What?
Together as a group we created a webquest for fourth grade students about lightning. The part that I specifically created was the day dealing with learning the difference between a rainstorm and a thunderstorm. The point was to help students understand that sometimes if it is raining that does not mean that the dangerous elements are present. The webquest as a whole taught students what when lightning is present, what it is and how to be safe around it.
So What?
I thought that the creation of our webquest went very well. It was frusterating that only one member of the group could be working on it at a time. At times I had time that I wanted to work on my part of the project but was unable to because I knew another member was editing.
I believe that it is important to know about webquests and how to create them because I now am more aware of how I could use them in my class. Now that I have exposure to how they are set up and what they contain I am much more likly to consider implimenting them. Also I am now able to adapt webquests created by others to my specific class needs.
Now What?
I would love to use a webquest in my future class. I think my using this resource would really be dependant on the avaliabilty of computers for my entire class. I think that webquests would be a great tool to use even if only parts of the webquest was used in class and the students had the option to explore more at home. Also this would be a great resource for those students who have to miss a lot of class because it can be accessed at home. The use of webquest would also really depend on the dynamics of my class. If there were students who had a more difficult time with independant learning a long webquest may be more difficult.
This experience has taught me how little i know about the large quantity of resources that area avaliable on the internet. There are so many other webquests on many subjects and so many other great sites that are very useful. I also understand how I need to become more comfortable with integrating the internet and technology into my teaching. I become stuck on the traditiional teaching methods because that is what I experienced in elementary school. I need to further understand and impliment how important it is to use technology for my future students.
