As you can see from the posts on this blog (and also in the name), technology will be the most prominent part of education in the future. This can be anything from quicker access of information, to the way in which ideas are communicated to others. The most important thing that a teacher needs to do to help prepare students for the future is to give them the skills to sift through a literal infinite database of information, while also showing them different options for conveying the significance and relevance of their findings. Along with these technological skills, teachers need to instill a sense of social responsibility and “global community” within their students. The webquest, “Why Good People do Bad Things,” accomplishes all of the above. (This webquest can be found at gaperaser.wikispaces.com)
From a skills standpoint, the fundamental goals of this webquest are as follows:
1) To familiarize students with a wide range of information sources
2) To teach students to sift through large amounts of information for relative material
3) To give students multiple ideas of how to communicate ideas and findings to other groups of people in a technological age
4) Allow students to analyze the consequences of change in technology (i.e. the loss of privacy, but also the increased access to anonymous help outlets)
Students are given ample freedom and opportunity to accomplish all four of these goals within the webquest. So let’s break the assignment down into parts, and take a look at how each goal is accomplished. To start with, students are directed to a minimum of three websites in search of information. At least one of these is a video pertaining to their psychological theory, while at least one other is the actual experiment report from the landmark study being used to describe a certain theory. The other websites are anything from third party commentary to alternate interpretations of the theory. Students are asked to sift through all of this information, analyze it, and decide both what is relevant and what is reliable. Filling out a guided template of each individual theory helps students along. This teaches the students how to assess a wide range of information for both validity and pertinence.
Another part of this webquest is to design a presentation geared towards a specific group of people: middle school students. Psychology students are to create a presentation that informs middle school aged teens about each psychological theory, and how to discourage the negative outcomes that can be associated with each. Students are first required to come with ideas about how to create situations and examples that are relatable to their audience. Here they learn to adapt the way they convey their findings, in order to make it accessible to a specific group. Students are also shown how to use a program called Glogster, which is an interactive online poster. By using this new technology, students are compiling a group of skills that can be used in future presentations both in school and the workplace. By learning how to imbed videos or link images to websites or other glogs, students are discovering new ways to communicate ideas. While glogster might be specific to this presentation, the concepts behind it can be carried on through the future.
Lastly for the skills portion, students will analyze the consequences of advanced technology and figure out how to use it to their advantage. The issues that will be specifically looked at are privacy and the role of anonymity in the Internet. Students will be asked to create a forum for helping out middle school students, while addressing the pros and cons of increased technology to create these forums. Students will be asked to address the decrease in anonymity amongst peers on the internet, while also taking a look at how this might benefit or negatively impact the lives of individuals. By creating a wikispace as an anonymous help site, students will have realized that there are certain safeguards that must be placed on technological advances in order for them to improve the quality of life.
Socially, the goals of the webquest is as follows:
1) Address the impact of new technologies on the quality of life
2) Develop skills that address and evaluate critical issues
The former has been previously discussed when talking about the wiki online help space; the latter is what we will focus on now. At its core, the goal of this webquest is to analyze three theories that explain why generally good people might act in a negative way, depending on their circumstance. The three issues /theories that are to be discussed by the student are Obedience Theory, Bystander Effect, and Conformity. Each of these three theories addresses actions that are encountered on a daily basis, which might be able to get altered. These issues cross socio-economic and cultural lines, and can be seen virtually everywhere in the world. These global actions can be detrimental to large groups of people (i.e. Conformity and Obedience in the Second World War, bystander apathy as can be seen in global or national events, etc). Addressing these issues and how to deal with them is seen in the Glogster presentation, as well as the “take away” handout that each group is creating. Included in both is the explanation of each theory and how it explains behavior, as well as suggestions for overcoming the pitfalls that succumbing to these theories might present. Students will analyze the problems that are brought up and suggest alternative actions that can be taken to prevent such negative social behavior.
In all, this webquest aims for, and I believe accomplishes, many important goals that translate to the future. By combining both skills and social responsibility goals, the webquest provides students the opportunity to test the futuristic water of technologically, while at the same time allowing far analytical thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment