Week Six--Webquests

I am not necessarily the most “computer savvy” individual you are likely to meet. However, I have found myself slightly exasperated by the somewhat basic and outdated information presented in this course. Chapter nine of the textbook was the source of considerable annoyance and vexation for me as a reader. Chapter nine concerns itself with the basics of the internet and email. Seriously? My eighty-plus year old papa uses the email to read the newspaper back in Massachusetts and floods my inbox with garbage forwarded emails!! I don’t think that the chapter provided much edification for many of the students in the class.

On a more positive note, I thought that the wiki I encountered last week would be the sole jem mined from the course study that I might readily incorporate into my teaching. I am happy to report that I was dead wrong! Before this week, I had never heard of a webquest. The thing that I really like about webquests is their structure. No longer are we giving the kids ambiguous instructions like, “go to the media center to research the adverse effects of global warming”. Instead, the students are provided assignment instructions bundled together with a number of links that can be clicked to access the necessary information. Another advantage to providing the links to the students is you ensure that the class members are not inadvertently coming across unacceptable material on the web. All materials have been previewed by the instructor.

The assignment this week required that we research the concept of webquest, and then seek out one that might work well for the students we are teaching. Next, we were asked to create a webquest of our own. I am currently “guest teaching” at the local high school to keep my pedagogical skills honed, as well as make myself known in my new community. I am teaching the gothic novel, “Frankenstein”, to a group of tenth-grade honors students. At http://www.huffenglish.com/webquests/frankenstein/Home.html I found a great website that I am going to use starting next Wednesday with the class. It is incredible! The webquest contains tabs for each of the assigned roles of the webquest, as well as over twenty-five links to usable articles and websites concerned with cloning and stem cell research.

I did create a webquest of my own. My webquest can be viewed at http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=125586

What can I say? It’s okay, but pales in comparison to the one I found at huffenglish. One difficulty I had with the assignment was setting up a free trial at the questgarden site. I tried to register about five or six times, and each time my username failed to register. I sent an error report to the web host, but received no reply. That is why I opted to use the zunal webquest creator. Although I may not use the webquest I designed for the gothic novel, I will be sure to create webquests for use with future works of literature I will be teaching.