Web Quests

First of all I think that Filamentality will be an excellent resource for us upcoming teachers to use. This is a great way to link interactive learning as well as being exposed to technology. This tool will keep the children engaged and gets them away from the ol' fashioned "go look it up in the book." This allows the student to stay active and learn to sort and look through information while also keeping the information in range and related to the topic at hand. This is also a great way to include the content standards into the curriculum.

On another note another great tool to use is the almighty WebQuests that we all hear so much about these days. No one really understands the power that they have until they actually use them. They were developed in 1995 at San Diego State University by two men by the name's of Bernie Dodge and Tom March. What WebQuests do is structure students to analyze a variety of information and resources so that they can analyze it and use their critical thinking skills to come up with a solution. Often real world wide problems are used and at the end there is usually some form of project or assignment to complete. This would be how the teacher would assess the students comprehension and skills. There are many ways to utilize WebQuests either you can create your own or you can search for ones that are already made. Remember, like anything else, there are always thorough ones and there are always bad ones out there. One way to narrow your search down is to use appropriate search engines and become advanced at learning how to use advanced searches. Some examples of some great WebQuests are an example of a teacher using a pumpkin patch as part of her WebQuest in hopes to link her inner city kids back to mother nature. Another great one was one that involved learning about Anne Frank, with it based upon the children of the Holocaust. There are no limits to WebQuests. They can be totally done on the computer or you can mix like the pumpkin patch and integrate some real life activity to the Web. The sky is the limit and like one of my professors once told me "Why try and reinvent the wheel?"