Web quest results

My research this week broke from the finding of ideas, to finding out just how successful these activities have been for others. After reviewing several articles, I found two that were most useful. This first page dealt more with the certification levels of teachers, but it did stress that higher order thinking and problem solving skills are built through a quality web quest. The notion that the web quests had to be well planned, thought through and supervised reminded me that even using this technology won't work without a good quality plan. They're not the kind of thing that you just throw together to make your own life easier.
My second page is a research project that had some very interesting pre-activity and post activity results. I found these to be the most interesting aspect. Some of the things I thought would be shown were not. In this writing, there is also talk about some of the problems encountered. The most significant dealing with the same group work issues that we have talked about here. The bottom line though, seems to point to the useful aspect of these quests and getting students involved in their own learning, while having something more to do.
Lastly, I'd like to say that I didn't find any concrete studies on how successful the WebQuests really were. I expected to find a study that showed the tremendous strides made by students that were regularly involved with this style of learning activity. I'll keep looking. Maybe I've just been looking in the wrong places this week.

Thanks for the help

Thank you all for your help this week. The web sites provided in responses to my blog have really hit the mark this week. I've emailed them to my school account so I can access them next week at school. I started by looking into Jimmy's idea of teaching students to work in groups. While I may not have the time necessary to get students through this, I think I have a method that might work.
In the middle school, there is a 25 minute period of each day where students are exposed to a variety of social skills. It's a wide range of activities that students take part in. I intend to speak with committee that sets up the curriculum to see whether this can instituted early in the next school year. Just about every teacher utilizes groups and has the same issues. By having the entire school subjected to this system, many of the issues can be resolved.
I also forwarded the pages of the AIE site and the others designed to help students with their future choices. I think my guidance department will be happy to see other things that will help them. Thanks again Jimmy.
I've also reviewed the math pages and think that they'll be useful as well. Science and math are difficult to separate. I intend to work more closely with the math teacher on my team and use these pages develop more useful cross-curricular activities. At times math can be less than exciting for students, especially with our district's use of one program. These new ideas(at least to me) can help to bring the idea of how useful math actually is to a broad range of students and hopefully, catch many of those students that bail out on math at young age.

AHA

After thinking about creating my own webquests, that meet exactly what I want, I remembered that several years ago I created something similar. I was working in alternative education and was in a stand alone building. We taught after regular school hours, which meant that there was no technical support for our iffy at best(at the time) internet connection. My project involved volcanoes, so I did the research and burned all the students would need to CD. We were totally off line, yet students could still visit what they needed to complete their projects. I even signed a couple of CD's out to students so they could work at home.
This involved many emails and a few phone calls to get approval from site creators. Most were more than willing to allow me to do this, as long as I left their names on their stuff. I guess that could be seen as a primitive version of a web quest?
Remembering the time required to do this...if I do, it wasn't really that bad and was quite successful. Being on CD-R did make it a problem to make changes, but today with better access that is more dependable, I think I'd like to give it a shot.

A Quest for Something

My research for a cross-curricular project utilizing the internet landed me squarely in the land of web quests. It didn't take long to find several pages dealing with these. A list of quests that I first found had several dead links, which was disappointing at first. I did find one particular quest that seemed promising. Space Station Phyve has a group of objectives that leads students through several scientific processes and is one that requires a rather high level of communication skills. Students will have to incorporate much English(or Language Arts in my school) knowledge in order to be successful in the project. Since science and math usually end up together, it's not surprising that there is a mathematical element to this. Art also plays a role in the final project, as does at least some in the Social Studies arena. Thinking about the socialization of human beings in closed quarters will most likely be new for students. This seems like a good final activity/project for students, culminating our unit on space and its exploration. Of course there are tweaks to made to suit the individual teacher, but this one seems very well thought out.
My only concerns about this sort of project revolve around access for students. There are several ways around the limited access that would have to be pursued. I would be exceptionally nice if a tech coordinator could be talked into giving each team of students access to their own network folder to store all their work. A place that each student can access, edit and create without having to exchange hard copies. That would make this a project that I could do with my entire team, grouping students from different classes instead of just using the same, limited number in a single class. That would also allow students to potentially pick their own team? I know this is risky some times, but it does end the problem of having one student do all the work and then getting calls complaining about the performance of the partners. This way they choose their fate, succeeding as a group or crashing to the ground with those they chose.
More research will follow, but this is my initial thought of webquests.

Software

I worked on finding software today. My goal was to find a tool to help me create my own web pages, without learning tons of technical jargon. I tried to use Netscape Composer for another class, and completed enough to get by, but didn't really like my result. I intend to create one for my students, and will build one for my second job. This seemed like a really good time to try one. I chose More Motion Web Express 3.3. CNET gave it 5 stars, but average users were in the 3 range. The initial file was a bit large, over 10 megs, but downloaded in zipped format pretty quickly. I'll install it this evening and start to see what it can do.
I had thought that photo editing would be nice and planned to try the GIMP, as I no longer have a workable Photoshop program. The problem is that I'm still running 98 on a computer that I built for myself way back in 99. GIMP requires a newer OS.
If the MMWE 3.3 turns out to be a toad, I'll try the Flick-R that was recommended by a family member. I guess sending a BUNCH of pictures to people at one time doesn't always go over so well! This one would also be useful to me, and could have a fun and purposeful use for my students.
I'll post more when I know more.

Using What I've Learned

While at work this weekend, it was brought to my attention that I had agreed to create a web site for the business. The original conversation was more than a year ago, but now it seems that the owner is serious and would like me to take care of it ASAP. Very timely huh? With my limited experience, I intend to do my best to create something useful, concise and one worth revisiting. I'll work on this during the week, but already have a list of things I'd like to do with it. Thanks to IC II I stand a better than average chance at creating something good! I'll most likely submit this page to the blog to get feedback before unveiling it to the power that be for my second job.

Two New Pages to View and Inform

This week, I spent some time with one of our LS teachers. She co-teaches LS science with me in 8th grade, but also co-teaches 6th grade LS science, 7the grade LS science and teaches her own social studies classes. Her mission was to create a short unit for teaching electricity. In doing so, we came across a couple of really nice pages.
This first one, Ipex, meets every need I can think of for being a good site. The information was well organized, well animated and very useful. It covers a wide range of interests and is very user friendly. No complaints from me at all!
This second page, 6th Grade Energy Unit, seemed quite well done too! I could use this next year with my unit on alternative energy. I have the kids compete to win the contract to power my new city. They have to tout the benefits of their given energy source, keeping the not so good parts for the fine print, and create a billboard. It's a fun project that has resulted in some interesting campaigns. One other important requirement is that they can't trash another source. It has to be kept positive...I learned that the first year I tried it (things got a little ugly between nuclear, and solar power groups!)
At any rate, this second page has good information and would be a good starting point for my kids to start their research. It's appearance is that of a quality site without being too overly dependent upon flashy, distracting content. I think they may have read the same articles we just did.