Teacher Process
Groups and Roles
Although this WebQuest groups students into teams of four with roles assigned as “professional experts,” the teacher may prefer to assign more students to each group and/or assign roles differently.
One possible alternative arrangement is to add an Artist and/or a Reporter to each team and assign them appropriate responsibilities.
Another alternative is to assign each student to become a comprehensive expert on a single volcano and/or a single technology. In that case, each student would perform all of the duties of all of the experts pertaining to that one volcano. Group size would be determined by the number of volcanoes to be visited (4, as the original Quest specifies, or another number determined by the teacher). Teams would still work together to create their presentations, with each member creating the slides that pertained to his/her volcano, and the team collaborating on the recommendation and sources slides.
The Jigsaw Classroom
Teachers should visit The Jigsaw Classroom to learn more about the Jigsaw Classroom process to facilitate and enhance learning in groups.
Equipment
- Computers (classroom, lab, or at home)
- Media projector to show finished projects to class
- Internet (research sites chosen from this WebQuest)
- MS Excel or Star Office 8 Calc (for spreadsheets and charts)
- MS Word or Star Office 8 Writer (for reports and summaries)
- MS PowerPoint or Star Office 8 Impress (for the final presentation)
- Graphics software (if used for creating maps or illustrations)
- Digital cameras (if you wish to take photos of your team "visiting volcanoes")
- Digital scanner (to make digital images of maps you create by hand)
- Google Earth (you may wish to use captured images to make your maps)
Students should be able to use the computers independently or in small groups.,
If this equipment is not available to the students, then the teacher may decide on acceptable substitutes for the various required items, such as poster board displays instead of the presentation and hand-drawn versions of maps and charts. Students could also use a table in a word processing program to make data tables and charts, instead of using spreadsheets.
Schedule
This lesson can be scheduled in a variety of ways to suit various classroom situations.
If students have access to computers at home, portions of the quest could be assigned as homework, thereby reducing the length of time to be devoted to the entire project to perhaps 1 week.
If students generally do not have computers at home, then the teacher must allow adequate time for computer use during the school day. This will vary depending on the classroom situation and access to a computer lab or laptops for the students. The process could then take 2 weeks or longer to allow sufficient time for research, collaboration, creation, and presentation.
Teachers should also consider whether this project is exclusively a science project or also a language arts project, because they could utilize class time from either subject or both. If the students also have a regularly scheduled computer literacy class, that time might also be devoted to this project with the cooperation of the computer literacy instructor. Teachers who teach self-contained classrooms may make this determination on their own, while others may need to consult other teachers and collaborate with them to schedule this interdisciplinary project. Standards addressed by this project are included in the Standards section.
This is one possible way to schedule the WebQuest:
- Day 1. Students are divided into teams.
- Day 1. Each team will designate one person for each of the roles as described.
- Day 1. Media Center/Library visit: Students do research and planning in accordance with their roles, choosing destinations as a team.
- Day 2. Expert Session: Students will meet with their “expert” groups (i.e., all statisticians, all technologists, etc.) to share and compare results of independent research.
- Day 3. Team Session 1: Students report back to their teams to share the results of their research and finalize their plans for their presentations.
- Day 4. Media Center/Library visit: Team members use computers to create their portions of the final presentation.
- Day 5. Team Session 2: Students gather parts of presentation, evaluate research, and determine which technology recommendation to make.
- Day 6. Team Session 3: Students rehearse presentation, involving each member in speaking (may need to simulate presentation using printouts of slides, if unable to use actual computer and media projector for rehearsal).
- Day 7-10 (as needed). Team Presentations: Each team presents its findings and recommendations to the entire class.
- Final Day. Reflection: Each student reflects on the project and writes about the experience.