Lecture#4
Internet-based project work
1.Why do Internet-based project work?
2.Basic projects
3.Internet-based simulations
4.Webquests
5.Webquest creation
Why do Internet-based project work?
A natural progression from using individual web pages and websites in the classroom is to move on to online project work. This will be an extension of the kind of individual-lesson work we have looked at in Chapter 3 and will involve the use of the Internet over a series of lessons. There are many compelling reasons for using Internet-based projects in the classroom:
1 They are a structured way for teachers to begin to incorporate the Internet into the language classroom, on both a short-term and a long-term basis. No specialist technical knowledge is needed either to produce or to use Internet-based projects. However, it is certainly true that they will take time to plan and design, so it
is well worth looking around on the Internet to see if something appropriate already exists before sitting down to create your own project.
More often than not, they are group activities and, as a result, lend themselves to communication and the sharing of knowledge, two principal goals of language teaching itself. The use of projects encourages cooperative learning, and therefore stimulates interaction.
They can be used simply for language learning purposes, but can also be interdisciplinary, allowing for cross-over into other departments and subject areas. This can often give them a more 'real-world' look and feel, and provide greater motivation for the learner.
They encourage critical thinking skills. Learners are not required to simply regurgitate information they find, but have to transform that information in order to achieve a given task.
In the context of doing project work, the Internet can be thought of as an enormous encyclopedia because it gives our learners quick access to a wealth of information which they can use to carry out their project tasks. A good example of such a source is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), a collaborative encyclopedia produced by and for the Internet community. Wikipedia has thousands of articles on many different subjects, and is an ideal place to start when doing project work that requires factual information about people and Have your learners write down the name of their favourite actor and mind-map what they know about him or her. Use the following as a guide:
Once they have written down what they know, have them make a list of things they don't know, but would like to find out.
Second lesson
This second lesson requires a fair bit of work on the part of you, the teacher. If you think you may be short of time, limit the names of actors in the first lesson to a small selection that you have already researched.
Before the lesson you will need to find useful sites to match the choice of actors your learners made. Make sure that they are simple enough for the level, and include as much of the information sought as possible. You can use the skills you acquired in Chapter 3 to accomplish this. Remember that for biographical information you can search using a part phrase such as "Johnny Depp was born in". Alternatively, and if your learners are comfortable with searching and dealing with websites, have them find their own. In this lesson, your learners will visit the identified sites and complete their mind-map, as far as possible.
In the next stage, you will need to provide them with a model biography. Check out Wikipedia for examples (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Depp) and rewrite one example to your students' language level. You may decide to do some comprehension work on your model text at this time, working on the structures and vocabulary areas that you want them to include in their biographies. Third lesson
This third lesson involves making the final product. By now your learners will have collected all the information they need and will also have seen your model biography, so they should be in a position to come up with one of their own.
One way of doing this is to have them prepare a short text based on the model from the previous lesson, and then to work this up into a poster (using Microsoft Word or similar) with illustrations and photographs also taken from the Internet. Remember that you can use http://images.google.com for relevant images.
Please remember that much of what you find on the Internet will be copyright material, so please ensure that you check that you are able to use the information and images you find. In the education field this is not normally a problem - 'fair use' of copyright materials is flexible when it comes to classroom use and a picture or two from a site such as Google will be acceptable as long as you keep the materials in the classroom or your learners' homes and they are not published anywhere. When in doubt, however, it is best to email the owner of the site you are using to check that they do not mind. Their final projects might look something like this:
Elementary MY FAVOURITE ACTOR
Mr. Johnny Depp
His name is Johnny Depp.
He is 44 years old.
He is American.
He was born in Kentucky.
He is an actor.
He lives in France.
He is married.
A high-level project - Global warming
This project aims to provide learners with the opportunity of examining a serious issue in depth. You may want to work beforehand on some of the language areas useful for the activity, for example giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing. However, this will depend on the level of your learners. It is ideal for groups at an upper-intermediate level and above.
While the lower-level proj ect we have just looked at is an ideal opportunity for developing specific communication skills, this project goes deeper into a topic and encourages more complex thinking and reasoning processes. With higher-level projects like this one there is plenty of opportunity for cross-curricular applications, working with teachers in other departments where possible, and for covering other areas of the overall syllabus above and beyond the teaching of English. For this project you will need:
three lesson periods of at least 45 minutes each.
access to the Internet for the first and possibly second of the three suggested lessons.
optionally, access to video recording equipment for the third lesson.
Internet-based simulations
Internet-based simulations bring real-life contexts to the classroom, helping our learners to deal with situations that they may come across during foreign travel or in encounters with other speakers of English. The more traditional approach has teachers cutting up prepared role-cards in order to simulate these contexts. The Internet largely does away with this approach, giving learners access to authentic websites that provide stimulating and relevant content that enables them to carry out these simulations. Simulations like these work particularly well in the field of business English, where the language learning is very task- or goal-oriented, but they also work well with general English learners who may have less clearly defined reasons for using English, as we will see below.
A business English simulation
This sample simulation looks at the case of a personal assistant having to organise their manager's business trip to the United Kingdom. The benefit of this kind of simulation is that it uses real websites, and a potentially real situation, to further the learner's reading, information processing, planning and communication skills. As an additional benefit, it also addresses technology skills that are useful in this professional context.
Of course, a busy teacher is not going to prepare complex simulations such as this on a daily basis, but for occasional activities they really can bring home not only how useful the Internet is for busy professional people, but can also be an important confidence booster for learners. Working through carefully guided but complex tasks such as these - tasks which have a direct relation to what they do in their work - can reinforce the value of their language classes and keep motivation high.
In this particular simulation, we take the case of a learner who communicates primarily in the written form, using letters, faxes and emails. It is this factor that influences the nature of the tasks in the simulation (see opposite).
A general English simulation
As observed above, simulations need to address potential real-life situations in order to appeal to the learner. The business-oriented example above is a clear case of this approach, but how can this kind of activity be prepared for learners of general English?
The activity above could easily be adapted for a more general context by turning it into a holiday being planned by a group of friends, or even a school trip. In this context, small groups would plan an itinerary around the United Kingdom, researching travel options, accommodation and things to do in each place visited. This might be presented as an award given to the students, with a limited budget, making the actual logistics more challenging, but more real. Shorter simulations are also possible, as in this example.