Week 5: PBL, WebQuest and rubrics

This week we read about 3 main points. The first one was about Project Based Learning (PBL). In the website Edutopia and Buck Institute for Education give very good introduction to PBL, class samples, rubrics and strategies of how to start. It gave me good ideas to work with my students at university and teach them a new way to look at education. It not only made me think of planning differently, but also consider skills that were not in my mind (21st century skills).
Look at this PBL plan! http://www.envisionprojects.org/cs/envision/view/env_p/78

We also read about WebQuest. I like the way this website "Concept to classroom" explains this.
"http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index.html
"Search for the word "WebQuest" in any search engine, and you soon discover thousands of online lessons created by teachers around the world. What is a WebQuest? A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented online tool for learning, says workshop expert Bernie Dodge ¹. This means it is a classroom-based lesson in which most or all of the information that students explore and evaluate comes from the World Wide Web. Beyond that, WebQuests:

• can be as short as a single class period or as long as a month-long unit;

• usually (though not always) involve group work, with division of labor among students who take on specific roles or perspectives;

• are built around resources that are preselected by the teacher. Students spend their time USING information, not LOOKING for it."

Due to the level of my students, I think that this link http://www.searchedu.com/ will be useful to find academic information need for the course and the necessary reading for the course. I also found out through this that certain universities have open online libraries allowing other users to have access to e-journals and e-books. So Google Academic will not be my online source anymore!
Also if you want to create your own Web Quest, Zunal.com. Here is the link of the Web Quest I created www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=134780 I prepared it for advance students who will write an argumentative essay based on the topic mentioned in the link. Take a look at it!

A third topic we read about this week was about alternative assessment. It explains the 4 alternative types of assessment and provides good examples. I think I will be using Analytic rubric more in my class. Here is an example of a rubric I made online.
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=PrintRubric&rubric_id=2154658&no_return=1& I really like this webpage www.rubistar.4teachers.org! It makes it so easy to prepare rubrics and allowing you to save, edit, share online and print it. I will definitely add it to my Delicious.com bookmark.