EDCP 305 FINAL: INTRODUCTION
Enjoy this music as you read.
"On the Road Again" : A quest for Digital Literacy
During my short practicum, I observed a lackadaisical tenth grade classroom embittered by a curriculum stuck in the backwater colonial narrative of 19th century Canada. "Whyyyy do we have to learn this? What is the point?" remarked one disgruntled student after an introductory Powerpoint on the effects of the fur trade, railroad, and native resistance.
This question forced me to admit thinking the same thing - why should I teach this? The narrative of 19th century Canada is really a part of the larger, more exciting context of the British Empire in the height of Victoria's rein, not properly one of Canadian Nationalism. What could I do?
Deviating from the curriculum didn't seem like an option that would win me any brownie points from my supervisor, so I decided a change of teaching strategy was in order. If I couldn't change what I had to teach, I could change how it is taught.
From early in the BEd program, I raised a question of how can teachers best use technology effectively in the social studies classroom?
The answers are remarkably few, or seem to be muted. Even a tech-savvy instructor might find their pedagogical compass befuddled among a market saturated with more small programs that can 'help' educators than could ever be viewed or tested in a lifetime. So I hit the road, expecting a long journey, to find my own answers.
I did not have a lot of time in the short practicum to gather, construct and review the efficacy of a curriculum which focuses on "Digital Literacy". I decided after a cursory search to create and test an older, perhaps the "classic" online instructional tool called a "Webquest". WebQuest.org seems to be a dedicated corner of the internet for the instructional tool, and cites a definition of a WebQuest as:
"an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in February, 1995."
Go to WebQuest #1
This question forced me to admit thinking the same thing - why should I teach this? The narrative of 19th century Canada is really a part of the larger, more exciting context of the British Empire in the height of Victoria's rein, not properly one of Canadian Nationalism. What could I do?
Deviating from the curriculum didn't seem like an option that would win me any brownie points from my supervisor, so I decided a change of teaching strategy was in order. If I couldn't change what I had to teach, I could change how it is taught.
From early in the BEd program, I raised a question of how can teachers best use technology effectively in the social studies classroom?
The answers are remarkably few, or seem to be muted. Even a tech-savvy instructor might find their pedagogical compass befuddled among a market saturated with more small programs that can 'help' educators than could ever be viewed or tested in a lifetime. So I hit the road, expecting a long journey, to find my own answers.
I did not have a lot of time in the short practicum to gather, construct and review the efficacy of a curriculum which focuses on "Digital Literacy". I decided after a cursory search to create and test an older, perhaps the "classic" online instructional tool called a "Webquest". WebQuest.org seems to be a dedicated corner of the internet for the instructional tool, and cites a definition of a WebQuest as:
"an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in February, 1995."
Go to WebQuest #1