Thoughts on WebQuest

Creating WebQuest are an excellent way to help beginning teachers in many areas. I realise now that in teaching a particular topic, we can use WebQuest to zero in on an important section of the topic, or even get students to learn and gather information outside of their syllabus. I would think that this could be the key to creating a thinking classroom in school.

In the process of creating the WebQuest, I had to muster all past knowledge and experiences from the ICT module where I had to create a Problem Based Learning lesson using PowerPoint. I must admit that a lot of skills learnt from that module have long turned rusty.

In putting this WebQuest together, situations that would arise in school are being addressed here as well. I especially think that having to generate a rubric for the WebQuest project assessment gives me a lot of insight of what a teacher should be looking for in an outstanding piece of work and one that is not up to par.

In this particular WebQuest on river management, drawing a focus on using dams, my group decided that students should investigate the different people that would be affected by the building of a dam. We have drawn up a task sheet to guide students in their individual analysis and facilitate their group discussion.

Our objective is to let students understand the plight of the different stakeholders and come to a conclusive decision on whether building dams would be more beneficial or detrimental. Having a more open ended project, the students would have to come up with their own arguments on why the dam should or should not be built.

I feel that this technique of using WebQuest to teach does live up to the “Teach Less Learn More” scheme that the government is promoting. It is good that students would be able to see that information and education is at a click of a mouse. Hopefully, this would inspire them to seek out more information on the topics they have learnt and have more than one perspective of Geography.

Fieldwork Package Reflection

We were having a bit of a problem deciding what to do for our fieldtrip package. We considered going to Labrador Park to conduct fieldwork for students, but that idea fell through as we had not much focus on what we wanted to have students learn there.

In the end we settled with Sentosa, where the students can learn about tourism, something that is intangible, something that has always been around us but we don’t see it unless we really look.

Instead of making the fieldtrip one which students just walk around and take notes after the teacher, we decided to make it a little more interesting and incorporate the need to search for the different destinations on the island itself. The pre-activity allows students to piece a jumbled up map of Sentosa up and find on the map the locations in which they are to gather their data.

We wanted to incorporate a myriad of skills for the students to practice; we would have them interviewing visitors of Sentosa near the Merlion, which is a significant Singapore icon. At Siloso, they would be attending to the management of tourists, using their observation skills and also getting them to learn to be investigators by sketching and taking photographs of the area and so on. There is another activity that would take them to Palawan Beach where they would investigate the changes in land use of old Sentosa with the Sentosa of today.

There were other ideas that we wanted to include in our fieldwork package. We did think of trying to make the whole trip like an adventure hunt or race, where students have to use a map and compass to find out where their destinations are by providing them with bearings. This was to aid them in their map reading. However, we thought that we would be losing our focus on tourism if we digress in other areas.

Considering that this fieldwork should be completed within a span of at most 3 hours, we decided against too many activities and factors like the race or adventure hunt idea. But this would be an excellent way to incorporate all type of geography knowledge if we did not have to stick to a particular topic. In fact it would be appropriate if the activities were to be carried out during a Geography Camp.

I think that after piecing this fieldwork together, I realise now that it takes a lot of planning in order to get a meaningful fieldwork up. But I feel that this is one of the best ways to learn geography, as students can see for themselves that geography is relevant to the world around them and that a topic like Tourism can be found at their doorstep.