Bořivoj Brdička,
Ph.D., Charles University Prague
Czech ESP coordinator
The ESP in the Czech Republic
At the
beginning of this contribution to the 19th European Schools Project (ESP) conference
I would like to comment the situation of the ESP in the Czech Republic Czech Republic Czech Republic
Another
problem is connected with the current unofficial organizational status of the ESP.
As such, it is not recognized by the University authorities. This doesn’t allow
declaring the ESP as an official partner of the Charles University
Until now the
only possibility to support indirectly the ESP movement from the position of
the Czech national coordinator and a university teacher at the same time, has
been the involvement in topically affiliated, but officially recognized
activities in the field of projects coordination, teachers training or
research. These are namely the projects Comenius 2.1 PROMISE, Comenius 3 ECOLE
and COMP@CT, international IEA research SITES and the special research
programme of the Charles University Faculty of Education called “Education for
the Life in Information Society”.
Consequences
Several
outcomes of the above-mentioned activities are particularly beneficial for the
project methods in general. The recent educational research [2] proved that the shift from traditional
to emerging practices – the same which is intuitively supported by the ESP for
more than 15 years – is under way on the global scale around the whole world
and has the right impact on the required competences of the forthcoming
generation. The innovative educational methodology is often characterized as
a problem-oriented or student-centered. The role of the teacher is
changing in spirit of the English idiom “guide
on the side, not sage on the stage”. This process of innovation is
described as the shift from instructivism to constructivism [1]. The emerging constructive practices
are typically represented by the educational projects.
This term
features really a very large range of often very different school
activities, in which the students take the control of the work in some way. As
mentioned above, the ESP has operated in this field focusing on projects
supported by modern technology for many years. Until the end of the 20th
century the theoretical background of the conventional projects was derived solely
from the teaching traditions of certain countries, or from some attempts made
by experimental schools. Together with the increasing deployment of technology
in schools the need for the appropriate didactical modification in field of project
methodology raised. Thanks to the ECOLE project, the classification in the form
of the Taxonomy and Examples of Internet Projects was realized in the 2002 (http://omicron.felk.cvut.cz/~bobr/role/projects/).
Based on this classification, the ECOLE project could later continue with the
description of the best projects practice. This domain is still very topical and
currently results in the new Comenius 3 proposal titled “Best Experiences for
Students and Teachers in ICT-Innovation”.
We have felt
that the Czech teachers need something more than just information about the variety
of project types complemented by the recommendations for the best methods. In
the situation when there is only a little chance to involve significant
amount of teachers in the project work training aiming at reaching the best
project quality, we decided to promote our activities also by other means. We
have tried to provide the innovators among teachers with the free tool for
designing such lessons, which completely meet all the stated requirements for the
modern emerging practices. This is WebQuest.cz.
What is WebQuest?
It is evident
from the definition that the WebQuest is a special kind of project
strongly supported by the technology. Depending on its content it could belong
to several categories in our Projects Taxonomy – 2.4.
Telefieldtrips, 3.1.
Information Searches, 3.6.
Simulations – and maybe even more (see the linked description). The main
difference to the common ESP or Comenius international projects is in its
independence on workmates out of the school. The project activity here is based
mostly on the cooperation inside the classroom using information from the recommended
sources outside. It is initiated and guided by the teacher. The WebQuest implementing
teacher doesn’t necessarily need to be the same person as the author. One of the
positive principles behind is the altruism of the authors. The big majority of WebQuests
is published on the Internet for the disposal of all teachers. The considerable
part of the tasks connected with the WebQuest implementation could be done by mobile
devices – the main theme of the conference.
It is possible
to consider the WebQuest as the modern form of a traditional lesson. But
it is important to keep in mind that it is not the same. The difference
corresponds to the difference between the instructivist and constructivist
approach. The task behind WebQuest must initiate the individual activity, often
in cooperation with classmates. This principle needs to be somehow embedded in
the assignment. To succeed here and to fulfill the educational goals at the
same time is the heavy duty of the innovatively thinking teachers. Not only
students, but also the teachers need some kind of guidance in this heavy work.
This is what they can get through the well-proposed didactical background of the
WebQuest theory.
The following table shows the
recommended theoretical structure of the WebQuest based on the original
materials developed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March in middle 90’s (see also the online
Materials for Teachers below).
Introduction
|
The purpose of this section is to both
prepare and hook the reader. The student is the intended audience.
|
Task
|
The task focuses learners on what they are
going to do - specifically, the culminating performance or product that
drives all of the learning activities.
|
Process
|
This section outlines how the learners will
accomplish the task. Description includes clear steps and tools for
organizing information.
|
Resources
|
Links to recommended usable online materials or
other sources (in simple cases it could be incorporated in the previous
section).
|
Evaluation
|
This section describes the evaluation
criteria needed to meet performance and content standards.
|
Conclusion
|
The conclusion brings closure and encourages
reflection.
|
Teacher Page
|
The teacher page includes information to help
other teachers implement the WebQuest, including: target learners, standards,
notes for teaching the unit, and, in some cases, examples of student work.
|
Each section in the structure is created by the
author in the form of the text article often with links and graphic. For that
reason most of the already developed WebQuests have been realized in the form
of static Web pages. A huge amount of tools and theoretical materials helping the
authors to design a good WebQuests can be found on the Web. Here is the
selection from the resources:
General resources
· Web-and-flow.com – commercial
service of Tom March for universal support, including teachers training and
WebQuest generation
· Filamentality –
outdated server for WebQuest creation with archives
Materials for Teachers
· Linda Starr : Creating
a WebQuest: It's Easier than You Think!, Education World, 9/03/2003
· Building Blocks of a WebQuest, Technology Challenge
Grants, San Diego
City Schools
· WebQuest
Taskonomy: A Taxonomy of Tasks, the overview of WebQuests tasks
· Bernie Dodge : Some
Thoughts About WebQuests, The WebQuest Page, February, 1995
· Tom March : Why
WebQuests?, Ozline.com, September, 1998
· Using
a WebQuests in your Classroom, Internet4Classrooms, November 2000
WebQuest Archives
· Best WebQuests – thematically
sorted archive of WebQuests personally evaluated by Tome March
· Matrix od Examples -
thematically sorted archive of WebQuests managed by Bernie Dodge
· WebQuests –
products of students from Old
Dominion University
· ECN
WebQuest – Math and Science WebQuests
The Czech solution
The development
of a WebQuest in the form of Web pages, even if the templates in HTML exist,
is not always easy for the teachers. Not many of them are able to manage all the
work necessary for the content authoring, HTML files editing, and final publishing
on the Web server. Moreover, in the Czech situation, there is not only the lack
of technologically literate teachers, but even the lack of pedagogy innovators.
Therefore we came out with the intention to make the development of WebQuests
as easy as possible for all testers, which are ready to try it.
The idea was
to offer teachers the WWW service (WebQuest.cz)
that brings together the advantage of Web Publishing System and Open Source
Database. The main task of the Publishing System is to provide the users with
the content authoring, management, and publishing of all WebQuests’ components.
The database deals with the description of every WebQuest in form of metadata
with the aim to facilitate the search for the appropriate teaching material.
The Archive of already published WebQuests includes not only the searching function,
but also the sorting and filtering tools working over all materials by the
given criteria (subject, students’ age etc.).
Not-registered
visitors of the WebQuest.cz site can see all published WebQuests, read the local
supporting theoretical materials, and visit the selected linked original
English pages. After the registration the user is allowed to set up a new
WebQuest, develop it, and publish the final version for public disposal. In the
authoring phase, the user gets the empty structure of the WebQuest components,
where every section is represented by the article of the Publishing System. The
author can either accept the given structure, or is free to modify it, add folders,
articles, files, etc.
The other
feature of the WebQuest.cz services lays in the support of the school practice.
All logged users can make an assignment from any WebQuests already published.
In this mode the teacher obtains an access code for his/her students. With this
code the students can log in and use a special mode of system environment,
where the original WebQuest is displayed, and they have their own folder at
their disposal. Students can publish all their findings and outcomes in form of
articles or files here. It is up to the teacher’s decision whether the
students’ folder is made public or not. So not only the teacher could see it
and evaluate it. The proper WebQuest tasks may often have also such outcomes that
can’t be simply saved in the form of an article. Such activities like live
presentations, performances, discussions, simulations, etc. still can be in
a limited extend documented by certain multimedia facilities (e.g. video).
By these means almost all the classroom activities can be in some way presented
by the WebQuest.cz system. Utilization of this capability could increase the
motivation of students in a significant extent.
The important
additional feature of the system is the supporting structure of discussions. On
the top, there is an ordinary FAQ functioning as one way response of
administrators complemented by the general forum of all users. In addition to
that every WebQuest and every assignment has its own discussion group of the users
or students involved .
Further development
The main
reason for the development of WebQuest.cz service was to make the most out of
all the research activities taking place at the Information Technology
Department at Charles University Faculty of Education. As the goal was to strengthen
the innovative methods of usage of the educational technology in Czech schools,
only the Czech language is supported by the current version. Nevertheless, the
application is prepared for the possible implementation of other languages
versions in future.
The system was
launched a moth ago, so it is too early to evaluate its content and public
contribution. We are undoubtedly aware of the difficulties connected with the successful
application. The problems of the satisfactory use of the tools like WebQuest.cz
have two levels. Both are connected with the teachers. First one is the time
shortage, which is significant for the majority of teachers. It is really not
easy for them to find enough time and energy to design the high-quality
WebQuest in its full complexity. The creation of a WebQuest could be, in
terms of the workload, compared to writing a chapter of a textbook or
a whole research study. No surprise that the teachers don’t hurry to carry
on with such activities as their extra job. On the other hand the ambition to show
his/her own qualification and to offer the best practical ideas to others is
often a good motivation.
The second
problem is linked with the right understanding of the current innovation of
education as it is described by shift from instructivism to constructivism. The
power of the publishing system, even with the pre-designed WebQuest structure,
is no guaranty of the real innovation. The tool itself could be used in many
different ways. There is a real risk of a traditional approach to the
Webquest designing that would rather resemble the old instructive lesson, or the
teacher may show some other signs of misconception. Therefore the propagation of
such a tool has to be complemented by the teacher training scheme.
Fortunately, the offer of relevant courses exists in the Czech Republic
The first
month of WebQuest.cz service showed that most of the pathfinders among the pilot
users were interested mainly in unfilled technical trials of the system
functions. Up to now only a few usable WebQuests were finalized. In spite
of it we believe that among the one hundred currently registered users, there
is a significant number of those meditating about the content of their
first regular WebQuest right now. If nothing more comes, a fact of closer
familiarization with the given issue would also be beneficial to them.
We hope that
we at least indicate one of the proper ways for the appropriate application of
modern educational technology in the Czech
Republic
References:
1. BRDIČKA, B. The Role of Internet
in Education, Kladno : AISIS, 2003, ISBN 80-239-0107-9, Available at:
<URL: http://omicron.felk.cvut.cz/~bobr/role/>
2. KOZMA R. M. Technology,
Innovation, and Educational Change: A Global Perspective. Eugene
4. DODGE, B. Five Rules for Writing a Great WebQuest : Learning & Leading
with Technology, ISTE, May 2001
