The Ease of Teaching the Internet

The Internet is such a great tool. The information and resources rival even the best libraries I have ever visited. I love maps and the maps that are available to use with my students with a quick click are amazing. Scanned copies of battlefield maps to copies of maps used by Christopher Columbus with anotations made by him or his crew. It is simple amazing. And if you do not have time to make your own lesson.... sites like The Center for Teaching History with Technology have tons of material just waiting for someone to come get it. If your interested, take a look at their site at http://thwt.org/webqueststhinkquests.html
This week's entry is supposed to be about creating a webquest. The hardest part of the Webquest is eliminating sources. The data is everywhere and the hardest part for me was cutting the information back to a reasonable amount of sites. I have to admit to being a technology junkie though. I seem to have a knack for internet searches and finding the right combination of keywords to seach for. I am sure thats not true for everyone though.
The other challenging part of the webquest is often getting the students to take the information they find and process that information into more than just a set of facts that they put on the paper. My time in special education has really helped me with that process. And often its a lot easier that most people think. The first step is often to simply ask for something other than words. This serves two goals as an educator. First, you can allow students to use other learning styles and/or multiple intelligences. The second is that the student has to understand more of the material they read to translate that information into a drawing or map or artifact. I find this works well for my high needs students and the other students in the classroom. And belief it or not, sometimes they even have fun.