i'd like to share with u my experience with searching for info on web.
more than a yr ago, i need to lead a project - creating a mulitmedia courseware for young kids to learn mandarin chinese as second language (SLA). i'd have to do some market research - to know what is already available in the market; who is doing it & how they do it. and i started with the web.
my intensive online research period has last for 6 months or so - there are many many many sites & also many many many links from 1 to the others. i put down notes about the site content & things worth referencing. there are also sites who servces as a 'hub' that link to many other online chineses sites. at 1 time i have at least over 100 sites noted but when i review them afterwards, i have little clue what they were!
my thoughts when i reflected upon it now are:
1. before the search, it's better to think & find out the key possible relevant place to find the info. or else you get drown like me & need 12 cups of coffee a day.
2. info literacy is really a skill that needs learning; too much info is bad for your health. am still learning.
3. for me without the domain expertise e.g. SLA teaching; it is difficult to judge what is a quality & relevant leads. hence consulting with life experts is still essential as pointers.
4. some people are doing some 'sorting' & grouping for others on the web e.g. like the 'hub' site i accidentally run into. nevertheless, it is still in a link format; there are many duplications under different categories e.g. the same site might appear under 'Reading' and 'Chinese characters' and 'online schools' and 'writing'. i'll then run into the same site 4 times. for these kind of 'hub' site, some better navigation & site map work would even help more.
I think there is a lot for sunday afternoon, i need my 4th coffee. talk soon.
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ReplyDeleteDear all,
ReplyDeleteI am here to share my little experience on teaching with IT in school.
I have been a secondary school Geography teacher last September. For Geography teaching, it is essential for teachers to incorporate IT into the teaching process. Since the Geography curriculum includes themes and issues of different locations in the world, say, tropical rainforests, students may not have any idea of the selected landscapes. Although the textbooks contain quite of a lot of attractive colourful photos which could give the students a basic image of the landscape, they are yet not sufficient to facilitate an active learning atmosphere; also, the data/photos included in the textbooks may be outdated compared with the materials prepared by the teachers themselves.
Better still, the use of IT could be able to bring images far away from Hong Kong to the classroom. For instance, I have embedded plenty of images and video clips (... hmm, honestly, some of them are just grabbed from Youtube for my convenience) in the PowerPoint presentations I used in class. With my narration and questioning in class, my students feel interested in learning my subject.
However, I have had a very bad experience in using IT as well. In my very first lesson taught in school, I have prepared a very sophisticated PowerPoint presentation for it. In the classroom, I have been in panic since the computer there has been broken down. I have got nothing to do with it. I have kept silence for ten minutes and have been trying hard to think what I can do without a computer in that particular lesson.
Hence, reliance on IT could be disastrous once the IT equipment betrays you.
Yanchap
i saw Daniel posting comments on other group's blog. can other ppl see ours? think we need to open to all.
ReplyDeleteYanchap, can u do it or only jingjing can?
Hilda,
ReplyDeleteI have checked the comment setting. It is open to registered users(include OpenID).
julia, we have 2 blogs on learning exp. can we merge in 1?
ReplyDeletehilda
It seems to be complicated for the disabled (me) to perform a merge of the selected entries. (Does Blogger have such function?) ~
ReplyDelete