Evaluating a teaching Idea - Child Labor
http://lehrer-online.de/511841.php?sid=99600733659273029730787468746140
The teaching idea that I want to take a closer look at is a web based research project for the eighth grade, promoting autonomous working in teams of two pupils. I chose this project because as a future English and history teacher I am interested in how to teach research techniques. Also this teaching method is very activity-oriented. The goal of the unit is that the teams who conduct the research together produce a dossier which presents their findings.
Conducting internet research is a competency which gets more and more important in today’s world. The ability to find suitable information for a given task will be crucial to most pupils throughout their school and university lives. The challenge for a good teaching unit is to lead the way through the jungle of different resources that can be taped via the internet.
The teaching unit starts with a text that introduces the pupils to the topic. The tasks that go along with this text are basically about comprehension. The idea is to give a first overview that helps choosing suitable topics for the later internet research. I find it a very good idea not to start right away with working with computers. By using a specific text it is possible to set the focus of the following research. The comprehension task makes sure everybody in class understands what they are dealing with.
After this step the groups of two choose their topic and the internet research starts. In order for the young students to be able to properly work with the computer, the teacher provides them with different information sheets. These include how to save information, how to work with Google and tips and tricks for using search engines. The idea of handing out these instruction work sheets, that pupils can keep and use again in later research is very helpful. These technicalities like saving and organizing web links, copying pictures and texts and so forth are very important skills for every research activity.
What I would criticize is that there is a strong focus on Google for the research. I admit that Google is the most important search engine on the internet today, but it is by far not the best for educational purposes. It often produces very confusing results and a lot of information that can be retrieved via this research method lacks proper documentation of sources. I would recommend introducing the pupils to more sophisticated resources like the portal of the Encyclopedia Britannica. This works the better if schools provide access to online content like the Brockhaus Online.
The teaching unit however provides the pupils with a list of helpful links that they can use. If I would use this method I would probably put more focus on these websites than on working with Google and discuss the advantages and disadvantages in class.
The last part of this teaching unit consists of working on the dossier witch will later be presented in class. Using another information sheet pupils are supposed to use an online dictionary. This I find to be another good idea as lots of students who have a computer at home will tend to use them without having had a proper introduction.
The information sheet gives very detailed information on how to operate the internet dictionaries including how to minimize and maximize the web browser. This part lacks the focus on how to deal with different results and how to choose what word fits the context best that the pupils want to use it in. Working with dictionaries might in the eighth grade be a new field for pupils, as they are used to being provided with the needed vocabulary by their text books. Online dictionaries are even more complicated than written ones as they only seldom include examples for how the word in question can be used. I would probably additionally to the internet version have pupils use a normal dictionary to double check the translations that they want to use.
There is another part in this unit that is concerned with how to write a good dossier that I do not want to go into in detail as it does not have to do much with the use of new media. The last part is concerned with self-correcting mistakes in the dossier and collecting vocabulary for later use.
The correcting method uses the English Google website typing in sentences and checking for how often this construction can be found on English speaking pages. If there are a lot of results it is likely that the sentence is right.
The latter method can be a good addition to using a grammar book. The danger is that pupils will only rely on this method in the future, the problem being that not all constructions that can be found on the internet necessarily have to be the proper way of expressing a thought. I would say that this type of correction is better suited for more advanced learners.
The last task is for the pupils to enter the new words that they have learned into Phase6 which is a program for learning vocabulary. This is a step I am also very critical about because I think that the best way of practicing is not to use the computer but rather old fashioned vocabulary card. I prefer the system of the “Vocabulary Box” as provided by the AOL-Verlag (http://aol-verlag.de/). The main reason for staying with this traditional system in my mind is that working with a computer offers too many distractions.
All in all this teaching unit is well though through. I would use it in class, but I would make some changes to it. I like the introduction and the research part a lot. Mainly it is very positive that the students are provided with information-sheets that stay with them for later research. I would however put more focus on diverse resources. In the part where pupils are producing the dossier this approach overdoes the use of the new media. Here I think it would be very helpful to include traditional methods and create a good mixture of both modern and traditional ways of working with texts.
The teaching idea that I want to take a closer look at is a web based research project for the eighth grade, promoting autonomous working in teams of two pupils. I chose this project because as a future English and history teacher I am interested in how to teach research techniques. Also this teaching method is very activity-oriented. The goal of the unit is that the teams who conduct the research together produce a dossier which presents their findings.
Conducting internet research is a competency which gets more and more important in today’s world. The ability to find suitable information for a given task will be crucial to most pupils throughout their school and university lives. The challenge for a good teaching unit is to lead the way through the jungle of different resources that can be taped via the internet.
The teaching unit starts with a text that introduces the pupils to the topic. The tasks that go along with this text are basically about comprehension. The idea is to give a first overview that helps choosing suitable topics for the later internet research. I find it a very good idea not to start right away with working with computers. By using a specific text it is possible to set the focus of the following research. The comprehension task makes sure everybody in class understands what they are dealing with.
After this step the groups of two choose their topic and the internet research starts. In order for the young students to be able to properly work with the computer, the teacher provides them with different information sheets. These include how to save information, how to work with Google and tips and tricks for using search engines. The idea of handing out these instruction work sheets, that pupils can keep and use again in later research is very helpful. These technicalities like saving and organizing web links, copying pictures and texts and so forth are very important skills for every research activity.
What I would criticize is that there is a strong focus on Google for the research. I admit that Google is the most important search engine on the internet today, but it is by far not the best for educational purposes. It often produces very confusing results and a lot of information that can be retrieved via this research method lacks proper documentation of sources. I would recommend introducing the pupils to more sophisticated resources like the portal of the Encyclopedia Britannica. This works the better if schools provide access to online content like the Brockhaus Online.
The teaching unit however provides the pupils with a list of helpful links that they can use. If I would use this method I would probably put more focus on these websites than on working with Google and discuss the advantages and disadvantages in class.
The last part of this teaching unit consists of working on the dossier witch will later be presented in class. Using another information sheet pupils are supposed to use an online dictionary. This I find to be another good idea as lots of students who have a computer at home will tend to use them without having had a proper introduction.
The information sheet gives very detailed information on how to operate the internet dictionaries including how to minimize and maximize the web browser. This part lacks the focus on how to deal with different results and how to choose what word fits the context best that the pupils want to use it in. Working with dictionaries might in the eighth grade be a new field for pupils, as they are used to being provided with the needed vocabulary by their text books. Online dictionaries are even more complicated than written ones as they only seldom include examples for how the word in question can be used. I would probably additionally to the internet version have pupils use a normal dictionary to double check the translations that they want to use.
There is another part in this unit that is concerned with how to write a good dossier that I do not want to go into in detail as it does not have to do much with the use of new media. The last part is concerned with self-correcting mistakes in the dossier and collecting vocabulary for later use.
The correcting method uses the English Google website typing in sentences and checking for how often this construction can be found on English speaking pages. If there are a lot of results it is likely that the sentence is right.
The latter method can be a good addition to using a grammar book. The danger is that pupils will only rely on this method in the future, the problem being that not all constructions that can be found on the internet necessarily have to be the proper way of expressing a thought. I would say that this type of correction is better suited for more advanced learners.
The last task is for the pupils to enter the new words that they have learned into Phase6 which is a program for learning vocabulary. This is a step I am also very critical about because I think that the best way of practicing is not to use the computer but rather old fashioned vocabulary card. I prefer the system of the “Vocabulary Box” as provided by the AOL-Verlag (http://aol-verlag.de/). The main reason for staying with this traditional system in my mind is that working with a computer offers too many distractions.
All in all this teaching unit is well though through. I would use it in class, but I would make some changes to it. I like the introduction and the research part a lot. Mainly it is very positive that the students are provided with information-sheets that stay with them for later research. I would however put more focus on diverse resources. In the part where pupils are producing the dossier this approach overdoes the use of the new media. Here I think it would be very helpful to include traditional methods and create a good mixture of both modern and traditional ways of working with texts.
