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The instructor will divide you into teams of four.
Within each team, each of
you will play one of the following roles. Your role will be
the viewpoint through which you evaluate the WebQuests.
1) The
Efficiency Advocate: You value time a great deal. You believe
that too much time is wasted in today's classrooms on unfocused
activity and learners not knowing what they should be doing at a
given moment.
To you, a good WebQuest is one that delivers the most learning
bang for the buck. If it's a short, unambitious activity that
teaches a small thing well, then you like it. If it's a longterm
activity, it had better deliver a deep understanding of the
topic it covers, in your view.
2) The Cooperative Learning Advocate:
To you, the best learning activities are
those in which students learn to work together. WebQuests that
force collaboration and create a need for discussion and consensus
are the best in your view. If a WebQuest could be done by a
student working alone, it leaves you cold.
3) The HOTS Advocate: Higher-Order-Thinking-Skills are everything to you. There's
too much emphasis on factual recall in schools today. The only
justification for bringing technology into schools is if it
opens up the possibility that students will have to analyze
information, synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance
on the merits of something. You also
value sites that allow for some creative expression on the part of
the learner. 4) The Technology
Advocate:
You love all things
technological. To you, the best WebQuest is one that makes the
best use of the technology of the Web. If a WebQuest has
attractive design, multimedia, and lots of links to interesting
sites, you love it. If it makes minimal use of the Web, you'd
rather use a worksheet.
Once your teams and roles are set, proceed to the
Resources page for the list of
WebQuests to examine. Look at them by yourselves first, then look
at them and discuss them as a group. There will probably not be
unanimous agreement, so the next step is to talk together to
hammer out a compromise consensus about your team's nominations
for best and worst. Pool your perspectives and see if you can
agree on what's best for the learner.
When debriefing time is called, report your results
to the whole class for the Evaluation.
Do you think the other groups will agree with your conclusions? |
