As a part of my children's literature and language course, I worked in a small group to create a webquest for 8th grade students. A webquest is an inquiry based lesson format where most of the information comes from the internet. The goal of our webquest was to help the students to explore popular book titles on a deeper level using the internet as a learning tool. We also had the goal that our students would be challenged by the books to be involved in their community. The topic of our webquest was "unexpected heroes" and we challenged the students to define an unexpected hero, and to become one in their own community. View our webquest below!
I believe that a webquest is a great tool that could be used to demonstrate competency in Danielson 1d: Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources. Many tools involving technology are teacher focused. A webquest, however, allows students to be directly involved in technology. It teaches them to use the internet as a learning tool, and it helps them to explore technology on a deeper level. Our webquest specifically also showed students the relationship between books and technology, which I believe is a powerful lesson for today's students to learn. Today's students will be using technology, and so I think it is really awesome to teach them to use technology as a resource to further their learning.
I believe that a webquest is a great tool that could be used to demonstrate competency in Danielson 1d: Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources. Many tools involving technology are teacher focused. A webquest, however, allows students to be directly involved in technology. It teaches them to use the internet as a learning tool, and it helps them to explore technology on a deeper level. Our webquest specifically also showed students the relationship between books and technology, which I believe is a powerful lesson for today's students to learn. Today's students will be using technology, and so I think it is really awesome to teach them to use technology as a resource to further their learning.
I got to actually go to Butler Intermediate High School and try my webquest with 3 8th grade Honors English classes. The students all loved the activity and it was so much fun to see the webquest in action! Above is a picture of a student working on the webquest. (photo used with permission from parent)