Please complete your pre evaluation of 5 WebQuests for next Wednesday and answer the following question here in this blog:
What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of using WebQuests in your classroom?
About Me
- Martha Thibodeau
- Having been in the regular classroom for 22 years, I appreciate the complexities of teaching today. For the last three years I have been a Certified eMINTS Trainer/Mentor and my job is to coach teachers in using inquiry-based teaching in a technology-rich environment. Working with 19 different school districts is a challenging job, but one I look forward to every day.
9 comments:
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/China/ChinaQuest.html
This is a quest to learn about China (modern). Uses impressive vocabulary, with it linked to a dictionary.
Asks student to decide what should be US policy regarding China. Links to news articles, sources of statistics. Asks student to read 3 articles and answer with one "truth" Involves high level skills. I would need to do with class, because of reading levels in articles. Like this a lot.
Gloree
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/education/projects/webquests/paper/
This is a 3rd grade webquest about the pros and cons of paper Vs. plastic. Kids take on different roles, research, and the group has to reach a consensus and make a poster for the public with their advice, "paper or plastic?"
Links work, kids need to learn their part, then learn to work together to reach agreement. Sounds useful for 6th grade level. Good skills, clear directions.
Gloree
Advantages of Web Quests: You can find one to suit your needs, allows for independent or group work (flexible), allows for student directed learning (thinking outside of the box without teacher guidance), great discussion topics, clear guidelines for grading/assessment, may help students become more organized (ha, ha).
Disadvantages: Time consuming to look through the quest to see if the links work, ? meets the intended need of lesson (short & quick or long,extended version), may be difficult for those students who have organizational issues, may be difficult for students who have reading issues (however pages may be read by computer???), what to do with groups that finish early (late), what happens if technology fails :), some kids may only have internet access at school and not be able to work at home.
Mary
Advantages:
Great use of technology and exploring new ideas. Could be used as a sub plan if students are trained enough to be on their own.
Disadvantages:
Sites or links not working. Time to work on them in class is limited. Keeping students on task has been a problem when using computers.
Gordon Small
Baseball Predictions
http://www.wfu.edu/%7Emccoy/NCTM99/baseball.html
Newtons Car Web Quest
http://www.portlandschools.org/CTS/GrantsProjects/moulens/newtoncar/
Gordon
The idea behind the web quest is to engage the students. I think with technology being a large part of the learning material. The problem is sometimes webquests are very informal and do not provide enough learning material. I used one in modern Olympics of China. It was very interesting.
ttp://www.education-world.com/a_tech/webquest_orig/webquest_orig008.shtml
This was the link from the Olympic games.
-Luke
http://babylon.k12.ny.us/usconstitution/
http://thayer.k12.mo.us/emints/hargrove/constitution%20webquest/index.htm
-Aindrea
http://web.mac.com/varkgirl/iWeb/Frog%20and%20Toad%20WebQuest/Introduction.html
This web-quest is for K-2 to compare and contrast frogs and toads using venn diagrams. This can be done whole class or as teams or individual. Most all of the links worked. A few did not. I have to say that I agree with Mary. When students work on web-quests some finish faster than others, then what does one do with the stragglers? If I were do do this particular web-quest, I would do it whole class because we do not have individual computers and limited time to use the computer lab.
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