Tag: webquest

Qwiki Creator: Create the textbook of the future with a few clicks

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Qwiki Creator: Create the textbook of the future with a few clicks3977 views

Play the Qwiki: Anastasis Academy

What it is:  I first wrote about Qwiki in 2010 when they launched their search service.  I just got word that you (and your students) can now create your very own Qwiki.  When students search using Qwiki, instead of coming up with a list of links to websites, images, and videos, a slide show of images and videos begins complete with computer voice narration.  It is truly an incredible experience.

With Qwiki Creator, it is easy to create your own Qwiki to share.  Creating a Qwiki is really easy and intuitive.  First, you find the content and media you want to add to your Qwiki.  This could be web content, video, images, maps, content from your computer, text or even a tweet.  Next you add narration and set your timing.  Finally you can preview your Qwiki and publish it.  I created the Qwiki above in about 5 min.

If you are looking for the original Qwiki, you can get to it at http://qwiki.com/reference.

How to integrate Qwiki Creator into the classroom:  Qwiki Creator is a fantastic way for students to create impressive presentations about their learning.  Students can quickly create mashups of web content and record or type narration to demonstrate understanding of material.  Qwiki Creator is also a great tool for teachers, create customized content for your students.  This is textbook 2.0 for sure! It can be tailored to the exact needs of your curriculum and can become an additional way for your to “flip” your classroom.

I love the idea of students creating their own digital textbooks as they learn about a subject. Throughout their learning and research, students can keep a table of contents of items they want to be sure to include in their Qwiki.  Students can create a Qwiki about the information they have learned, add text/voice/video narration to help describe the learning and publish it for classmates to learn from.  The Qwiki can be shared easily or embeded on a student blog or website.

Create your own series of Qwiki’s for your classroom blog or website where students can further their learning.  They can access any of the websites or resources you include in your Qwiki for a majorly upgraded version of a webquest.

Qwiki Creator could be used for digital storytelling.  Students can find images, videos and maps that help them tell their story and narrate the creative story for others to enjoy.

In a foreign language class, students can give a web tour where they narrate in the language they are learning.  This would also be neat to do in a geography or history class.

If you teach students who are younger than 13, consider creating Qwiki’s as a class using an interactive whiteboard and teacher account.  Students can help put the Qwiki together and the finalized Qwiki can be put on a class blog or website for students to learn from any time.

Tips:  Students must be 13 years old or older to use Qwiki Creator according to the Terms of Service.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Qwiki Creator  in  your classroom!

eField Trips

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on eField Trips2216 views

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What it is: eField Trips are a neat idea for students to ‘travel’ virtually to learn about the world.  These virtual eTrips are composed of 4 parts.  The first part is a pdf called the Trip Journal.  Teachers download and print out the trip journal to guide students on their journey and to give them a place to record what they are learning on their trip.  Second is the virtual visit, this is a flash video where students go on the actual trip at their own pace.  Generally trips take about 15 minutes to complete.  Third is a form where students can ask experts questions they have about the trip they took.  Actual experts will respond to the question in 1 to 2 days.  The fourth is a live chat.  These chats allow students to interact with the experts in a live session at a scheduled time.  Available eField Trips include: Pearl Harbor, bats, underwater ecosystems, brown vs. board of education, butterflies, western exploration, caves, climbing Denali, desert dwellers, Dred Scott, Earthquakes, mountains, and glaciers, fires roll in an ecosystem, Glacier Bay, Grand Tetons, invasive species, whales, renewable energy, sea turtles, mammals of Denali, manatee, reptiles and amphibians, wetlands, and more.  I would categorize eField Trips more like a webquest than a virtual field trip.  These are great webquests!

How to integrate eField Trips into the classroom: These eField Trips would be an excellent extension (or replacement) for text book reading.  Students can work through the eField Trip at their own pace in the computer lab setting.  I like the Trip Journals that guide students on their journey and keep them thinking critically about what they are encountering.  For younger students, take an eField Trip as a whole class using a projector or an interactive whiteboard.  Each student could still fill out a Trip Journal as the class goes on the journey.  Because the etrips require reading, struggling readers may be paired up with confident readers or a helper.  I really like the interaction that students get with experts after the field trip.  As students are going on their journey, they are bound to come up with additional questions.  Students always love sending and getting mail, eField Trips gives students the opportunity to do both.

Tips: One thing that I don’t love about this site, it is hard to navigate back to the homepage.  This isn’t a problem for students completing the trips, but it is a little frustrating as a teacher planning a trip.  

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using eField Trips in your classroom.

Education Diigo

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Education Diigo2173 views

 

What it is:  Education Diigo offers k-12 and higher ed educators premium Diigo accounts!  The premium accounts provide the ability to create student accounts for whole classes, students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can easily share bookmarks, annotations, and group forums, privacy settings so that only classmates and teachers can communicate with students, and any advertisments on Education Diigo are education related.  If you aren’t familiar with Diigo, it is a social bookmarking website where students can collaborate on the web.  Diigo works in to a project based learning environment nicely and allows for exploratory learning and collaboration.  

 

How to integrate Education Diigo into the classroom:   Education Diigo is an outstanding place for students to solve problems together.  Provide students with a problem and send them on a web scavenger hunt to find the answer, students can post their findings and notes about their findings on Diigo.  Students can collaborate online to solve the problem.  Education Diigo is also a great place for “teachers to highlight critical information within text and images and write comments directly on the web pages, to collect and organize series of web pages and web sites into coherent and thematic sets, and to facilitate online conversations within the context of the materials themselves.”  This feature makes Education Diigo a great place to create webquest type lessons and virtual field trips around the web.    Diigo also allows teachers to collaborate and share resources among themselve. Education Diigo is a must for students who are learning to complete web-based research!

 

Tips:   Your Education Diigo account must be approved so sign up today!

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Education Diigo in your classroom.

Interactives

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Interactives2233 views

What it is: Interactives is a truly amazing website for teachers and students. Interactives provides educators and students with strategies, content, and activities that can enhance and improve students’ skills in a variety of curricular areas including math, literature and language, science, history, and the arts. The site has great webquest/interactive activities on a variety of subjects for first through twelfth grades. These activities are extremely well done. The spelling bee activity is really the only activity appropriate for first grade but I found that many of the activities that were rated for middle and high school students, would be appropriate for elementary students as well. I cannot say enough about this site, it is a truly amazing site for teachers and students!

How to integrate Interactives into the classroom: Interactives has a variety of interactive activities for the subjects listed above. These would be great to use as an introduction to a new unit, or as a learning activity or field trip in a unit. The Interactives could be completed as a whole class (using a projector), in groups (center style in the one or two computer classroom), or individually (in the computer lab setting). Any of these options would be time well spent for your students! Each Interactive presents the student with information about the unit and follows with interactive activities such as building a roller coaster, collecting rocks, or tracing the growth of the United States.

Tips: Sign up for the learner.org newsletter for some great teaching tips and ideas.