Week Six EDOL533

This week we learned about using webquest in the classroom and created our own webquest assignment.
The URL for my webquest that I created is: http://questgarden.com/119/23/7/110214125135/
I created a webquest intended for a younger elementary school classroom in Kentucky. The webquest I created was intended to go with a lesson about mammals that are native to Kentucky. My webquest is to be used as an introduction to mammals native to Kentucky. I am not yet teaching so this assignment and lesson is a hypothetical one. I chose to do a topic about animals because a class I observed recently was doing a lesson on mammals so I decided to make my hypothetical lesson about mammals native to Kentucky (this can be done for any state if one is not teaching in Kentucky). The objective of my webquest is for students to do in depth research in groups about one mammal per group, the habitat of that mammal, its eating habits, and its basic way of life. The assignment is for the students to do the research on their assigned mammal, then give presentations in their groups to the rest of the class about the mammal they were assigned. I also asked the students to present on information they found interesting above and beyond what was assigned, encouraging high understanding and learning about the mammal. I provided a list of web based sites on native Kentucky mammals to get the students started and give them a head start on their research. I included only minimal images in my webquest so that the students wouldn’t focus too much on decoration and lose sight of the presentation objective. I actually had some trouble creating this webquest because I am not familiar with using webquests in the classroom, and I am not familiar with how lessons about native animals are taught. I had a lot of trouble with the formatting of the webquest, I finally got it published and then realized the “process” section, where I included the list of websites is completely in the wrong format  and it took me forever to figure out how to fix it, I’m still not really satisfied with it. Also, I found that adding images (even though I didn’t want to add many) was a huge pain because you couldn’t copy and paste. Another major difficulty I had was with coming up with an idea, and really following through with the idea then creating something that makes sense, and that would be appealing and relevant to my pretend students. When you are not actually teaching, coming up with a lesson is very difficult because you are never really sure if what you are doing is correct. But I tried to make a good webquest that would be useful in a real classroom, I’m still not sure if I succeeded….