Focus on Using Informa- Ity of the Web Sites It Uses
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Feature C O U F S By Bernie Dodge Subject: Any Audience: Teachers, technology coordinators, teacher educators Grade Level: 3–12 (Ages 8–18) Technology: Internet/Web, e-mail Five Rules for Writing Standards: NETS•S 4, 5. NETS•T II, III. (Read more about NETS at www.iste.org—select Standards a Great WebQuest Projects.) Copyright © 2001, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.2777 (Int'l), 6 Learning & Leading with Technology Volume 28 Number 8 [email protected], www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Feature ince it was first developed in Find great sites. Probe the deep Web. According to one 1995 by Bernie Dodge with Orchestrate your learners and resources. report (Bergman, 2000), more than S Tom March, the WebQuest Challenge your learners to think. 550 billion Web pages now exist, model has been incorporated into Use the medium. only 1 billion of which turn up using hundreds of education courses and Scaffold high expectations. the standard search engines. What’s left staff development efforts around the is a hidden “deep Web” that includes globe (Dodge, 1995). A WebQuest, archives of newspaper and magazine according to http://edweb.sdsu.edu/ articles, databases of images and docu- webquest/overview.htm, is ments, directories of museum holdings, and more. Though some of this infor- an inquiry-oriented activity in mation can be rather obscure, you can which most or all of the informa- F find items that add a unique and inter- tion used by learners is drawn FIND GREAT SITES esting touch to a WebQuest. from the Web. WebQuests are One thing that distinguishes a good Take, for example, a WebQuest designed to use learners’ time WebQuest from a great one is the qual- about whales. A newspaper account of well, to focus on using informa- ity of the Web sites it uses. What makes people trying to save a beached whale tion rather than looking for it, for a great site? The answer varies with would add human interest and drama and to support learners’ thinking the learners’ ages, WebQuest topic, and to an otherwise routine lesson. By at the levels of analysis, synthesis, specific learning you hope to bring about. searching the deep Web you might find and evaluation. In general, though, you’ll want to find a link to a page in Thomas (a tool to WebQuests are appealing because they sites that are readable and interesting search U.S. legislative information on provide structure and guidance both for to your students, up-to-date and accu- the Internet, provided by the Library of students and for teachers. The stated rate, and come from sources your stu- Congress) describing legislation from ideal of engaging higher-level thinking dents wouldn’t ordinarily encounter the 106th Congress designed to protect skills—though making good use of lim- in school. whales. Searching through the Library ited computer access—seems to reso- of Congress’s American Memory Col- Master a search engine. How do you lection might lead you to a letter by nate with many educators. find great sites? It helps, first of all, to Thomas Jefferson on whaling and a A quick search of the Web for the fully master one or two of the most picture of a whale skeleton. word WebQuest will turn up thousands powerful search engines. It’s somewhat Searches of the TV Episode Guide of examples. As with any human enter- a matter of personal preference, but as and the Internet Movie Database will prise, the quality ranges widely. Many of this writing, most savvy users would take you to pages showing how whales WebQuests were created hurriedly to include AltaVista®, Google™, and per- have been portrayed in popular culture. complete a class assignment. Others ap- haps Northern Light™ at the top of Including such sites drives home the pear to have been developed over a their lists. (See Resources on page 10.) fact that what you are teaching is im- longer time and thoughtfully refined Most people do their searching by portant in the world outside school each year while being implemented. typing a few words into one search en- walls. Where do you find such ac- Some of the lessons that label them- gine (e.g., Yahoo!® or Dogpile®) and counts? I maintain a page called “Spe- selves WebQuests do not represent the then plow through a blizzard of irrel- cialized Search Engines and Directo- model well at all and are merely evant sites. It’s much better to learn the ries” that might help you find these worksheets with URLs. quirks and advanced search techniques resources off the beaten path. By closely analyzing what’s out there, of the better search engines to get what I’ve identified five general bits of advice you’re after faster. By mastering just a Don’t lose what you find. A practical that will help anyone create WebQuests few commands, you can quickly be- problem in lining up great sites is keep- that are head and shoulders above the come a better searcher than most of ing track of them. Most teachers do rest. Thanks to some wrestling with the the Web-using public. One Web page their work at more than one computer. alphabet, the five guiding principles can many have found useful is Seven Steps Sometimes you’ll be searching at your be captured in the word FOCUS: Toward Better Searching. desk at school. Other times you’ll be at Copyright © 2001, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 541.302.2777 (Int'l), [email protected], www.iste.org. All rights reserved. May 2001 Learning & Leading with Technology 7 Feature your home machine, and someone will • If the only access to the Internet stu- debug each other’s conceptualizations. e-mail you a great site. You might look dents have is by a scheduled (and limit- Guidance on how to work together over the shoulders of your students and ed) set of lab periods, then a well- should be an integral element of the find something great you want to use in orchestrated lesson frontloads that lab process section of the WebQuest. Find a future lesson. So how do you store and visit with offline activities so students ready-made pages to support effective access your finds so that you can get to are prepared to use lab time well. cooperation on the Process Guides page them when you need them? Web-based • If all computers don’t have Internet developed as part of the San Diego City bookmark servers such as Backflip are a access, then students can access Web Schools Patterns Project. boon to teachers. Once you’ve set up a archives created on another computer How do you create positive inter- free account, you can log in from any and saved on their hard drives. dependence in a WebQuest? You create computer and look at or add to your separate responsibilities by having Organizing people. Designing a great list of bookmarks. One especially useful learners read different Web pages or by WebQuest is also a matter of organiz- benefit is that you can set up categories having them read the same Web pages and subcategories and put each book- ing your learners. Though having teams from differing perspectives. You can mark into some kind of organizational and roles for students to play is not a also divide the production responsibili- framework as you find them. critical attribute of a WebQuest, practi- ties in ways that parallel production cal considerations lead to group work careers in adult life (e.g., scriptwriter, being more common than not. Having graphic artist, or producer). The trap more than a superficial knowledge to avoid is creating separate roles that ORCHESTRATE of cooperative learning strategies has do not result in information all mem- LEARNERS AND proved to be a useful background for bers of the team will need to accom- RESOURCES O WebQuest designers. According to plish the end goal. Johnson and Johnson (2000), the critical attributes of a successful coop- Teachers who survive the first few years erative learning environment include on the job are masters of organizing the following: CHALLENGE children and resources. The experience YOUR LEARNERS • Positive interdependence: Learners per- TO THINK of not having enough books, globes, ceive that they cannot succeed with- C or frogs for students teaches one quick- out each other. ly to arrange activities so that resources • Promotive interaction (preferably face- can be shared. The same wisdom can to-face): Students help teach and ap- We’re passing through a period in be applied to problems of less-than- plaud each other as they wrestle with which standardized test performance optimal computer access. A great Web- authentic work. drives much of what happens in Quest is one in which every computer • Individual and group accountability: schools. At the same time, everything is being used well and everyone has The group is held accountable for around us tells us that tomorrow’s something meaningful to do at completing the task, and each indi- adults will need to analyze and synthe- every moment. vidual is held accountable for his or size information to succeed in most professions and to participate fully as Organizing resources. As of this writing her part in the process. citizens. It takes a gifted teacher to play and for the foreseeable future, there are • Interpersonal and small group skills: both games at once, but it can be done. not enough computers to go around. Most children (and many adults) A WebQuest is not the vehicle for mas- The creative response to that is to orga- need to be taught how to work tering a list of U.S.