Webquest final product

https://sites.google.com/site/mcdonaldwebquest/conclusion/home-page/introduction

Digital Media Final product

Life of a Butterfly by dmcdonald1977 on Storybird

IPad Review

The two app’s that I have chosen are “Oregon Trail”, and “Awesome Arithmetic”. 

 The Oregon Trail game would be good to use for a  fifth grade Social Studies class, studying about the pioneers heading westward. The game builds off of the old computer game called “Oregon Trail.”  The game involves building bridges, forts, and camps to help survive on the Oregon Trail.  The game would be fun for kids, and help reinforce learning in the classroom because they could also play the game on an ipad on iphone at home. 

The game “Awesome Arithmetic” helps kids practice math skills including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  The user can select the skills to be tested on, and the amount of digits used.  This would be a good game to help kids remember multiplication skills.  This would also be a good game to practice speed math where kids try to reach the answer as quickly as possible.  The difficulty of this game can be adjusted, so it would be appropriate for all grades.

I think that both of these app’s could be used in the classroom to enrich learning, and kids would enjoy using the ipads in the classroom to play these educational games.

A Rubric for Evaluating WebQuests
The WebQuest format can be applied to a variety of teaching situations. If you take advantage of all the possibilities inherent in the format, your students will have a rich and powerful experience. This rubric will help you pinpoint the ways in which your WebQuest isn't doing everything it could do. If a page seems to fall between categories, feel free to score it with in-between points.

Webquest: The Life of a Butterfly

	Beginning	Developing	Accomplished	Score
Overall Aesthetics (This refers to the WebQuest page itself, not the external resources linked to it.)
Overall Visual Appeal	0 points There are few or no graphic elements. No variation in layout or typography. OR Color is garish and/or typographic variations are overused and legibility suffers. Background interferes with the readability.	2 points Graphic elements sometimes, but not always, contribute to the understanding of concepts, ideas and relationships. There is some variation in type size, color, and layout.	4 points Appropriate and thematic graphic elements are used to make visual connections that contribute to the understanding of concepts, ideas and relationships. Differences in type size and/or color are used well and consistently. See Fine Points Checklist.	2- colors are appropriate, has animated pictures
Navigation & Flow	0 points Getting through the lesson is confusing and unconventional. Pages can't be found easily and/or the way back isn't clear.	2 points There are a few places where the learner can get lost and not know where to go next.	4 points Navigation is seamless. It is always clear to the learner what all the pieces are and how to get to them.	4- links to other pages, but I think it has too many game links, need more authentic hands-on study
Mechanical Aspects	0 points There are more than 5 broken links, misplaced or missing images, badly sized tables, misspellings and/or grammatical errors.	1 point There are some broken links, misplaced or missing images, badly sized tables, misspellings and/or grammatical errors.	2 points No mechanical problems noted. See Fine Points Checklist.	2-no broken links
Introduction
Motivational Effectiveness of Introduction	0 points The introduction is purely factual, with no appeal to relevance or social importance OR The scenario posed is transparently bogus and doesn't respect the media literacy of today's learners.	1 point The introduction relates somewhat to the learner's interests and/or describes a compelling question or problem.	2 points The introduction draws the reader into the lesson by relating to the learner's interests or goals and/or engagingly describing a compelling question or problem.	2- interesting topic, will be fun for kids to visually see the life cycle of a butterfly
Cognitive Effectiveness of the Introduction	0 points The introduction doesn't prepare the reader for what is to come, or build on what the learner already knows.	1 point The introduction makes some reference to learner's prior knowledge and previews to some extent what the lesson is about.	2 points The introduction builds on learner's prior knowledge and effectively prepares the learner by foreshadowing what the lesson is about.	1- uses basic prior knowledge, requires assistance
Task (The task is the end result of student efforts... not the steps involved in getting there.)
Connection of Task to Standards	0 points The task is not related to standards.	2 point The task is referenced to standards but is not clearly connected to what students must know and be able to do to achieve proficiency of those standards.	4 points The task is referenced to standards and is clearly connected to what students must know and be able to do to achieve proficiency of those standards.	4- states that students need to know the life cycle of a butterfly, lists standards
Cognitive Level of the Task	0 points Task requires simply comprehending or retelling of information found on web pages and answering factual questions.	3 points Task is doable but is limited in its significance to students' lives. The task requires analysis of information and/or putting together information from several sources.	6 points Task is doable and engaging, and elicits thinking that goes beyond rote comprehension. The task requires synthesis of multiple sources of information, and/or taking a position, and/or going beyond the data given and making a generalization or creative product. See WebQuest Taskonomy.	3- could use more higher order level of thinking skills
Process (The process is the step-by-step description of how students will accomplish the task.)
Clarity of Process	0 points Process is not clearly stated. Students would not know exactly what they were supposed to do just from reading this.	2 points Some directions are given, but there is missing information. Students might be confused.	4 points Every step is clearly stated. Most students would know exactly where they are at each step of the process and know what to do next.	2- some missing information, teacher will have to provide additional resources
Scaffolding of Process	0 points The process lacks strategies and organizational tools needed for students to gain the knowledge needed to complete the task. Activities are of little significance to one another and/or to the accomplishment of the task.	3 points Strategies and organizational tools embedded in the process are insufficient to ensure that all students will gain the knowledge needed to complete the task. Some of the activities do not relate specifically to the accomplishment of the task.	6 points The process provides students coming in at different entry levels with strategies and organizational tools to access and gain the knowledge needed to complete the task. Activities are clearly related and designed to take the students from basic knowledge to higher level thinking. Checks for understanding are built in to assess whether students are getting it. See: Process Guides A Taxonomy of Information Patterns Language Arts Standards and Technology WebQuest Enhancement Tools Reception, Transformation & Production Scaffolds	3- too many links to games, need more hands-on activities w/real world application
Richness of Process	0 points Few steps, no separate roles assigned.	1 points Some separate tasks or roles assigned. More complex activities required.	2 points Different roles are assigned to help students understand different perspectives and/or share responsibility in accomplishing the task.	0- no separate tasks, everyone will be doing the same thing
Resources (Note: you should evaluate all resources linked to the page, even if they are in sections other than the Process block. Also note that books, video and other off-line resources can and should be used where appropriate.)
Relevance & Quantity of Resources	0 points Resources provided are not sufficient for students to accomplish the task. OR There are too many resources for learners to look at in a reasonable time.	2 point There is some connection between the resources and the information needed for students to accomplish the task. Some resources don't add anything new.	4 points There is a clear and meaningful connection between all the resources and the information needed for students to accomplish the task. Every resource carries its weight.	2- some connection between resources, others not helpful
Quality of Resources	0 points Links are mundane. They lead to information that could be found in a classroom encyclopedia.	2 points Some links carry information not ordinarily found in a classroom.	4 points Links make excellent use of the Web's timeliness and colorfulness. Varied resources provide enough meaningful information for students to think deeply.	0- points can be found in classroom textbooks
Evaluation
Clarity of Evaluation Criteria	0 points Criteria for success are not described.	3 points Criteria for success are at least partially described.	6 points Criteria for success are clearly stated in the form of a rubric. Criteria include qualitative as well as quantitative descriptors. The evaluation instrument clearly measures what students must know and be able to do to accomplish the task. See Creating a Rubric.	3- uses a student diary to record life cycle stages
Total Score				28/50

 

webquest

http://questgarden.com/149/75/5/121022122114/t-index.htm

Webquest

___Efficiency Expert

___Affiliator

___Altitudinist

_x__Technophile

Your Impressions

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Grow School Greens	Colors are attractive, links to other sites, pictures are animated	Did not list teaching standards
Where is My Hero?	Colors were vivid, listed teaching standards	Pictures were not animated, student-teacher pages were separate, links were hard to see when clicked on because of colors
Underground Railroad	Colors fit theme, links to other sites, graphic organizer good idea,	Pictures were not animated,
Ice Cream	Has links to other sites, colors appropriate	Does not list creator of webquest, no animated pictures, could use more instruction/video embedded in each page, could give examples of advertising
Ancient Egypt	Background colors could be more interesting, gives sample brochures, links back to webquest, links to other sites, informative, links to games	Top of page links to school site, can be a little confusing at first, non-animated pictures, could embed video to make it more interesting

 

 

Double Entry Journal #15 Deconstructing Digital Natives: Chapter 8 Beyond Google and The "Satisficing" Searching of Digital Natives. 1. What is the purpose of this chapter? To explore why students who are famililiar and adept with Internet tools are at times poor at using Internet academically. 2. What is the major finding from a review of studies that have looked at technology adoption of young people?. Does this finding seem to reflect your own use of technology? On the basis of the review, they aligned students "satisficing" information-seeking behavior and attitudes with a well established educational construct: a surface approach to learning. Sometimes I feel that I use a surface approach to learning, especially if I am not interested in the material being taught. If I am truly interested in the material and information being taught, I will dig deeper to find out more about the topic than just a surface approach. 3. How do the authors define Information Literacy? The authors define Information Literacy as a set of skills and knowledge that allow us to find, evaluate, and use the information that we need, as well as to filter out the information that we don't need. 4. What is the "clear message" from a review of the studies focused on college students information seeking behavior? Do these findings relfect your own information seeking behaviors? Rowlands and his colleagues found that 89 percent of college students use a search engine to begin their scholarly information seeking and only 2 percent use the library website. I would have to agree that I also use the internet to search a topic first and follow the "skimming" practice to determine if I think the website is valid and if it will be helpful to me. 5. What does the term "satisfcing" in the area of decision making mean? The term "satisficing" describes the decisions that individuals take that are satisfactory but not maximal or optimal, in other words acceptable based on personal criterion but not always the best choice. 6. What are the differences to deep and surface level approaches to a learning task? Students who adopted a deep level approach to learning focused on comprehension of the meaning behind the material. Students who adopted a surface level approach to learning tended to focus on reproduction of what was contained within the learning material without concern for understanding. 7. What should educators aim to do to improve the scripts student have for sophisticated online information seeking? Educators should encourage a deep level approach to information seeking because they are associated with greater conceptual understanding of the material that is presented. 8. Why is Google's page rank system problematic for information seeking? Because students can become frustrated with the functionality and ease of use of online academic tools and services, which will result in heavy use of familiar tools known to produce results, and the quality of these sources can also be questioned. 9. Are you "digitally wise" when it comes to information seeking? Give an example of how you approached an information seeking task for one of your academic courses this semester (do not include this class). No, I am not "digitally wise" when it comes to information seeking because I was never taught how to search properly for academic purposes. For another class, I used Wikipedia when searching to find information because I knew I would find results fast and be able to use the information. 10. Has the popularity of the Internet and the information contained on the Web created a new problem for undergraduate students research skills? Why of Why not? Yes, because we are uninformed about how to search properly to gain the best knowledge.

ThinkAloud

A think aloud about privatization of health care by from dmcdonald1977

Bunnies in the snow by: Eden McDonald age 7 by dmcdonald1977 on Storybird

Bedtime Stories by dmcdonald1977 on Storybird

Dogs I like them. Ask me why. Because they like to play fetch, Because they like to play catch, Because they like to give puppy kisses, Because they are man's best friend, Because they are always happy to greet you, Because they are always happy to meet you, Because they beg for dog biscuits, Because they are soft, furry and lovable. Because. Because Because. That's why I like Dogs