WebQuest

Lesson Plan

CSO's
RLA.O.4.1.1
identify and practice appropriate vocabulary:

• multiple meaning words
• synonyms
• antonyms
• homonyms
• content area vocabulary
• context clues

RLA.O.4.1.8
interpret and extend the ideas in literary and informational texts to summarize, determine story elements, skim and scan, determine cause and effect, compare and contrast, visualize, paraphrase, infer, sequence, determine fact and opinion, draw conclusions, analyze characterize and provide main idea and support details.

RLA.O.4.1.12
recognize and explain the defining characteristics of genre in literary and informational texts:

• fairy tales
• folk tales
• myths
• poems
• fables
• fantasies
• biographies
• short stories
• novels
• plays
• legends
• autobiographies
• magazines
• newspapers
• textbooks
• essays
• speeches
• electronic databases
• reference materials

Role: The Altitudinist- WebQuest

Elementary WebQuests

Your Role

___Efficiency Expert

___Affiliator

_X__Altitudinist

___Technophile

Your Impressions

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Grow School Greens	Allows students the opportunity to develop professional skills by seeking permission and finding funding for their projects. Gives students the opportunity to work together and develop a plan. Each student is given a particular role and must accomplish tasks that fall within that role.	Large number of steps and information given all at once.
Where is My Hero?	Shows students that everyday people can be heros	Allows for little creativity. Listing, interviewing, and looking at various websites are the only tasks. Does not develop critical thinking
Underground Railroad	Offers fantastic creativity. Students must write journals from the perspective of their character. Includes website research to support their learning and help them develop their character Encourages collaboration	Possibly not enough structure to the directions.
Ice Cream	Collaboration! Students are required to listen to all ideas and collectively agree to one idea Students research a skill and then practice that skill- supporting their learning	I don’t see the connection to language arts
Ancient Egypt	Proper research websites are provided so students know they are gathering valid information Students are given 4 topic options to allow for variety	Students are not required to locate information on their own, all information they need is provided for them. This does not allow for self-sufficiency or learning through research.

Social Media ban, right?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10309421-238.html

This article discusses the cons and invalidity to banning sexual predators from social media sites. It explains that it would offer a false sense of security- because maybe the worst predators are the ones that haven't been caught. The author also says that some people listed as sexual predators are people who have urinated in public or are streakers, or teens who have had consensual sex. The article lists statistics to support their argument. The article only gives one side of the argument, it does not cite any other ideas or arguments to defend their position. The article references other articles but it does not link us to that article.

I can understand both positions. Parents want to know that their children are safe on the internet and they might be all for banning registered sex offenders from social media sites. However, there would be a huge sense of false security because children and parents would feel like they were protected from ALL predators- but they are really only protected from the people registered as offenders.

Storybird

Classroom chaos by lsands2201 on Storybird

Wikipedia Article

Article is a stub and not completed. This article states only a few references. The references are various education sites regarding their deaf education programs. The information there is clear; however, there is not a lot of information there. The information is neutral and factual. There are gaps however, and not a lot of information. The few references listed seem to be reliable. There are no discussions listed under the discussion tab. I would rate this as partially reliable. 1. Although the information is accurate, there is not enough information to support the information. 2. The article doesn't completely define what deaf education is. 3. There are no contributors that are talking back and forth on ways to improve the site.

What is Wikipedia??

What is Wikipedia?

• Wikipedia is a web-based collaborative encyclopedia project

How would you answer the question posed in this piece “How reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it?

• There is more chance of a project being accurate when collaborated with many people. It helps cut out biases and more objectivity

Who do the creators of Wikipedia place their trust in when it comes to weeding out misinformation?

• Volunteer group of editors and administrators

Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia?

• He felt that more authority needed to be given to experts

What would abuse or vandalism look like on a Wikipedia page?

• people may add inaccurate information or even misspell words and small minute details.

What do the statistics quoted in the third paragraph of this piece reveal?

• Wikipedia is a constantly changing and constantly used source of information

Why do you think Wikipedia is so successful?

• Wikipedia gives people the opportunity to collaborate and it offers a unique and free source of information that is available to all people

Why might Wikipedia’s creators not want to accept advertising?

• Accepting advertising may make vandalism to grow and may make it harder to control and monitor entries and articles

How does Wikiscanner help increase the reliability of Wikipedia entries?

• Wikiscanner exposed governments and businesses that were editing the information on them in order to make themselves look better, so it helps monitor the site and articles and to try to eliminate biased information.

Wikipedia: Friend Not Foe

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/archival/EnglishJournalArticle2.pdf

3 things I learned:

• wikipedia has tutorials for prospective editors on structure, format, and style
• there is a discussion forum for each article that encourages debates about editorial choices
• footnotes provide commentary along with the citations

2 things that surprised me:

• i never thought about the idea of looking through encyclopedias for gaps where new research might be possible.
  
• articles are ranked based upon certain criteria. less than 2,000 articles have achieved the highest honor of "featured articles"

1 question I have:

• why do teachers automatically write off anything new instead of trying to discover ways of using new material and technology to encourage critical thinking and judgement.