EDUC4105

The following is the opinions of a small group of university students on a webquest activity. We are all viewing the contents as beginning Mathematics Teachers.

Here is a link to the Chess activity.

Strengths

• Task has good Knowledge Integration with history (cold war)
• Uses research as a teaching strategy
• Relevant links are included for students to read more about different aspects of the task
• Plenty of technology incorporated with links to films and opportunities for students to create part of web pages
• Students have the chance to play chess with one another

Weaknesses

• Irrelevant to maths syllabus
• Research is only of interest to chess fans and requires a degree of background knowledge of chess
• Task 4 is more suited for D&T where design and ease of use is important
• Seems to be a trivial activity aiming at chess promotion
• Outcome is not mathematical and does not require higher-order thinking (more a structured writing task)
• No meaningful motivation for students
• Purely individual work – lost opportunity for collaboration

For anyone interested in learning chess from a grandmaster, here is a blog on the games of Karjakin Sergey.