64 A Four-Week Quest From start to finish, the Indigenous Cultural Traditions WebQuest took about four weeks. That gave students lots of time because they are in class or online about 25 hours a week. Week 1 focussed on vocabulary and the presentation example. The whole class watched the video on dancing, talked about how we felt after seeing the video and how the dancer described how she felt, practiced listening for specific information, and discussed the features of a good presentation. Week 2 was about listening and preparing group presentations. Each group watched one of the videos together. They worked out responses to questions I had prepared in advance. They identified one or two new words in the presentation and looked up their meaning in the dictionary. They then created a Google Slides presentation to explain the cultural tradition they had viewed. If students ran into technical issues, a volunteer (Robin’s son, Daniel) helped them sort things out. Week 3 saw the delivery of the presentations – a few slides presented by each group member – followed by class discussion. Week 4 used the course’s online Forum to give each student an opportunity to share a description of a tradition from their own experience. I provided students with a template to take simple notes during their classmates’ presentations. An assessment of each student’s progress was conducted at the end of each week based on rubrics provide to the class in advance. In short, each group watched only one of the videos, learning about one of the traditions. They would then share what they had learned and learn about the other traditions through the group presentations. There were particular things I was looking for and there were test tools to enable the students themselves and me as their teacher to assess whether they were meeting the objectives. The Search for Culturally Relevant Videos It took some time to assemble the videos. Through friends and contacts in the local Nokiiwin Tribal Council, Lakehead University, and elsewhere, I eventually found – and sought permission to use – locally relevant videos on trapping, beadwork, ribbon skirts, and collecting maple sap that would be accessible to students at CLB levels 2-4. The videos were mainly in English, with some including presenters speaking their Indigenous language. For instance, in the video on collecting maple sap, the on-screen host introduces herself in her first language, then in English, so the students got to hear the sound of her language. She also explained some Indigenous vocabulary. In dividing the 20-member class into work groups of 4-5, I first asked students which topic interested them the most. In grouping students according to interest, I also made sure that at least one member of each group had a laptop and some digital skills to help others who did not. I explained to the students that, on first viewing, they didn’t have to understand every word spoken in the videos. They could log in to the Avenue.ca eLearning platform to review the videos as often as they liked before answering questions. For learners at CLB 2 and 3 levels, I posed simple yes-no self-assessment questions such as “I can understand the main idea of the video,” I can understand the feelings connected to the tradition,” “I can understand why the tradition is important,” and “I can write down a few new words.” CC-BY-NC-SA 2025 New Language Solutions Avenue Instructor Standards for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning, version 1.2
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