PREPARATION OF STUDENTS OF PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITIES TO CREATE AND USE WEB QUESTS

Abstract

Modern educational information technologies are a powerful stimulus that allows to develop students’ cognitive activity, improves the quality of knowledge, promotes the development of skills of independent acquisition of knowledge. Therefore, the information and communication competence of future teachers is an integral and important component of their professional competence. One of the modern interactive pedagogical technologies, which demonstrates an example of integration of information technologies with common pedagogical technologies (project learning, role play, business game) is web-quest technology. The article considers the basic concepts of web-quest technology, the analysis of problems of preparation of students of pedagogical universities for development and use of a web-quest in the course of teaching schoolchildren Mathematics has been carried out with the emphasis on the need of purposeful preparation of future teachers for creation and use of web-quests in their professional activity.
 Information and technological support of the educational process is important for a clear organization of students’ accomplishing the stages of the web-quest and achievement of its educational, cognitive and developmental goals. The authors describe the advantages of using the e-learning environment Moodle as an integration tool for organizing work with web quests. Moodle allows not only to post the necessary materials and links to the resources online, but also to communicate between the teacher and quest participants through personal messages, chats, forums, seminars and to evaluate students’ achievements. The results of the web quest can also be displayed on the e-course page.
 The article offers training courses in Mathematics and methods of teaching Mathematics in the study of which it is advisable to use the technology of web-quest as one of the means of forming information and digital competence of students and also provides two examples of educational web quests. The first of them is designed for students of pedagogical universities and is aimed at mastering by them the course program «General methods of teaching Mathematics». Another web-quest gives students the opportunity to master the topic of «Text problems» in the course of Mathematics in a more profound way, to develop critical and logical thinking of students, as well as their research skills. Web-quest technology is an effective tool for integrating project method and information-communication technologies in education, and the use of web-quests in the educational process of a pedagogical university lays a solid foundation for the application of this tool in the further professional activity of a Mathematics teacher.