Webquest strengths and weaknesses

Questgarden.com/118/11/9/110201080330/t-index.htm

This is a very nice website that incorporates researching food webs and ecosystems with collaboration and creativity.

Introduction:

            This area is well written and is easy for students to understand, however it is not visually appealing.  It doesn’t grab a students attention enough o get them interested to read it.

Task:

            This page very clearly states what information the students need to gather.  It incorporates some information they should already know and some they need to look up.  I think it could explain the details of how a newscast should look. Should they make props or visual aids?

Process:

            I really like hoe the author created this section.  Very clear instructions. Varied links, some are for information gathering and some are for organizing that info.  It also includes a worksheet so the students can make sure they have all the information they need. One downside is that one of the links leads to a cool website that is unfortunately not free.

Evaluation:

            This is a great rubric for the collaboration and newscast part of the project.  It doesn’t include how the students are scored on the content of the project.

Conclusion:

            This wraps up the newscast part of the quest nicely, touching on scripts, rehearsing and readiness for film.   Doesn’t provide any sort of conclusion in regards to the science ecosystem content area of the webquest.

I will be able to use the majority of this quest without modification.  Some of the wording that is specific to the author’s own classroom needs to be adjusted.  For instance I won’t be putting the recorded newscast on my non existing class website.  I will also have to remove the link to the website my class does not have access to.  I will also add to the evaluation section to add a rubric for the science content of the quest.  I will also do this for the conclusion section. 

Educational Technology Guy: Experiments and Exploration are vital to science education!

Educational Technology Guy: Experiments and Exploration are vital to science education!

Technology standards in my teaching

3-5.DC.1. discuss scenarios involving acceptable and unacceptable uses of technology (e.g., file-sharing, social networking, text messaging, cyber bullying, plagiarism)
This is a standard I recently covered with an ELA lesson in my 5th/6th grade classroom.  The lesson began with my students reading a debate in a recent issue of Time For Kids.  This debate was over the issue of children using Facebook.  Our discussion after reading the debate was much more intense than I originally planned.  I usually love when TFK include debates in their issues because it is something my students need to learn and we tend to have great discussions as a result of the articles.   This case was no different.  Every single one of my students had a strong opinion regarding the topic of underage children using facebook or other  social networking sites.  It was pretty equal with half the kids saying they should be able to use Facebook and the other half agreeing they were too young.  Several of my students either have their own accounts or use their parents' accounts.  They we able to show how their parents restrict and control thier internet use.  We had a pretty broad discussion on this topic.  We covered issues such as internet safety and cyber bullying.  Our lively discussion was followed up with each student writing a journal entry  detailing their opinion on the debate.
I do not see this lesson as fully covering this standard. I see it as a good start and I know I have my students thinking about good uses of technology.   I plan to delve into this topic more when we begin researching topics online.      

blog comment #2

Here is the link to he comment I posted on Ron Houtman's blog.
http://www.ronhoutman.com/technology-in-the-classroom-thoughts-on-the-2011-cdw-g-classroom-report/#comment-107