Your Procedure -- Week 2

Introduction | Task | Procedure | Evaluation | Conclusion | Teacher's Page

B. Week Two -- Adapting Existing Pedagogies to the Online Environment

Introduction to Web Quests ....

A popular type of cooperative teaching strategy utilized on the web with K-12 students is a WebQuest ( http://webquest.sdsu.edu/ ) . WebQuests were originally designed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March in 1995 as a constructivist method of teaching on the Web. The site has grown to the point the it got over 1700 hits per day in 2000, and is currently up to 5 million visitors. We will be using a webquest format for this week's activities in order to explore cooperative teaching strategies that can be adapted to online learning. The web site is very intensive yet friendly, with many samples of webquests created by teachers, a training site with webquests about webquests, and Bernie Dodge's own blogging page where he shares his thoughts as he travels around the country sharing webquests. Read this overview on webquests ( http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/teacher-resources/webquests/ )before we begin this process.

A WebQuest has six building blocks ( http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/staffdev/buildingblocks/p-index.htm ). The introduction, which you are reading now, gives an overview of a topic. Then the Task section gives an overview of what you will be doing, and is the anticipatory set for the activity. The Procedures give detailed steps for doing the activity, the Evaluation includes some activity to measure the success of the lesson, while the Conclusion acts as the closure to the lesson. Many webquests created by teachers include a Teacher's Page which gives details about the lesson plans or references utilized to create the webquest. It may also include some teaching suggestions.

You and your teammates will be utilizing this procedure as we work through this week and next week's lessons. So onto Your Task ....