Chapter Six: Teaching with Educational
Websites and Other Online Resources
Focus Question 4: What are WebQuests
and virtual field trips?
A WebQuest is
an online inquiry by students and is designed and created by teachers. In a
WebQuest students follow an electronic map while moving from various web
resources to gather information and learn about a particular topic.
A virtual
field trip takes students all over the world, using video and or pictures,
without ever leaving the classroom.
Tech Tool 6.3: An Interactive Online
Field Trip: The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc
The Cave of
Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc is a cave in France that shows some of the earliest cave
paintings ever found. When I visited the website I immediately saw tabs
detailing when the cave was discovered, how it was authenticated as truly having
the oldest cave paintings ever discovered and how those paintings are being
preserved today. If someone is just looking to read the facts about the cave
then have questions about how it is today, these are great informative tools
that can be easily accessed. There is then an area dedicated to research of the
cave, it tells you about the research team, their methods, partners and the
results they have achieved. What I found interesting was the geographic context
tab concerning time and space, which describes what the cave looked like 100
million years ago and there is even a picture you can scroll over to view the
image. There are of course different images of the cave all over the site. It
seems to me to be very informative and it set up in a way to make finding
specific information very easy.
Summary/Points:
Some terms I
was not familiar with and found to be interesting were real-time and recorded
data websites, they are like virtual field trips in the way that the data sites
provide opportunities for students to enter a setting as an observer.
Teachers can
organize electronic resources to address the curriculum by building a standards
connector web can be a way to help teacher’s access academic material that can
be used to teach about topics that are required by the curriculum.
One of my
favorite parts of this chapter that I learned about were the virtual field
trips. I had never heard of this before, it is a great concept and there are so
many resources online that cater to the concept. A perfect example is the one
the book provided about the cave in France, Chateau-Pont-d’Arc. It is perfectly
labeled with informative information that makes it extremely easy to navigate
and learn.
Resources:
Textbook - Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen,
Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2011). Transforming Learning
with New Technologies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN:10
0-13-159611-X, ISBN:13 978-0-13-159611-5
The Cave of
Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc. (n.d.). Accueil / www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr /
Ministère - Ministère de la culture. Retrieved October 2, 2013, from
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet
Michael Coghlan via Flickr
It is a great chapter full of super links to usable websites - glad you found it interesting and hope you kept some of them in delicious or symbaloo. :) Do remember to hyperlink within your post, especially if it is a tech tool, i.e., The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc. Enjoyed seeing the CC-licensed photo enhancement.
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