Post here the ideas you discussed in class for your WebQuest interdisciplinary lesson. Say how you are going to use the tool you were assigned. GROUP 2 will be posting 4 challenge questions for you to also respond to this week. Choose ONE question and post a response by next class.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2000

Answers

In our group we talked about, Beanie Babies. the curriclum was math. We found that some of the activities that were presented were not appor4iate for k-2nd grade children.Some of the weakiness where that the graphing they provided was too advanced,the scales they suggestedwhere also too advanced.Some pluses where, the use of familar items such as, scales,colors and rulers where good choses.Students where able to do the math and it was a fun activity.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2000

The lesson that Liz and I discussed in class was an English Language Arts lesson entitled "Brrr It's Alive" for a Pre-K-2 grade class. These students were given the task of writing a riddle about cold weather animals. Other students were to guess the identity of the animals. The information the students gathered to create the riddle was culminated in a written report about cold weather animals. Liz and I discused how these young students used word-processing and software tools to create and share information about cold weather animals. Through this project, the students developed organization skills. They added details and organized the information with an electronic web and an outline. They created a text+illustrations and were able to scan an image that correlated with the text. The final project was presented electronically. At the end of the lesson a suggestion was made to provide additional resources to aid those students with limited English.

I will be able to use this tool to teach my students how valuable the web can be to research and collect data. I believe that cooperative and collaborative learning will benefit both the cognitive and social development of all students.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

For our Webquest interdisciplinary lesson,we discussed the 'Lining up Data' in a math lesson for grades 9-12 We were assigned to use 'StarTrack'. Our suggestion was to impove the lesson by asking students to evaluate their expectations and outcomes of the lesson. Rubics would be used for the self evaluations in our WebQuest lesson. In my opinion the computer is a useful tool to use even in the student's earlier grades, but as a supplement to the initial lessons by the teacher. Once the student learns new ideas, concepts or facts, the comupter becomes a fun tool for the students to expand on their initial learnings. The added positive factors are that the students love to play with the computer and the computer has the non- human factor of long time patience. It also can possibly help the children find new knowledge on their own, when they work independently.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2000

Our group did not begin to discuss the lesson plan that we eill design. What we looked at was a lesson for highschoolers, that has the students graphing data that they get from say a phone bill, and then comparing their graphs and data with the other students. We thought that it was a very good lesson because it encorporated real life situations as well as important math and even social skills. We also thought that this lesson could be imporved. We dais that the kids should fill out rubrics before and after they have completed the lesson. We think that this will allow the students to set goals for themselves as well as surpass the expectations or even limitations that they might think they have. This lesson was also good because it incorporated the use of technology, real life situations, math skills as well as comparing amd contrasting data.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2000

Tuesday's lessonplan utilized Beanie Babies as a tool for teaching math. The lesson plan was to catagorize the beanie babies with how many legs they had, the color of the beanies, the kind of beanies, etc. After the class put them in the order that the teacher wanted, they were suppose to make a graph of the results. This would had been fine for grades 3 and above, but for prek-2 it was too involved and complicated. The easier way was to ask the children to put the beanies in categories of ; how many legs, color or size. I felt that the lesson play could be altered to fill this requirement. Children of this small of an age are easily distracted and tend to have an attention span of maybe twenty minutes, therefore the lesson must be plain and simple. Our group did not quite have the time to discuss our plan which I hope we will do on Tuesday. The beanie babies website (www.tygroup) is a very fun site for teachers to visit. It has calendars with the beanies on top, different descriptions of the beanies, etc. For teachers of early childhood it can be a valuable site, to help keep the attention of the children. The added bonus is that you could incorporate the website into a lesoon for many days in fact. What a fun way to teach the kids. I hope to used this site soon, so that I can help the teachers that I work with. Twice a week I teach the class and this would be an excellent way for me to use the beanie babies web

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Unfortunately, we never got to discuss any ideas for the upcoming lesson, because we were still working on our in class activity.

Beanie Babies Basic/Math/PreK-2 Although this seemed like a great project, it was definately too advanced for your typical 3-7 year olds. The would need assistance practically every step of the way. I feel, that this lesson better suits 5th graders and up, however modifications would absolutely have to be done if you were to keep it at the suggested level.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

We discussed the lesson , world wide weather, The activity was for children garde level span 3-5. The information that we recieved from Webquest would be of help in planing a lesson plain. The page building Blocks would enable you to plain how a lesson would be taught also how each part would be linked together. We also discussed how we would teach the lession to enable all the students to participate in the activity. We were assigned the topic Inspiration , which is about technology and how to buy the computers. Inspiration also gave some ideas that was used in the class room , which I was able to read at home. which demonstrated as to how you can plain a complete web story on the computer. We were not able to do much in the classs room on Inspiration. For some reason I an not able to adjust the screen to make my gramer correction.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I was not in class last week, so i am not sure of the work group project. In reference to what i have read so far i can see how children no matter what age can benefit learning through technology. However modifications must and can be done for children of younger ages in order for them to capture whatever goal the teacher may have set for them. What better way for children to learn than by having the experience of constructing and resolving on their own.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Brrrr, It's Alive was the name of the lesson Kathy and I reviewed. It is good example of a lesson that integrats technology. It is an effective lesson because it meets the NETS performance indicators as well the content standards for english/language arts.

The lesson is also effective not only because it meets the standards but because it is well thought out and approperiate for K-2. It is a fun student centered activity that will most likely keep the students interested and focused on the task at hand.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2000

To ensure that the students are integrating technology into their lessons, I would first familiarize them with the parts of the computer, the monitor, keyboard, etc. Then as a class we would work together on a simple lesson in which all the students would participate their answers. I would ask the students then to work together with a partner and write a story of interest to them.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2000

Yes, I believe that computers should be used in the earlier grades before most children have earned the basic rules and concepts of what education is and have developed a learning system of their own. Computers and technology do not have to be a separate entity. The students can learn the basic rules and concepts in conjunction with the aid and tools that computers have to offer. The computers may also enhance the interest of the student in learning some of the basics.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2000

Our group created a lesson about the weather. The age group we chose was Kindergarted to grade 3. Our lesson integrated math and science. Our goal was to follow the weather and compare the changes over time.The resources we chose was having children watch the news every night. On-line research on the weather,unfortunately we was not able to give direct web-sites because we didn't have time.Children would compare the differences over the years. I think the web-quest idea was wonderful, the process was phenomenal,intro,task resource,process,evaluation and then conclusion. The process is so organized and children are able to gain so many skills which they can use throughout their lifetime. Most importantly kids will have fun learning which I think is extremely important.Learnig is an adventure as well as a challenge and I feel every child should have the opportunity to approach learning this way. Our group was assigned Inspiration. We used Inspiration to create a lesson about living things for children ages 5-8. I think inspiration is great because it enables you to be organized creative as well as efficient.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

My group made a lesson plan using inspiration. In this we were going to teach the scientific method. We planned out what to do with the students. We would do research in the library, talk to a gradener, a grocer, and even do some planting of our own. By using inspiration we were able to map out everything we were going to do and make it visual so that the students could understand what we were doing and follow it through the pictures.

-- Anonymous, November 27, 2000