April 20th

Phew, the WebQuest is complete! It was a lot of work but I am pleased at the outcome. Of course there are things I would change for the next time, but over all it went well. I think the hardest things were that the implementation time came as my school was going on spring break. I hoped to finish before break, but we actually finished today. It was a bit hairy to get done.

I could have used another couple of days to really finish this up with the students.

It was also a bit difficult because I am not a classroom teacher, so I did not have the relationship with the students that would have helped move through the project.

All in all, it went well.

I have learned a great deal in this course and the end is coming soon. One big paper left. The time seems to fly by!

April 5th

We are getting closer to the end of the semester and the pace is picking up. In a way this class goes well with my other class (Professional Development) as I have done professional development on technology integration previously but as a technology director I am not in a classroom every day. As I work through developing my WebQuest it takes me back to the training I have done recently, and I am now tweeking it some to make it more realistic.

My school goes on spring break beginning Thursday and I am hoping to implement my WebQuest tomorrow if I am done. If not, I will have to wait until the week of April 20th. I am also out of town for spring break so am feeling some pressure to get ahead in my work this week. Otherwise I will be working over break :(.

Third Post-March 20th

The course is moving along quickly. We have just completed our WebQuest work and are now in the review and evaluation process. I liked the process and am thinking about how I can use wiki's to teach high school students. I think I would like to do some professional development for my teachers around wiki's. I also liked that amoung our resources as we went through the WebQuest were podcasts, videocasts, journals, etc. It was good to have a wide variety of resources.

NAU Spring break came at a good time for me because my school is going through its state evaluation and part of my responsibility has been to work with our new buildings and grounds person to get our physical plant ready for the inspection. What a job! I have done quite a bit of physical plant work previously but this is taking all of my time. I will have to work hard in both of my courses the rest of the weekend not to fall behind.

February 16

This week I found myself stuck going round and round with the assignements. My group is less than responsive to requests for meeting and in fact we have only communicated via the discussion board. I have attempted to set up meetings several times, but I don't get much feedback. My weeks become progressively difficult to manage as we go into spring with my job requirements. I generally do not like to do work at the last minute with groups because I feel like we rush and do not work through all of the detail. I am hoping to get a response from them shortly.

I like the idea of a Webquest and I have taught this concept to our faculty. I am hoping to learn some new ideas!

Susan

1st post

This is my first journal post for Technology in the ESL Classroom-ETC559 at NAU. I am a bit uneasy with taking this class as I am not an ESL teacher, but work in a high school where 1/3 of our students come from a Hispanic background. I think learning techniques and stragegies which might benefit our students will be important. However, my lack of knowledge of ESL curriculum might be a hinderance.

It seems like we have a great group of students this semester and I look forward to learning from them.