Final Project

Creating the Final Product

I found each of the parts interesting. I had not looked at WebQuests very often before this part of the assignment and I had not used one in class or with teachers. That will change this year. As I look to find ways to integrate technology into school curriculum, the WebQuest is going to be of great assistance. Not wanting to reinvent the wheels or the cart that goes with the wheels, I will be suggesting a number of the WebQuests I found to the teachers with whom I will be working. I like those that address science and social studies topics. These subjects get minimal attention, except in grades 4 and 7 for science. I am assigned to work with these grades so a Questing we will go. I will also try my hand at authoring a couple more, now that I do have a clue.

Probably the most beneficial for my role as a tech lead was the HotList. I found numerous resources for the teachers at my school and will be sharing my diigo list with them. I will also look to borrowing lists from everyone in class. The more resources I have at my fingertips, the more I can share with my school.

The Sampler Site was the most difficult for me. I had used FrontPage a number of years ago. Oops, it is no longer around. Therefore, Dreamweaver was not an entirely new animal, but the evolution of web page design had left me behind. Once I saw how a couple of things could be done, they did become easy, but the seeing was the hard part. I will have to spend more time working with the program, just to practice what I have learned. Then I might have time to find new things to do. With Educational Networks having created and hosting the tech academies’ web page, I do not have to worry about designing one, at least not for a couple of more years.

The Learning Experience was a unique form of a summative assessment. Did I use the web page development skills learned in the class? Did I understand my own rubric for assessing a WebQuest? Was a project/presentation a part of the evaluation process? Was I able to create a rubric for the activity? Was the activity interesting? Was it standards based? Were there sufficient resources to start the students on the road to completing the activity? I would answer yes to all of these questions except one. I am still working on ways to make the colonial period of American history interesting to today’s students. I do not know if I can get a seventh grade student to share my excitement concerning the birth of the U.S. Reading about it in a text is not the answer, so this may be the way generate interest in what most students consider a “boring” part of an even more boring subject, social studies. This project provides direction to the students, but the conclusion is theirs to create. The questions that they generate lead to answers that will often create more questions. Their project presentation will have had the students evaluate and synthesize the information they had gathered. Let’s see, the students would have searched for answers to questions they have generated, they would have used higher-ordered thinking skills to organize their final project, they would have presented their project using a wiki, or PowerPoint, or some other form of electronic media. Was the project inquiry-based? Yes. Was technology integrated into the project? Yes. Did I use what I learned to create the project for the students? Yes. Could it have been more interesting? Yes, but what can you do with the colonies and today’s kids?