenagers. It can satisfy students of different learning styles. 

I read many articles about WebQuests but I didn’t read any articles by the creator of this wonderful project Bernie Dodge, only quotations used by other teachers. And this week I was offered to read the whole article written by him in the original and that was exciting for me.

This week brought deeper understanding of the project-based learning as a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges.

 Firstly it’s an active type of learning; students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying. 

Secondly, students explore real-world problems and challenges, developing cross-curriculum skills while communicating in small collaborative groups.

Project learning is an effective way to integrate technology into the curriculum. It can easily accommodate computers and the Internet, as well as interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, etc.

I believe that while doing the Web Quest students get the experiences of a life time and they are more likely to retain the knowledge gained through this approach more readily than through traditional textbook-centered learning.

Besides we were offered the necessary materials on assessing students’ projects. It has been a my problem how to explain students the merits and the drawbacks of their job.

Creating rubrics with the help of RubiStar was exciting and our discussions brought me some new ideas on using them in my classroom. Surely I am going to implement the idea about creating rubrics by the students themselves.

In the whole the week was full of interesting travel in the Internet, reading new articles, meeting new people and discussing our problems.