Web Quest Memo to Principal

An activity that we should be including in our curriculum is Web Quests. These are activities where students are given links by the teacher to various websites which are used to answer questions the teacher supplies. The advantage of this activity is that the students are guided to the website, so there is no worry that they are looking at questionable content, and they do not waste time "searching" the entire World Wide Web for the information.
The web quest will require the student to read. High school students are "digital natives", meaning they grew up entirely in an age of technology, and are much more comfortable reading information from a computer screen than from a book. By reading from the Internet (as opposed to a textbook) the time-on-task is greatly increased.
These Web Quests can be done in every class and in every subject area. All it takes is a teacher who is willing to search for some reliable and content specific websites and create some questions based on those sites. With the availability technology in the form of the library computers and the mobile labs, there should be no problem having access to the technology at any period of the day.
I hope you consider endorsing the use of web quests in the classroom. If you would like, I can develop a PD on the topic to explain the advantages to all of the teachers in the building.

Web Quests and Web Inquiries

A web Quest is using a guide to find information on the internet. It guides students to particular websites and asks them to find information. Rather than turning them loose on the Internet, this saves time by guiding them to the source.

On one of the sample webquests I found this site which may help me with a lesson plan that I am designing:
http://www.quick.org.uk/menu.htm - quality internet information
http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/evalwebteach.html - another webquest for searching for good sources.

What it all Means...

I am so excited by all of the technology we have discussed in class and read in the book. However, I see lots of opposition from my administration to using such resources. The administration doesn't like for the students to have free reign of the Internet. They don't like not having control about what RSS feeds the students are subscribing to. Are the sites they are saving in Furl educational (because we wouldn't want them to have a site that's just "fun" saved)? Are the Podcasts they are listening to on iTunes appropriate? Is an Internet predator going to start commenting on their blogs?
There are so many questions, and I don't know if the answer is that we need to keep a close eye on everything that every student is doing, or if the answer is to RELAX and trust the students a little more. If there are expectations set, they should be doing exactly what we ask of them and nothing else. If they are challenged everyday in the classroom, and feel engaged in the content while using technology, why would it be so bad if they had a link to a silly video on YouTube?

Richardson Chapter 6

I can't quite get my head wrapped around how to use furl.com or del.icio.us. I don't think I would use these yet. I need to see someone using it in person before I understand. I like the idea that Furl can save previous versions of websites for later use (even if the site no longer exists). That makes me so mad when I go to my bookmarks to find a website I used last year, only to find it's no longer active! This would make my life easier for those times.

Richardson Ch 8 - Podcasting

I have been wanting to use podcasting in my class, but I didn't know where to start. I have recorded a discussion using an iPod with a microphone, edited it using audacity, and added music. But this chapter gave me a new idea on what podcasting actually is. I didn't ever make the connection about how it shouldn't be read from a script because it is more like a radio broadcast and should be somewhat spontaneous.
I am going to a workshop in Lexington on Feb 22 that is put on by Apple about blogging, podcasting and web publishing for teachers. I hope it will be interesting and I will learn more about how I can use podcasting in my class.
I will write more about how the workshop goes later.

Wikis

I decided to try my hand at editing our digitalstorytelling Wiki. I added a page and some information on that page. I can't picture in my head how the structure of this will work, so I will just see what happens to the content that I have added. I think the chapter in the Richardson book has great information about Wikipedia, some of which I am going to share with my students. I don't think they understand where that information comes from. I think that the facts about the Tsunami information arriving on Wikipedia so quickly is very interesting! I also would like to browse and see if I have anything to add to Wikipedia!