My dream project using the new media in school
My always longtime-favorite project including the new media is still any type of email project. After everything that I have learnt about the use of new media this semester, I am still very fond of the idea of communication with native speakers of the language students are studying. After all, I think that motivation is most important when acquiring a new language, and authentic communication has always been my goal in language learning. Thus, I am looking to include as much communication with native speakers as possible in my lessons. This, however, did not always prove as easy. Of course, student exchange programs are the best way to provide an authentic communication environment but we can’t have an exchange all year around so other possibilities to communicate with native speakers need to be found. We discussed live chats a lot in class and I am not entirely against trying a live chat in my lessons but we’ve also encountered a lot of possible problems and factors that cannot be influenced. This leaves me concentrating my enthusiasm on email communication. Asynchronous communications seems to be the best solution of all because you can put more time and thought into a text. Snail mail might have been a way to deal with this in the past, but now, it is definitely email contact.
It does not have to be a simple email pen pal ship that I am thinking of for a good project in school. I liked a lot of other possibilities that came up in class during the semester. For example, I really liked email discussion about certain topics to enhance vocabulary knowledge in a certain word field. I also liked the newsletter email project that I presented in my blog in the end of November.
This might not be everybody’s dream project considering that we were supposed to think about something we would like to do if we had all kind of time and money, but I am not much of a dreamer: I like email projects, I will use email projects in real life, thus, this is my dream project J
I also have to admit though that I started to like WebQuests a lot. As I already started writing my Term Paper, however, I realize how much work they are if you try to find decent material and anticipate problems that might occur.
Still, once you have a good WebQuest, I think that students can learn a lot from it and have fun as well. I have to admit that it is even fun to prepare them if you have enough time. You can still find a lot of interesting facts about the topic you are preparing on the Internet. It’s fun watching videos on the topic, reading through different pages, following hyperlinks, finding new pictures and so on. If it’s already that much fun for me, it just has to be entertaining for my students! But as I said, you really need to take your time to prepare it or else it won’t be good. And it seems as if teachers usually don’t have a lot of extra time… Nevertheless, I found a lot of WebQuests online while researching the Internet for literature on WebQuests, so it might always be worth to check if a WebQuest for the topic you want to deal with does already exist. Especially for teaching English you will have a good chance to find something because you can use most of the WebQuests made by US teachers who started with the whole WebQuest idea a lot earlier than we did.
Hey Ines,
I liked your idea of keeping your dreamproject as realistic as possible. I also liked the two methods you described most.
What I have realized during my term paper research is that including the web (2.0) into your lessons is always alot of work. Maybe because were not used to it? Or maybe because it is just so much easier for teachers just to follow the text book. But nevertheless, just as you said, using the internet and teaching our students how to use it correctly and efficiently – is fun and therefore worth it!
Best wishes,
Marina
Hey Ines,I liked your idea of keeping your dreamproject as realistic as possible. I also liked the two methods you described most.What I have realized during my term paper research is that including the web (2.0) into your lessons is always alot of work. Maybe because were not used to it? Or maybe because it is just so much easier for teachers just to follow the text book. But nevertheless, just as you said, using the internet and teaching our students how to use it correctly and efficiently – is fun and therefore worth it!
+1