Week 6, WebQuests continued.

This week we are critiquing our classmates WebQuests and, obviously in turn, having ours critiqued. I have the good fortune of working with some really intelligent and creative students in my class here. That always makes things easier.
However, I find that critiquing other students work, and especially in an online classroom, is always tricky business. One thing that is definitely missing in the online classroom is room for error in choice of words. When you are speaking face to face with someone, you have the opportunity to use your words, your tone, your body language, and your interpretation of the other persons read on what you just said to make sure that your message is clear and respectful, and most of all, understood in the context in which you intended.
To critique someone's work is, in and of itself, tricky business. For me, at least, I can find a hundred different ways that I might reword a sentence. So the first step is to ask myself if what I would change is actually wrong, or just different than my own style. Besides that, there is the fact that we all make silly mistakes. Grammatical and punctuational errors, oversights and the like... those are the most difficult to mention tactfully.
For me, I get frustrated when the feedback that I get on my work is unhelpful in improving my work. Criticism is so necessary to our education because the knowledge and opinions of other human beings are all that we have as a measure against which to gauge our own success.
There is no book that tells us definitively what is the best way to teach a class, what is the best way to raise your family... there are only collections of information based upon what we, humans, have been able to figure out so far; our theories and ideas, supported by experimental and observational data. And even the greatest minds in history have faced criticism, usually to the improvement of their ideas.
I'll wrap up by saying that in this particular class, in this particular week, I find myself quite fortunate to have classmates who are adept at both giving and receiving feedback. I found the suggestions made by my critic quite helpful, which makes sense considering he has practical teaching experience and I do not. He was able to point out the weaker areas in my WebQuest that would lead to just the kinds of things, slacking and scapegoating, that we need to be very careful to avoid in group projects. In turn, I felt that the direction that I attempted to provide my classmate was well received, and besides which, put to fantastic use!
I had a teacher once who loved to say that "The best way to learn something is to teach it!"
I have never been offered a truer sentiment. I have found that I gain so much more from a class in which students actively challenge one another, which is, in general, why I prefer online classes. When students exercise the online forum to its fullest potential, the rewards are exponential.
Thanks,
Katie May