Creators: Randi Vaseleck & Nicole Franklin

Grade Level: 2nd-3rd

This project is intended to teach students a lesson, and engage them in an activity interactively. By using this project in education, the teacher can allow the students to have independence while learning. This helps strengthen children's reading skills on the computer. For some students, reading text on a computer is a very new concept, so by having them do this lesson, strictly through the WebQuest, they'll get experience with on-line literacy. I can see this project making a strong impact on students' learning. Children think that computers are "fun" and sometime see them as a reward. So for some students, they'll be having fun, and learning without even realizing they're doing so. This project will strongly encourage use of problem solving skills, because the students will need to understand how to navigate through the site, to complete their lesson.

The goals of this project are to integrate social studies with technology, and give students a better understanding of how large the world they live in really is.

This project integrates english, social studies, and technology all into one lesson. It is sometimes hard to integrate even two subject matters into one lesson, but WebQuest makes it very simple to integrate three, even sometimes four. This also addresses cultural responsiveness teaching because it reaches out to students who are visual learners, or who are maybe not the best at reading actual textbooks. If there were students in the class that were auditory learners, the teacher could an audio clip on the WebQuest to assist their learning as well.

The learning styles that will most likely be attracted to this project are visual and tactile learners.

The instructional strategies that have been utilized in this project are computer assisted instruction, cooperative learning, and decision making process.

This is a very self-paced media project. One the teacher gives the students the web-link, it is their job to pace themselves from their, follow the directions on the WebQuest, and complete the lesson themselves. This project begins as an individual project, but various questions in the lesson allow the students to cooperatively work together.

The students will be informally graded while they are working on the lesson based on their engagement, and cooperation. The short story however; will be graded formally based on their creativity, grammar, and their understanding of where they live.