Webquest Ideas

Today we learned about Webquests. These allow children to gain experience with and exposure to using the information available on the web, without having to get lost in the navigating of the web. I think it provides a very engaging and exciting way for children to learn.

I've been brainstorming a few different topics I could do for my webquest. One is to create a webquest for 3-5 grade students about Endangered Species. I really think they'd enjoy researching about an animal that's endangered. Also, I've considered doing a webquest on natural disasters/safety, including earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. This is another topic that I believe is always intriguing to students.

Website Evaluation

Today we learned about website evaluations and the importance of ensuring that our future students know how to discern a good website from a bad website. The first website I looked at was the Smithsonian Education website, http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/students/index.html. I loved this website! It was extremely easy to navigate and contained very useful, intriguing information. Using Kathy Schrock's guide for Educators, I observed that this website was very well done because the information was organized, including introductions, title pages, and it even include information (links) that led me to more information on the subject. Additionally, the graphics on the pages facilitated my learning. Plus, contact information was available for the director and editors of the site.

I also used WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) located at http://wave.webaim.org/ to evaluate the accessibility for ALL of my students to the website. I was extremely impressed to discover that the Smithsonian Education website had no accessibility errors! Therefore, my students with visual or hearing impairments should have no problem accessing the information available on that website. How wonderful!