WEB QUEST

Hopefully, my Web Quest was successful. I reviewed some of the examples and tried to be creative in my design. Again I chose a civil rights issue. I chose to do a web quest on Brown v. Board of Education. I have an insane interest in the civil rights movement and as a result, most of my assignments have included some type of civil rights history. I really liked this assignment because it required me to demonstrate my knowledge of basically everything we have learned in this class. It was frustrating at times, but it was also a fun experience. I think the hardest part is deciding on a topic. The other stuff that follows is pretty easy.
I would say the HEAT level of my web quest is a five. At least that is what I was going for. Students were each assigned a role. One student represents Mr. Oliver Brown. One represents the NAACP. One student represents the Supreme Court and one represent the Board of Education. Students research information to support their role in the assignment. At the end of the assignment, students recreate the decision of Brown v. Board by using their research to support their individual roles viewpoints. The assignment was designed to make students think.
I just want to say, that I have created assignments in the past that involved students searching the Internet for information. I would never have thought about creating a web quest that had all the resources students need to complete the assignment in one place. It also provides a design that can be followed to complete the project. I intend to use this format in the future if and when I find a teaching position.

Here is a link to my web quest
Movement Toward Freedom

Fun With Data

At first, this assignment was fairly easy. Once I figured out how to format the worksheets to match, I was able to complete it rather quickly. I remember taking a computer class in college and excel was one of my weaknesses. For some reason I could just not get. This time, with a little research and a little perseverance, I was able to complete the assignment. The biggest challenge I had was with manipulating the raw data. If had the formula off just by one number, the results were flawed. When I figured out the totals, I knew they were wrong and had to check all of my formulas and correct the mistake. The mistake occurred when I would copy and paste the formulas and then realized that it should be B2-B60 not A2-A60. I have to admit it was fun though and it was also a challenge. I had a sense of accomplishment when I finished since I was never able to understand formulas in excel before. I think this tool would be useful for many reasons. The most useful I can think of right off hand is recording students scores and averaging those scores to gain an overall understanding of student performance. This assignment forced me to think, research and find creative ways to complete the assignment. I have to admit I did a lot of copy and pasting.

Online Quiz

This assignment was fun. I liked the format for creating the quiz. It made it very simple to create. When I try to create quizzes myself, they never seem to look right. I also think that the results being displayed on an excel worksheets is very interesting. It would allow the teacher to keep track of student responses and see where students are making the same mistakes in answering the questions. It would also be a useful tool for re-teaching questions that students missed. This format eliminates the stress. My quiz is on my googledocs. I did not see a link so I invited the instructor.

Found a link to my quiz

Movie Maker

This was an easy assignment after I was able to get the windows movie maker to work. I had trouble with it being slow and closing. I had to save each powerpoint slide into a pictures file. I then imported my slides into the windows movie maker. I then selected the transitions between the slides. Through completing this assignment, I was able to demonstrate my technological skills in downloading, uploading and publishing my work on utube.

The following is a link to my video
movie

Rubistar

O.K. this assignment was fun. I had no idea there were online sites to create rubrics. It makes it so much easier. There are also hundreds of rubrics for every topic. I was able to download it to excel and save it on google docs with some modifications. For some reason, I could not upload my assignment to google docs. I had to copy my rubric and then had to paste it to a new document in google docs. Unfortunately, it changed some of the format of the document. Eventually, I was able to add it to my google docs.
What I liked about this assignment was that it required you to think. I think it can be hard developing a rubric, but the template made it much easier. I created a rubric for the Three Branches of Government since I had already researched the information for my PowerPoint assignment.


Rubric

PDF

For this assignment, I had some trouble. Eventually, I had to upload PowerPoint to Google docs and then download and save as PDF. Then upload to Google docs again. I'm sure there is an easier way, but this is the way I found to be successful. I think PDF would be a useful because it is easier to view. It would also be easier to print copies to hand out to students. I tried to add a link to my ftp site with my PDF, but for some reason it is not working. My PDF is located on my Google Docs and is by invitation only. If anyone want to view it let me know. I've invited the instructor as requested. I will keep trying to add a link to my PDF via my ftp site.

O.K. I figured it out. Here it is.

PDF

PowerPoint

If you want to see my embedded PowerPoint presentation, please go to the bottom of the page.
I could not embed the presentation into the post. I had to go to layout and click add a gadget. I added the html and then I was able to embed the PowerPoint on blog spot. It's not ideal, but this is the only way I could get it to work after three hours of trial and error. If I am able to figure it out, I will change it's location on my page.