Webquest and web based activities resources

In 2005 Bernie Dodge of San Diego University developed a learning activity that harnessed the information that existed on the World Wide Web, he and his colleague Tom March spent much time developing the concepts and a range of learning activities were born. In the early days, in order to build your own web-based activity such as a hotlist, multimedia scrapbook, treasure hunt, subject sampler or webquest, you needed to have a basic understanding of web design and how to use authoring tools such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver, but no longer! Both of these educators have created online tools that will assist you in the creation of your own resources, you don't have to know web design, and you don't need your own server to host your work. These websites assist you in building your activities and will then provide you with a website address where they will be hosted.

Filamentality

Filamentality is a program developed by Tom March to allow you to easily create a range of web based activities online. This includes hotlists, treasure hunts, subject samplers, multimedia scrapbooks and webquests. This site is all encompassing providing detailed information on the types of activities you can create and comprehensive user guides on building your activities and using the website.

Filamentality allows:

Filamentality is FREE!

Web'n'Flow

Created by the same team that developed Filamentality, Web’n’flow is a more sophisticated tool to use in the creation of webquests and other web-based tasks, and therefore has a cost attached (USD$25 a year).

What Web’n’flow does that Filamentality doesn’t:

To see if this is something you could use, trial it free for 30 days.

Quest Garden

“QuestGarden is an online authoring tool, community and hosting service that is designed to make it easier and quicker to create a high quality WebQuest. No knowledge of web editing or uploading is required. Prompts, guides and examples are provided for each step of the process. Images, worksheets and other documents can easily be attached or embedded in the WebQuest, and users have complete control over the appearance of the final lesson.” Overview from the website.

Until January 1st 2007, QuestGarden is a free tool to use. After this date there is going to be a USD$20 fee attached. However this is good value for such a useful tool. Another great feature is that you can check out the recently published WebQuests and edit them for your own use. This is great if you locate a webquest that is not quite what you want, but is close. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel!

Blogs, Wiki's and Discussion Board resources

These interactive web-based tools have been widely embraced by the general community, but are yet to be used significantly in education. In recent times there have been some restrictions placed on access to some of these resources by the Department of Education for reasons of student safety, but those listed here are good, safe tools, that allow students to use these technologies in the classroom without you having to worry.

Using a Blog

Group Blogs - Set up a blog that allows contributions from multiple users. It could be used to facilitate discussion, in the target language, by the students. They will also be able to link through to relevant websites and share ideas in a public space. Your responsibility would be to monitor the blog (you should be one of the users and the person to set it up), generate points of discussion and ensure it is being used properly. The blog may be used for one topic, unit of work, or even for a whole term/semester/year.

Publishing writing- A blog could be used as a forum for publishing students writing in a public forum, providing them with a real audience for their work. It is also possible for them to then receive feedback from users of the site. It is a great way to practice writing skills in their target language.

Journaling - There are a number of different journaling formats that could be used in a Blog format. If students are attending an excursion, going on a study tour or something similar, they could keep a journal detailing their experiences and critically reflecting on what has occured. They can also use a Blog as a research journal, tracking the research process throughout an activity. Or they could use it as a learning journal, reflecting on their learning throughout the year.

Global Teacher & Global Student

Global Teacher is a virtual community for Victorian Teachers. It forms part of a research project that was developed in partnership between the Victorian Education Channel and the School Library Association of Victoria.

This weblogging space is available to Victorian Teachers as space for publishing and celebrating staff and student work. It also exists to facilitate communication with schools and educational experts across the globe.
To join this community you simply email global.teacher@edumail.vic.gov.au

On your email to join they ask that you provide a paragraph outlining why you want to participate and what you hope to contribute to the network. They also ask you to inform your Principal and that your email to them includes a CC to your Principal.

If you are feeling ready to bring your students into a blogging environment and you are from a Victorian School please contact global teacher at global.teacher@edumail.org.au. They will send you the guidelines of using the space and ask that both you and your Principal are willing to participate within the guidelines. They will also send you a login page which allows you to set up your student blogs.

Edublogs

"Edublogs.org was founded in 2005 by James Farmer as an extension of the incsub.org project aimed at providing teachers, students, researchers, librarians, writers and other education professionals with freely available emerging technologies.

What makes edublogs.org different from, for example, Blogger is that we’re dedicated to educational professionals, we’re nice and small (by blog provider standards), we’re aiming to provide more and more freely available (and ad free!) emerging online technologies for your use… and we’ve got a much better blogging tool at our disposal :)" - Information from edublogs website

Edublogs also allows you to set up student blogs via their learnerblogs portal.

Using a Wiki

Wiki's are websites that groups, such as your class, can build and edit together. You can create a wiki based on a theme or topic that you are currently studying. You organise the layout of the wiki with relevant headings and some basic information for the topic you are studying. Your students will then contribute to the wiki as they discover new things about the topic, and in the end you will have not only a record of what the students have learnt, but evidence of how the learning occurred. It is also a great place for students to post their work so that teachers and classmates can correct, improve, and discuss their work. Visit this great site to get a better idea of how you might use a wiki in your classroom.

Wikispaces

Wikispaces allows you to set up a free wiki, with up to 2GB of storage that has secure publishing. Only those people registered to the site are able to edit, however the website itself is viewable by the general public. Wikispaces features an easy to use layout and has great instructions on how to set it up and use.

Using a Discussion Board

Discussion boards are valuable tools that can be used to facilitate written discussion of an issue or a contentious topic. They are also valuable for the practice of writing in the target language. Students can be assessed on the number of contributions made, grammar and spelling, language level, arguments and content. This type of activity opens up opportunities for students who do not like to contribute vocally in class.

Nicenet

The Nicenet Internet Classroom Assistant was set up by Nicenet, a volunteer, non-profit organisation in the USA dedicated to providing free services to the Internet community. The Internet Classroom Assistant (ICA) is designed to address the pedagogical needs and limited resources of teachers and their students.

The ICA is designed for post-secondary and secondary classrooms, distance learning and collaborative academic projects, though anyone who finds it useful is free and welcome to use it. The ICA runs on Nicenet's server and requires any web browser running on any platform and an Internet connection - there is no software to download and no server to configure. The ICA was intentionally designed as a low graphics environment to decrease the load time of each page. The queries used to fill the site with class-specific data take less than a second. A fully dynamic site, the ICA is customized at two different levels: 1.) the user and 2.) the class. Anyone can set up a class in minutes and allow others to join. After login, users are presented with a "heads-up" display of class resources.

The features include:

Nicenet will not only support the use of discussion boards, but is a good general purpose web resource to support your classroom teaching.

Film and Podcasting web resources

Film and audio technologies such as podcasting lend themselves well to LOTE teaching as they support the oral component of language. There are a vast many ways of integrating these technologies in the classroom and the costs can be minimal. Particularly if you utilise some of the free resources available on the web.

Monkey Jam

Ever wanted to introduce stop motion animation into your classroom teaching? Monkey Jam is an open source program that functions in the same way as many high end software packages, and it's a free download! All you need to operate the software is a web camera, a computer and a bit of creativity and you're good to go. A great guide to using Monkey Jam can be downloaded here. Your students will be well impressed.

Photostory

If you haven't heard of Photostory, or thought about using it in your LOTE classroom, you are surely missing out! Photostory is a free microsoft program that allows you to make digital films of your still images. Better still you can record an audio track behind it and package it to be shown to the whole class.

Audacity

When recording your own podcasts it is really important to have good quality multi track software. One of the best packages to use is Audacity which is a free download off the web. This software will make any attempts at podcasting a much more professional process.

Other useful web resources

Intel

The Intel Teach to the Future project has assisted thousands of teachers with the integration of ICT into their teaching. The latest project "Teaching Thinking with Technology" incorporates three online thinking tools that teachers can use to enhance their classroom activities. These free tools and resources for educators support collaborative student-centred learning. Online thinking tools are active learning places where students engage in robust discussions, pursue investigations, analyze complex information, and solve problems. Resources for 21st century teaching help teachers play a critical role in facilitating learning activities and posing questions that take student thinking deeper. The following is a summary of the tools available through the intel site.

The visual ranking tool - Making a list is usually straightforward and requires little thought. But when it comes to ordering and prioritizing items in that list, higher-level skills of analysis and evaluation are put to use. The Visual Ranking Tool brings focus to the thinking behind making ordered lists. Students identify and refine criteria as they assign order or ranking to a list. They must explain their reasoning and can compare their work with each other in a visual diagram. This tool supports activities where students need to debate differences, reach consensus, and organize ideas.

The seeing reason tool - Analyzing cause-and-effect relationships is important in understanding complex systems such as traffic patterns or destruction of animal habitat. The Seeing Reason Tool promotes cause-and-effect thinking through visual mapping. Students create visual representations of the factors and relationships in a cause-and-effect investigation. These maps make thinking visible and promote collaboration as students work together to refine their understanding.

The showing evidence tool - How do you use evidence to support an argument or prove a hypothesis? What is reliable evidence? With vast amounts of information instantly available, it's more important than ever to be able to assess evidence for reliability and value. The Showing Evidence Tool helps students learn how to construct well-reasoned arguments and prove their case with credible evidence. Showing Evidence gives students a visual framework for constructing an argument or hypothesis that is supported by evidence. Using the interactive features of Showing Evidence, students make a claim, identify evidence, evaluate the quality of that evidence, explain how the evidence either supports or weakens their claim, and then make a conclusion based on the evidence. This thinking tool supports activities where students need to debate differences, reach conclusions, and organize ideas.

To use these tools with your classes register and set up your own teacher workspace and classroom activities.