Chapter 6

Focus Question: What are WebQuests and virtual field trips?

      WebQuests is information that bring alive the language, drama, comedy, and history of Shakespeare- as well as hundreds of other playwrights, poets, and authors( Transforming Learning with New Technologies, pg. 153, 2012). WebQuests are very innovative and take on Web-based teaching methods that can help all grde levels. WebQuests allow th students to visit groups of preselected websites to learn about academic topics by pictures, audio, video, and even online digital text. The virtual field trips are also innovative and quite interesting because the students are taken virtuallly to places all over the world without leaving the classroom, as part of their academic studies.

Tech Tool link: The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc

The Interactive online field trip of The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc shows some of fthe earlier painting. It goes on explaining how early humans inhabited the cave some 31,000 years ago. There's a map of the whole entire cave with buttons linking to that particular spot, that actually presents pictures. A lot of these paintings inspire students to draw their own paintings, drawings, even writings. This also inpires students to visit a local history museum and find out about other past civilizations. I recommend this site for those who have never heard about this cave. It's a very beautiful discovery. This video shows a little bit of the cave and what to expect when you go to the website itself. 

Summary and Connection:

This whole chapter is about teaching with educational websites and other online resources. It presents new way of educating students by showing WebQuest and virtual field trips. This chapter also talks about bookmarking and information alerts that help teachers organize and prepare lesson plans. I enjoyed this chapter because it focused on educational websites and different ways to teach children online at home or in class. I wonder where technology is going to take us next time...?