Webquest Project

So, here's the Webquest Project!

http://instantprojects.org/webquest/webquest.php?AuthorID=12091

Carlynn and I had so much fun learning to use Webquest and also stretching our imaginations to create a fun, interactive, and educational Webquest Project for our students:)

In thinking of ideas for the theme of our project, we came across Carlynn's copy of Kid's World Almanac that had tons of exciting information available for children. After flipping through the pages, one section caught our attention - planets! And one of the greatest news in the planet section was the fact that since last year, Pluto is not an official planet!

We decided to choose Planets as our theme in order to guide our students in researching and gaining more detailed information about the planets, especially with the still not widely known recent updates of Pluto's ellimination from the planet group.

In following the detailed instructions and in researching for the answers to solve this Webquest, students will enhance their learning in aspects of gathering, analyzing, and presenting information using technology as their main source of the project.

I think the most important lesson I learned from this activity was in creating the Webquest to be an informative yet challenging learning tool for the students. Creating a Webquest just to get your students on a computer is what I would consider as a "time waste" for both the teacher and the students, therefore through this experience, I really learned the importance of hard work in creating create a fun, interesting, exciting, informative, yet challenging Webquest for my students.

I liked using the Webquest tool because it was very simply laid out for teachers to use, but on the other hand, I found it to be quite confusing in trying to embellish the layout of the Webpage it self. I sorta wished it had been more like the Blogger we use, where we can choose a template design for the Webpage and not have to stick to the basics.

The next time I create a Webquest, I think I would do a more thorough research on the topic of my Webquest to really challenge the thinking skills of my students; a Webquest something more on the lines of the DaVinci code Webquest, where students are really pushed to use the full extent of their knowledge and imagination.

Mind-Mapping: Getting Ready for School

The learning objective of this mind-map is to help first grade students sequence and organize their daily morning routines in getting ready for school. I decided to create my mind-map on "Getting Ready for School" because some first grade students might not quite understand what they are expected to do after they get out of bed, and could also easily forget important steps such as checking to see if they have their homework and supplies in their backpacks before heading out the door. I've numbered the steps in order from the moment they get out of bed until they wait for the school bus (or parents' car), and placed them in clockwise direction to make it easier for first graders to read and understand the mind-map. With this mind-map, I hope my first grade students will be able to fully understand, organize, and remember each step in getting ready for school by literally mapping out the mind-map in their minds.



I think the most important lesson I learned in this activity is realizing how simple mind-maps can be used as effective tools in teaching valuable lessons to students. The only mind-maps I've used in the past were for purposes in the writing process, but learning to use the mind-maps as a teaching tool was a fun, new way of adding more ideas to my teacher memory bank!:)

The Inspiration software is extremely user-friendly and has numerous colorful, creative templates, designs and ideas that anyone can easily use, but I found the web-based online mapping tools to be quite confusing in signing up and downloading. I got scared at first at the idea of having to learn to use a new software, but I'm so glad I didn't stick with my original plan of using Microsoft Word in creating this mind-map.

The next time I use Inspiration to create more mind-maps and other diagrams for my classroom, I would like to explore more with advanced editing and designing tools so my students and I can easily outline even the hardest, most complex topics like....rocket science!:)