Course: Tech Literacy for Teachers/Staff

Create an Internet Scavenger Hunt or Webquest

One of the first steps of a project is to collect information on the topic at hand. When solving a problem, students will need to research the issue to find a solution. When it is practical, and you are comfortable with it, students need to frame their own searches. Searching for information on the Internet is as important as finding information in a newspaper or library. If students do not get the opportunity to search for information on the Internet during school, they will learn on their own, but the gaps in their learning will be great and could possibly even handicap them. There is no way that we can know what technology, even the Internet, will be like when our students leave school. Even students as old as freshmen may see an Internet that is vastly different than the one we have now. the skill they need to develop is that there are many ways of looking at a problem or framing a request for information. The more ways they have experience using, the better equipped they will be to adjust to new circumstances. This may only serve to better establish my reputation as a geek, but in some of the Star Trek television series, we see a glimpse of what the Internet could become. They have a computer that has all of the information that is known to man, but often they can't solve the problem right away because they don't know how to ask the question or even what question to ask. We have to give our students experiences that require them to come up with the right questions to ask.

That being said, there are times when you will want to apply more structure to your student's research. A web quest or scavenger hunt is a great way to do this. A scavenger hunt is basically an electronic worksheet with links to pages that have the answer to a question. See the link below.
Click to view the Inventions Scavenger Hunt.

A webquest is a full project-based unit. It will have the steps for students to follow and links to data needed to complete each step of the project. See the link below. Follow the links at the bottom of the page to go to each step of the project.
Click to view the Rainforest Webquest.

I also believe very strongly, that you cannot just throw students into a complex problem solving situation when they aren't used to situations like that. A scavenger hunt or webquest is a good way to break students in to using the Internet. Conduct an Internet search and look at some other examples of Internet scavenger hunts and webquests. Bernie Dodge is considered to be the main man when it comes to webquests. If you have trouble finding information, try using his name as a search term. Another hint, begin your searches by being as specific as possible. Put a + instead of a space, between the words in your search. Other ideas for finding the information that you want can be found at searchenginewatch.com. A clickable link was provided in Step 1 of the training.

Create your scavenger hunt in a word processor like MS Word, then submit it in the forum below.