Week 2 (Jan. 26-28) – What are WebQuests I: (Re-)Introducing the Term

Since we’re back to work on WebQuests, it is important to revisit what they are. This will be our work for this week.


To get us started, I want you to watch these two videos. One featured the WebQuest master himself, Dr. Bernie Dodge:

Also, watch this video where a group of gifted students in 1st and 2nd grade talk about WebQuests

This second video is particularly interesting as it goes on to prove that WebQuests as a learning tool don’t really have a ceiling. All ages and language competence levels have the potential to create top-notch WebQuests.

As you watch this, in class you are going to come up with a brief working definition of WebQuests. 

Reconceptualizing and Recontextualizing Language Education and ICTs in the Classroom – An afterthought

As you watch Prof. Areiza Lecture last week, think about the central transformation that lecture is calling for in the way we should conceive language teaching today. Complement this discussion with the new challenges for ICT and language learning posed in the three articles below:

Barnes, K., Marateo, R., & Ferris, S. (2007). Teaching and learning with the net generation. Innovate, 3(4). Retrieved from  http://uruguayeduca.edu.uy/Userfiles/P0001/File/Teaching_and_Learning_with_the_Net_Generation.pdf

Please post here your mind maps and comments regarding Barnes, K., Marateo, R., & Ferris, S. (2007) reading.

Mora R. A. (2011, August). Challenges and Opportunities for Literacy and Technology in ELT Teacher Education. Keynote Presentation at the 2nd Colloquia on Research and Innovation in Foreign Language Education 2011, Bogotá D.C., Colombia. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED547648.pdf

How could we as preservice teachers adapt education to our students' needs nowadays bearing in mind the characteristic of obiquitous learning, in a world everytime more multimodal?

Mora, R. (2014a). Technology, digital literacies, and language ecologies. Rethinking the intersection between technology, digitalliteracies and Language Ecologies. Enletawa Journal (7), pages 115-128. https://www.academia.edu/13823015/Rethinking_the_intersection_between_technology_digital_literacies_and_language_ecologies

How has a language user been influenced by the implementation of ICTs?

Week 1 (Jan 19-21) – Reconceptualizing and Recontextualizing Language Education and ICTs in the Classroom

Reconceptualizing and Recontextualizing Language Education and ICTs in the Classroom One of the goals of this course is to help preservice teachers gain a deeper understanding of everything that introducing ICTs/digital literacies/internet-based tasks entails. The central argument here is that we need to engage in an epistemological discussion about the use of these new media and digital literacy practices as the precursor of the instrumental work that will take place in the classroom, and not the other way around.

To engage in this work, students will initially watch Prof. Areiza lecture:

Lecture: Education in the Digital Era: More than technology use in the classroom by Prof. Hugo Areiza (Universidad del Valle)

Primera Parte

Segunda Parte

Use this space to write about your insights from Prof. Areiza lecture.

Course Presentation

In the context of preservice second language education in Colombia, there is a concern about the implementation of online and digital technologies in our classrooms (Mora, 2014a). With this push, there is the need to consider pedagogical alternatives for the use of computer labs and other resources available on the web (e.g. learning platforms, webpages, blogs, etc.). However, as Mora and colleagues (Mora, et al., 2012a, b, c) have pointed out, if there is not a clear conceptual framework or well-defined tasks, activities may not go further than using Google or Wikipedia to end up writing (sometimes barely cutting and pasting) a report. When activities in the computer lab require little engagement and creativity, and the end result is not conducive to the construction of new environments for knowledge generation and interaction. At the same time, teacher-moderators and their students are discussing the inclusion of conceptual frameworks such as socio-cultural theories, critical thinking and competencies, and multimodality, to name a few, as ideas that are becoming more predominant in today’s classrooms.

This background supports Communicative Competence V. Through the readings and discussions in class, students should be able to develop a sense of autonomy in relation to their own learning strategies while engaging in deeper language and literacy practices. This component will retake some of the initial work with WebQuests (Dodge, 1997; March, 2000; Mora, et al., 2011, 2012a, b, c) that belonged, prior to the curricular transformation of the Communicative Competence Cycle (Martínez, 2012; Mora, et al., 2012a), to Communicative Competence III. The work with WebQuests that we will continue in Communicative Competence V will revisit the first additions to the conceptual background that integrated ideas about communicative tasks, competences, and the analysis of the Common European Framework and will add a few more ideas (Mora, 2014d). Specifically, in this iteration of the component we will zero in on the inclusion of multimodality (Kress, 2010; Mejía-Vélez & Salazar Patiño, 2014; Mora, 2014b) as the key feature that will help teachers design better and more meaningful WebQuests.

In line with the overall spirit of the Communicative Competence cycle, this component will continue emphasizing a heightened awareness of two realities permeating our work: (a) the need for all teachers need to be highly qualified practitioners of their craft and (b) the position of this course within a preservice teacher education program. Therefore, a constant reflexivity (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Mora, 2011, 2014c, forthcoming) process about how to apply these contents and ideas to our work with students in the local contexts of Antioquia and Colombia will be a fixture will be a fixture in our class activities and discussions.