WebQuests

Webquests are an exciting teaching tool. I was first introduced in webquests in a 4 day class in the late 90s. The quest was based on backward design and I created a task on creating a future colony. The students had different roles and specialized started with studying the past. The colony study allowed the perfect medium for collaboration and students worked in different teams to become specialists. I have used a trip quest to have my students research foreign countries and plan two days of sightseeing.  The final presentations included excel spreadsheets and many students made brochures or multi-media presentations. It is fun to work on a quest with Erkays and we are enjoying the collaboration. Creating a green school quest will be a fun project.

I have a lot on my plate with the launch of the new website. I want to save and update the quests I have created. I think there is value in adding some of the regular project I teach to this online format. It allows parents to see the rubrics and keeps the websites limited. This could be a great summer task.

Prezi

I am finding the technology exploration exciting but it is hard to not be on top of the new things I hear about. I have watched the students exceed me and they catch on so quickly. I love that they are enthusiastic and know that motivation is key in teaching today. With a large class I struggle with giving the individual technology training. The Smartboard offers great whole class instruction and the weekly lab helps. The prezi presentations showed me the importance of having some sort of quality standards to show the kids before starting multimedia projects. They leap in and forget about how important the content is.