Journal Post 6

Chapter 6

Teaching with Educational Websites and other Online Resources

What are WebQuests and virtual field trips?

                WebQuests enable online explorations in Mathematics, English, Science, Social Studies, or any given subject! Each WebQuest is a unique exploration designed to be fun and engaging. They make connections between any particular topic and the real-world. Students who embark on WebQuests become engaged in both finding information and learning from it. They will gain essential Internet literacy skills of information retrieval and analysis. Teachers encourage students to engage in web-based inquiry with WebQuests. They also use these WebQuests as a virtual environment to give students roles, creative activities, and unique assignments designed to stretch their thinking and enhance their understanding of the text. Students can design a Roman village for Caesar or create plots of their own St. Crispian’s Day speech for Henry V.

Photo Credit to Michael Surran

                Virtual field trips take students to places all over the world without ever leaving their school’s classroom or computer lab. One small study involving 400 students from two different middle schools, one urban and one rural, showed that middle school students had higher reading comprehension scores after participating in online field trips developed by Maryland Public Television. The students who took the field trips performed better than a control group of students who experienced only traditional teaching methods. Numerous museums, science centers, historical sites, and other educational organizations have developed online field trips programs that do not require any human to human interaction, so no reservation is needed. Which I think is incredibly awesome because many students do not have the transportation needed. Some popular destinations that offer these great experiences are the following: Lake Michigan Science Research Center, Baseball Hall of Fame, and Cleveland Museum of Art.

                Interactive videoconferencing is also a great virtual learning experience for students! It is a powerful distance learning technology that offers real-time access to people and places that students are unable to visit. It enables students to communicate with scientist, historians, writers, and other experts from all over the nation extending the classroom beyond the local community. Wow!

The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc

                TheCave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc is a great website example that offers an online field trip. It shows some of the earliest cave painting ever found. Taking a virtual tour of this subterranean world is one the joys of this site. In my World Civilization class, the professor used this exact website when we were learning about the Babylonian era. It came in handy at all times and I honesty learned a lot because the wealth of the information given, it almost felt tangible. When you go on the site there is a map of the entire cave system with linking buttons. Clicking on a button takes you to that location in the cave with its drastic drawings. Viewing these paintings from the past may inspire students to produce their own drawings, paintings, or writings to post on the walls or blogs. The exploration of distant destinations made possible by visiting archaeology and anthropology websites may interest students finding out about the history of local areas or visiting nearby museums.  

Summary

                In this chapter, it considers information management, a necessity when teachers and students utilize learning resources provided by educational websites and other online resource. It also introduces booking making, social book making, and information alerts as ways to organize information that teachers need to prepare lessons aligned with local, state, and national curriculum frameworks. WebQuests and virtual field trips suggest ways to extend learning using the web. Finally the chapter examines six different types of educational websites that support inquiry and interactivity to fully engage students with academic content.