meskill and dodge blog

Sheila Wallace
Ling 611
Webquest & Triadic Scaffolds Blogs
tundrahoop@yahoo.com

Dodge, B. (2008). Some thought about webquests. Website: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about webquests.html.

Many school are connected to the internet and the numbers of schools with computers have grown in recent years. This article provides the definition for Webquests as being an inquiry based approach an activity that uses the internet to find their quests. There are given steps to learn about webquest. First, the teacher needs to know the resources online, organize the lesson based on what is out there, identify a topic of inquiry, use the template to learn how to navigate through the webquest.
This article is useful to as it pertains to having students use the internet as a source for information gathering through the inquiry process. I will definitely use this resource to implement this approach to my seventh and eighth graders as well as my high school multimedia class. I think the instructions on how to do webquests are easy to follow and it is very teacher friendly.
I was surprised to see all the thinking skills a webquest activity includes. Comparing, classifying, inducing, deducing, analyzing, constructing, abstraction, and analyzing different perspectives are all skills a longterm webquest entails. I can see doing a longterm webquest with my high school student but not with my middle school students. It would be too long for them to complete a long term quest.


Meskill, C. (2005). Triadic scaffolds: tools for teaching English language learners with computers, language learning & technology, pp 46-59, 9
This article describes a teacher’s innovative approach to English language learning that is designed through triadic scaffolding where the teacher uses a verbal strategy with the computer as the contributor as to what the strategy accomplishes. The computer is used as a vehicle for capturing the students’ attention and motivation to anchor their learning through teacher directed language activity. The language forms and functions are learned in a triadic discourse (teacher, learner, computer) .
This article is a hard read due to the high level of vocabulary used. I liked the part that described the research suggesting that the use of computers as a tool increases student motivation and high level of attention is being given to the teacher instruction. In addition, I like the part where the student, John, was an unreachable student who, by this approach did very well and was involved. I can see this approach being used in my school region in the villages where there is language deficiencies in English. Computers in this approach can support their learning and motivate them to become good English learners.
In this approach, the teacher has to be very organized and conscious about the instructional sequence of the activities to lead students to cognitive academic language. I am wondering how teachers with poor organizational skills and technology skills could navigate through this approach. There would seem to be a lot of attention being focused on teacher training and development for it to be successful as it is designed to be.