WebQuests!

I personally can say that I had no idea what a WebQuest was before last Wednesday. Therefore with my unclouded hands on opinion of them I feel . . . that they have there place in the educational environment. They seem to be a great way to control internet content, guide students without having to state each direction, and to transmit information without lecturing. I feel this sort of self directed assignment would be great for giving students a change of pace from the regular day-to-day activities they experience in the classroom. Although i do see issues with maintaining focus with some students, or perhaps more of an issue with assessing their focus, because essentially a WebQuest looks like playing on the internet, while secretly being educational. In this case I really appreciate the idea of bringing in the group work aspect, to give a little peer pressure to the situation so that everyone has a a bit more incentive to thoroughly read and explore their WebQuest. I do also have a concern with using internet sources to teach standards-based education to students. Typically it is difficult to find good Art sources on the internet that are both reputable (which their are many) and also age appropriate (for which their are few). Apparently in the Art community no one ever mentioned that some parents don't appreciate students being able to view such images as a nude figure drawing on the internet, and in this case many of the best and most extensive collection on works contain many such artist's works. Although perhaps with proper linking and security blocks this situation may be a simple one to ratify. All in all i feel this is an interesting direction for self-directed learning to go in.

Wikis

Sigh.

Sadly, i am not quite yet convinced about their awesomeness. Yes, information does go up quick but I don't know how much I will ever really use them in the classroom. This may be where my lack of enthusiasm stems from. For many other classes besides Art the story is different, but in a classroom where I feel that if students aren't actually holding some sort of expressive creation making tool in their hand I'm wasting their time it doesn't yet clearly fit in my mental conception of my class. The future will tell.

Web 2.0 Tools?

Admittedly I am not a big technology user, of any sort. So . . . I was pensive at best about this assignment, but I must say there are a few useful tidbits I learned. Delicious, will solve my remember web address problem, with a Latin American Studies course that meets Mondays for lecture and has a podcast Wednesday, and a Bio class that where all content is web-based I NEED DELICIOUS. Knowing that I may use any five differerent computers, in different buildings, and at times PC and Mac, with each class having a different website where information is kept knowing those addresses is difficult. I originally was just saving the initial emails my professors had sent and basically using my UT email account as a less organized, more annoying, and far less efficient version of Delicious. So, yes I will soon be signing up for at least one more account in the coming days.

Prezi on the other hand, is super cool in concept but I feel requires a certain understnading of the pace of presentations and a rather large "taste" level that I am not sure most users will have. I shall remain optimistic though.

Lastly, Wordle, simple as it may be it makes adding graphics a no-brainer. Needless to say in my rather intense urge to make everything I do time-consuming and super "artsy" I will use this tool over and over to attempt to actually finish on time and under budget.

Education Resource

After searching through many, many websites that seemed to be written by people who had no idea what they were talking about I finally settled in on site I have used before the National Art Education Association's website, or http://www.arteducators.org/. It is kind of an over-arching Art Education site with almost every topic you could imagine, from lesson plans, to attending conferences, to tips on writing grant proposals for your classroom. Another bonus is that it has links to many other reputable websites that go into further detail and description about some of the topics that are represented in sub categories on the main NAEA site. While I was disappointed not to find a particularly new website, I was not surprised this is often the case in Art Education, which really seems to need to catch up on the times when it comes to internet resources for teachers, not to mention students, where content-controlled information is virtually non-existent. I will definitely be using this site over and over again. If anyone is interested in the conference it's in Seattle this spring!

Website Evaluation

http://lib.nmsu.edu/staff/susabeck/checs98.html



After much searching i found a site that i feel both helps as a general quick overview of issues related to teaching students how to evaluate web information, and also has information available for a more thorough investigation. Under each of the headings and subheadings is a vast amount of links and resources. All are from authoritative sources and seem to be well connected to the issues at hand. While I was searching I was concerned that the information was out of date because it was mainly from a presentation given in 1998, but upon further looking, i realized when i chose to link this site it had actually been updated a mere 4 MINUTES before I was reading it. If that isn't up to date than I don't know what is.