The Research

What is “Techquest”? Is it just a phrase pertaining to the course, and I have to come up with my own Techquest for applying technology? Are there other Techquest done by other Tech savvy teachers around the world, which can be model for my Techquest?

What does “trying to solve my problem,” mean? What exactly is the problem that needs to be addressed? The fact that I want to set-up an information portal providing students with the pre-requisites /benefits of the SAT exams, and then screening them with an online questionnaire seems too vague to me.

So I wanted to address all the above questions by doing research on Techquest. Internet research was quite an obvious part of my Techquest project.

Similar Projects

A project, which I found similar to something I would want to implement for my institute, that attempts to answer students’ queries and gives them an online test was the Test Info web-site.

http://www.testinfo.net/sat/links.htm

This project is quite interesting as the links caters to various needs of students like background information, a sample diagnostic test, SAT11, etc.

Relevant Search

There are several SAT related web-sites, online, providing an abundance of resources I can draw upon for my project. Some of them are:

http://www.collegeboard.com/
Another informative web-portal.

http://www.kaptest.com/sat
an organization which enjoys a great deal of success and reputation for the SAT exams. They publish several study-guides for students.

http://www.princetonreview.com/college/sat-psat-test-preparation.aspx
Very similar to the organization like the above, Princeton Review is into training and counselling students who want to go to North American universities

Interpretation

There is a wealth of information and resources documented on the internet which can be used for my project. However, I would wish for my Techquest project to be slightly more personalized and geared towards my institute. I suppose my web-site would need to be both an information portal, as well as a marketing tool. For my project to be successful, I need to provide relevant information to the student viewing my web-site, in a concise and clear manner. In addition, I need to explain/demonstrate how the institute can be beneficial for the student in reaching their goal. And, then, of course there is the whole online diagnostic testing part of the web-site, which would be beneficial for me as well as the student.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT
Wikipedia is not always reliable, considering it’s a community-edited web-site, but the information about SAT1 is quite authentic.

http://www.collegeboard.com/
this web-site is almost like a one-stop SAT 1 destination, for students, as College Board conducts SAT1 tests.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/about.html
this site gives tips and other information which directly comes from College Board.

http://www.studyworks.com.sg/sg_sat1.html
quite a comprehensive site providing links and information about the SAT1 program

http://www.flashcardsecrets.com/sat/
this site provides information about tips to solving SAT1 question.

http://www.satexamprep.com/
A SAT1 preparation site that has separate sections for Math and English.

https://www.blogcatalog.com/blogsearch/sat+1/
these are teacher’s blogs who train students for SAT. These blogs are maintained by the teacher themselves to share their teaching strategies.

http://www.testprepreview.com/sat_practice.htm
an online preparation centre for SAT1

While I usually use Google for my online research, this time I thought I would also try out Ask.com, which to be honest, wasn’t very helpful.

Next time I will try searching MSU’s online library and resources available which I could not comprehend and gauge this time. The amount of information available online is just so over-whelming. Though one needs to sort through a lot of “junk” before getting any form of value out of searches surprisingly, I also found a few teachers’ blogs who train students for SAT 1, which I found to be quite informative. These blogs can be a constant source of information for me, in terms of latest trends and strategies in teaching. Perhaps I could even collaborate with some of these teachers and share my experiences, as someone who has been preparing students for the SAT exams outside the U.S.

As a result of the online research I been doing, I have learned a great deal about how the internet can be such an effective tool of communicating information. Reading other peoples’ blogs, I’ve also gained a lot of confidence in being able to implement my own Techquest project.