Action Research

Getting Started on an April Evening

Art for Sale presents a challenge for students to research and add three pieces of art work to a collection. How will they integrate Pacific Northwestern art into a collection that has been fairly traditional in its taste? How does this WQ incorporate conceptual thinking, differing viewpoints and synthesizing ideas...as well as scaffolding the learning. Take a look and see what you think. Is this an appropriate activity for 3rd through 5th graders?

Non native species are invading everywhere. It's a problem in many parts of the world. What student doesn't love to study Hawaii. In this WQ students are examining this invasion in the context of the tropical paradise of Hawaii's ecosystems. In this WQ, I'm interested to see what you think of the resources they've selected and if you think they match the task. What do you think of the scaffolding? Is the task and evaluation well matched? Will middle school students be able to complete this task in the alloted time and able to synthesize the material into new thinking with what they are given?

Now take a moment to think about how what you've seen in these WQs should/can influence what you're doing with you're own WQ designs. It can be positive and negative. Add a comment below.

How can We Differentiate the WQ

I've found a wonderful example of how we can support learners in using a WebQuest. I would like for you to take a look at this Grammar example.

It helps students in a variety of ways....by already preparing the skelton PowerPoint presentation as the guide students can fill in the "blanks" with their research information. The focus would be on information rather than on the pretties of PowerPoint. Isn't that where we all fall down in helping our students stay with the content instead of the snap, crackle and pop of technology?

Look this over and see if anything would be useful to you in your WQ efforts?

50 Ways to Scaffold a WebQuest

Tonight we're exploring ways in which we can support students in tackling material that might be too complex or complicated for them to do without some help. Scaffolding gives them structures and help to process information, transform it or produce outputs. These are temporary structures that allow them to function at a higher level than really are capable of performing without those structures.

All of this springs from the belief of being constructivists teachers and the models of WebQuests is clearly a of constructivst bent. Towards that Bernie Dodge offers this as evidence, " WQ offers useful inputs, it gives transformation of information into new forms and WQs guide students into making products that represent new knowledge". To me, that seems to personify what constructivist learning is all about.

We will explore the three major ways we can support students as they go through a WQ tonight.

As they begin to receive the information--------------Reception
As they begin to thrink about the informtion.---------Transformation
As they begin to report out about what they learned-Production

these structures combined with your links will then begin to form the heart of your WQ. When we return in January, we will combine all of this with some of the Templates that you may have already thought were possibilities and plunge ahead in writing. We can write the first WQ as a simple lesson with links and see how that goes and then add the more complex tasks after a trial run on the simple level. So by the end of TT2 , you will have a full blown WQ!!!!

Getting the Message Out---Production Scaffolds

OK....we've used Reception Scaffolds to help students acquire information and Transformational Scaffolds to process it into new information... but without the ability to express this learning in clear and concise ways, we would be remiss in our task. So the last form of Scaffolding is Production.

Production Scaffolds help learners to demonstrate something that is observable and conveys what they've learned. These are particularly useful when there are some "conventions of genre, publication or presentation format" that should be followed".

Transformation Scaffolds

Once students have acquired the information from the sources we steer them to, they must take that inforamation and transform it into new learning. Learning that is relevant to them and is something new. This is a daunting task and it is here that a WebQuest really tests itself. Synthesis is high up on Bloom's Taxonomy and requires students to put together information in new and unique ways.

Transformation scaffolds will help students to do this because it gives a structure to thinking about all this information.

Reception Scaffolds

Something that helps learners to perceive, understand organize and retain relevant information.

Examples could be
glossaries
listening guides
interview guides or protocals
note taking frameworks

TappedIn notes that these are desgined to "take care of the fact that some students , some of the time, aren't full prepared to make sense of and fully make use of information we bring to them from more authentic and messy sources."

So we utilize structures to help them until they learn enough to do it for themselves. They just can't appreciate it because they can't take apart the information yet...when they can, they will understand what treasures you are bringing to them. With the power of the web, there are so many new things that they have never seen or had access to before that scaffolding will play an important part.

WebQuest Scaffolding types

Eureka...I found a solution

Good news everyone.

I've found out how to make it easy to know if someone has updated their blog. It seems like it might be a tad too complicated to explain in writing, so I'll reserve the directions for our November meeting. But it will seem very easy once I show you.

Hurray.!!!!!

October Agenda

Agenda
Taming the Tiger
October

4:15-4:30
Traveling the Blogging Highway!
Please spend this time reading the posts on Typepad.com. Remember to log in as k12bloggers and use the password bv229.

Pay close attention to the Action Research section. Marsha has posted some food for thought in terms of Blogging and WebQuests.

Respond to other class members’ posts if you have extra time.

4:30-4:50
Begin at the end…

Article about beginning at the end:
http://www.ubdexchange.org/resources/news-articles/article4.html

Bernie Dodge’s WebQuest project selection tips:
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/project-selection.html

4:50-5:20
Time to work…
Design a topic for your WebQuest. Be sure to answer the following questions:
1. Does the topic require deep understanding?
2. Does the topic allow you to use the web appropriately?
3. Does the topic fit curriculum standards?
4. Has the topic been difficult to teach well in the past?

Post your topic on our Blog. We suggest you use your own page to post your topic and thoughts.

5:30-6:00
CPS Verbal Question Use
Share our topics and receive class feedback. This step is for the brave and bold tamers!

6:00-6:30
Back to Blogging: Make ‘em pretty
Instructions on designing your unique blog.

6:30-7:00
“Blog Buddy” Work Session

We will establish “blog buddies” to better manage our numbers.
Respond to your blog buddies and work on your blog design during this work time.

For next session:
1. Read the information about design patterns of WebQuests. (http://webquest.sdsu.edu/designpatterns/all.htm)
2. Be prepared to share your topic and design pattern.
3. Engage in Blogging (post and/or comment) at least once each week. (This time will be used as our additional contact time required by the university to earn credit.)

How the Heck to do You Customize The Looks of these Things

Now all of our blogs look pretty much the same. It's the default look. But we want to break free of the widget mentality and express ourselves with color, font and who knows what. Here's a few tips on how to use the features of TypePad to do that.

Download file

See if this can help you learn how to do some of your customizing. Then don't forget that we have digital cameras so you can go hog wild and use digital photos and do even more. There's no end of trouble or fun that you can have with getting a look that expresses your individuality.

TT the Second

We're going to begin at the END. Yep at the end.

And for a very good reason. By knowing what our students should know and be able to do at the end we will always keep asking ourselves all throughout the creation of this WQ, will this student activity get them closer to being able to complete that end task. It's a pretty clever idea that has really caught on fire through the work of Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins over the past few years.

So take 5 minutes and write what you would like for your students to know and be able to do at the end of this WQ. In light of all we're trying to do these days in hooking everything back to the BV curriculum see if you can't stay within close proximity to the curriculum.

Then I want you to read other's posts keeping in mind the following things and react to their ideas specifically with these items in mind

will this curriculum indicator lend itself to use of information from the web
will be require understanding
will it require analysis
will it require synthesis
will it require problem solving
will it require creativity

Help our other classmates avoid WQs that only requires our students to do lower level projects that only ask for recall and comprehension tasks. If you find these, then bring it to their attention and suggest ways that they could leverage up the idea to something that is more powerful and/or engaging.

Here's where we're going to harness the power of the blog....to critique each other and to build a community spirit of leaning on one another and to ask for help from each other. Maybe you have create idea but are stuck on how to do something. Well, put it out there on your blog...ask for the help and someone will answer, you'll see. Probably more than one. So venture from your zone and you'll be amazed.

So typing fingers engage and let's hear about your ideas for an engaging WQ.