Internet Research for TechQuest Project

When originally planning this task I wasn’t too sure about how to store the information and how students would be able to access it. I thought a basic website could be appropriate but I am now wondering if it still will be. Working with Weebly helped me realise the limitations of this site; it was a good tool but possibly may not be appropriate for what I have planned.

I received some really helpful feedback from both my lecturer and a member of my class that helped me to imagine the next step on from identifying the problem and outlining a very basic plan. My lecturer’s ideas about using a Learning Management System helped me understand that there will be many facets to what I am hoping to achieve and I need to select a package that will manage these effectively. So to start I may follow her recommendation of a 2 step process. This is to initially create a website, until I can meet with the IT management team at my school to see if we could consider using an LMS. Then, if the IT team are in favour of me using it, I can then transfer my resources across to the LMS. This seems to be the best way to hand pick and organise resources, unless I find something else along the way when I am doing my research.

I had a look through the Moodle package, as well as Blackboard. It seems the activity modules and resources sections include the things that I want to do through Moodle. Before meeting with the IT team I will need to further investigate other features of Moodle so I am thoroughly prepared and have researched the resource as much as I can before the request. I plan to visit the site demo.moodle.org to see what I can really do. Three things I like about Moodle are; so many groups are using it already, so it’s is well established, it’s commitment to collaborative learning, and it is Australian – YEAH ! And free- I forgot to mention that part.

I have envisioned quizzes, lessons, collaborative rooms for questions and answers, so I will need something that supports the different nature of each of the learning activities. Two suggestions that were made were the idea of including a social bookmarking page, which I would like to do, and also include a space where students can ask questions anonymously. Great ideas Sue and Katy - thank you for your feedback !

I approached my Headteacher about the project and he is supportive of my ideas. He also acknowledged a need for a resource such as the one I intend to create. It was great to have that feedback from him as now I feel more purposeful.

Since looking at the resources I have found so far, despite the fact that they are almost exclusively aimed at an adult audience, I realised that they have quite a bit to offer so I think it will be prudent to include a parent’s/teacher’s page.

I also used some of the search engines recommended by Valenza in our readings for this session, for example http://www.rollyo.com and http://clusty.com. Through these I found great sites such as “how stuff works” see http://www.howstuffworks.com/human-reproduction.htm and http://www.livescience.com/reproduction/ as well as many other sites that would be helpful for students, who are my target audience. Now I have plenty of resources for them, I’ll need to sort through the resources and see how I can make the learning as interactive as possible and package the resources I have found so it is interesting and informative for everyone who visits the site.