WebQuest with Class 10.34!

On Monday 27th of March 2023, a WebQuest lesson was held at St. Margaret College Verdala Secondary School in Cospicua. Consent forms were collected prior to the lesson by both teachers. Moreover, the lesson plan devised by Ms. Borg and reviewed by Mr. Calleja was discussed in a meeting beforehand, where feedback was given to the former to adjust and implement certain changes in order to make the lesson more feasible and achievable within the limited time frame of 40 minutes.

The aim of this lesson was for students to familiarise themselves with authentic online British newspaper articles, as well as to learn how to look out for reliable news sources on their mobile devices. In groups of three, students were asked to look out for articles related to ‘Health’, ‘Education’ and ‘Employment’, specifically in the year 2020 on the BBC News website. Students accessed the BBC News website through the QR Code provided by Mr. Calleja, and they then skimmed the articles chosen. Following this, they then wrote some of the salient points taken from the selected articles on PADLET. On the classroom’s Smart Board students could read out the points written by their friends. Moreover, students learned how to look out for reliable news sources on the Web, as well as enhance their reading and writing skills.

The students were monitored by Mr. Andrew Calleja (Head of Department for Digital Literacy and Transversal Skills), Ms. Benedicta Borg (English Teacher) and Ms. Alison Meli (Learning Support Educator). Besides the pedagogical aims of the lesson, this session was also a way of promoting Digital Technology, particularly the strategic use of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in schools. Furthermore, the notion of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) encourages our students to negotiate ideas and interact with each other, as well as reflect on their own work. For Sultan (2023), the TBLT method demands purpose for the task, and students should know its outcome in advance. Moreover, it should be strictly related to a real-life situation. Interestingly, not only does TBLT develop target language fluency, but it ultimately boosts our students’ self-confidence. As a college, we believe that the use of DT enhances the effectiveness of this approach, as well as highly motivates our students by making the content and material more relevant to them.

We firmly believe that language learning enables our students to access a wide range of information. Since English globally serves as a Lingua Franca, through WebQuests we allow our students to process online information in English and use it for different purposes. Throughout any WebQuest activity, students are normally always active participants, and learning is seen as “a process rather than an end product”, where teachers facilitate learning by encouraging the students to accomplish the task assigned using their present linguistic resources (Sultan, 2023, p. 77).

A WebQuest is “an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet” (Dodge, 1995). Through this WebQuest lesson, Content-based language learning (CBI) was also implemented amongst this specific group of Year 10s, where students not only practised their reading and writing skills, but also had the opportunity to gain mastery over the content matter. As cited in local research carried out by Mr. Norman C. Borg (2019), Kukulska-Hume (2009) claims that many teachers see the use of Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) as a threat, as it disrupts the form and structure of a traditional classroom. Additionally, the stakes are even higher if the classroom dynamics are troublesome, thus the use of devices might stir up serious classroom management issues. Therefore, it was imperative that consent forms would be collected beforehand, to minimise any misbehaviour from the students’ end.

At the end of the lesson, the teacher held a brief discussion with the students, and the feedback was very positive. After the successful outcome of this lesson, as well as by reading around the literature present on the use of DT in the English Language classroom, it is evident that the strategic use of the Internet encourages not only autonomous learning, but more so it makes language learning more relevant and enjoyable to our students.

In his study, Borg (2019) claims that despite the current rapid technological change, many teachers still seem hesitant to integrate technology in their classrooms. He advocates for more training within the field, both for pre-service and in-service teachers. Through this WebQuest lesson, Mr. Andrew Calleja and I aim to encourage local teachers of English to make more meaningful use of Digital Technology in their classrooms. As Borg (2019) outlines in his study, one way this issue could be addressed is by demonstrating the effective use of such a pedagogical tool in class. We hope that this will spark the interest of other fellow teachers to make use of DT in class!

• Mr. Andrew Calleja, Head of Department for Digital Literacy and Transversal Skills, St. Margaret College.

• Ms. Benedicta Borg, Teacher of English, St. Margaret College Verdala Secondary School, Cospicua.

• Ms. Alison Meli, Learning Support Educator, St. Margaret College Verdala Secondary School, Cospicua.

REFERENCES

Borg, N. C. (2019). One-to-one teacher training in the meaningful integration of digital technology in the ESL classroom [Master of Arts in TESOL (Dissertation)]. University of Malta.

Dodge, B. (1995). “WebQuests: A technique for Internet-based learning”. Distance Educator 1(2): 10–13.

Sultan, Z. (2023). “Task-Based Language Teaching: A Paradigm Shift in ESL / EFL Teaching and Learning: A Case-Study Based Approach”. International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences. 17(1): 76-79.