Week Six

This week my Educational Technology class focused on WebQuests.  I had never heard of a WebQuest before this week.  I consider myself tech-savvy and my husband is a very tech-savvy teacher so I usually hear about what they're doing in his classroom.  I asked him if he knew about these and he said yes, but I don't think he uses them or I'd have heard about them before.  It was quite an adventure and I stayed up way too late one night to finish it and get it over with!  I believe this tool would be great for older students however I’m not sure how I like it for use with elementary school students.  It seems like younger students would need lots of help with using the technology and that I could teach the unit simpler without the WebQuest.  I may have a different attitude about it once I am in the classroom and can actually see it in process.

            I created a WebQuest for counting money.  I included a webpage that was very informative as a review, two worksheets to be completed and graded, and two games.  One game was online and the other was a memory game to be played with a partner.  Because I am not in the classroom I didn’t have lots of resources at my disposal so I looked online to find helpful worksheets and games.  I would like to add videos that would be effective for students.  My first WebQuest can be linked to below:

Counting Money

          I think my greatest challenge in creating a WebQuest was just learning a new website and tool.  I had to learn what pages to use and how to use them.  I was not happy with my layout or color scheme.  It was difficult to figure out which design to use and I had a hard time relating it to my subject.  I also had a hard time with the colors available.  I’d have like an easier way to choose a complimentary color scheme. 
          One challenge I had was to find good material to use for my process.  I ended up creating a worksheet myself using Microsoft Word.  I Googled for images of coins and then used DocStoc to upload it.  If I had resources of math textbooks for worksheets or if I could create pdf’s that would have made the WebQuest much easier.  For veteran teachers that have the unit resources they continually use it would be much simpler to compile all their information and create a WebQuest.  I hope to use WebQuests more in the future as I have my own classroom.