470 online proposal

Web Quest proposal:

For our online assignment I have decided to challenge myself by creating a web quest. As a history teacher and a high school teacher, I thought that it would fun to put together a web quest for history 10 though 12 on how to use primary and secondary sources, issues regarding biases and other research and investigating issues. During my internship I realized how little students understand researching, and using different sources. Many would either simply site "Google" as their entire bibliography, or would explicitly believe anything they read on the internet as basic fact without questioning the source or its validity. So in order to combat this issue, I am thinking that I might create some form of web quest in which the students are given some sort of scenario such as a Historical event CSI. I would then have them work through a series of tasks and pieces of evidence that include primary and secondary sources, biases and false sources so that they must process the information they are given and begin to develop researching and analytical skills. If this is successful, it will be a great resource that I can use for a number of grades, and on the first couple of days or weeks of a semester in order to begin to engage the students with what they are learning and to address issues that arise regarding researching and analysis early on in the semester.

So here is the who, what, when, and where of my proposal,

Who: Students in history 10, 20 and 30. It will not focus on specific curriculum content, but rather on the skills and abilities that are outlined in the curriculum. Although the students at each of these grades are at different levels of critical thinking and deeper thought, my plan is to create a web quest that can be used across the grade levels to help build strong skills that do not pertain solely to history. Because this is an introductory webquest that is designed to teach students basic researching knowledge and skills, students will not be required to know much content prior to commencing. However, they will be required to know basic computer skills in order to navigate through the webquest.

Curriculum:

Part of the Saskatchewan Curriculum for high school history is to foster higher order thinking amongst the students. Some of the objectives that relate to skills and abilities are that the students will learn to,

• Review/learn the skill of categorizing and classifying material according to some system in order to make it meaningful.
  
• Review/learn the use of criteria as a basis for analyzing an event or situation.
  
• Learn the skill of hypothesizing.
  
• Learn to test hypotheses against historical fact.
  
• Learn and practise the basic research skills of:
  
  • finding information;
    
  • classifying information into meaningful categories;
    
  • distinguishing between relevant and less relevant information; and,
    
  • describing cause and effect relationships; and,
    

I think that creating a web quest that teaches these skills would therefore be a very useful tool, especially to start off a semester. If it does not work to make a multi-grade quest, I may tailor it to grade 10 so as to start instilling these skills into them.

    http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/history10/unit1/over.html

http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/history20/uniti.html#over

 

Questions: In order to instil in my student higher-order thinking skills, my questions will focus on why and how. I am still in the process of creating a scenario for my web quest so I do not have a specific idea yet, but my goal is to provide the students with a scenario and have them question and sort through the different forms of sources that are out there.

Evaluation: to evaluate students completed webquest, I will create a rubric that I will have them fill out. I also want to try and create scenarios that correspond with their completed webquest, i.e. if they take the wrong information, they lose the case and something bad happens. I have to think more on what exactly will be evaluated.

Some resources that I have found so far are:

Found on google.

• http://www.youthsource.ab.ca/teacher_resources/ps_comparison.html
  
• http://www.historyonthenet.com/Lessons/sources/sourcesmain.htm
  
  • Both the above sites introduce the basic definitions and examples of the different forms of resources and how to distinguish between them.
    

Found through Lycos:

• http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/bias_news_lesson.cfm
  
  • This resources provides a lesson plan on teaching about biases. I probably won't send my students here, but it had good ideas that I could use or incorporate into my webquest.
    
• http://search.lycos.com/image.php?tab=multi&img_frame=1&query=primary+sources&thumb_url=http%3A%2F%2Fthm-a01.yimg.com%2Fnimage%2F44e571ba0163f4fa&image_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designedinstruction.com%2Fimages%2Fevent_trace_map.gif&refer_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designedinstruction.com%2Flearningleads%2Fsa-trace.html&page2=0
  
  • This site had provided tasks that students can do to internalize different sources and the impact that evidence has in history/life. Mostly I will use this source to get ideas to adapt to my own activities.
    

Yahoo:

• http://www.library.barrie.on.ca/teens/research/tips_primary_vs_secondary.htm
  
  • This is a source that is geared towards teens for teaching about sources. I might send my students here to learn about it.