WebQuest Assignment

I explored the White Water WebQuest which is still listed on the WebQuest.org website but is currently housed on a server at Iowa State University. You can find it at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jamaiers/webquest/introduction.htm

This WebQuest would best be done with high school students for a unit on economics because the task is actually to plan many aspects of running a whitewater touring business in the Western part of the USA. The students work in groups of four, with the following roles: Guide, Map Maker, Nutritionist and Media Specialist. The guide & the map-maker work closely together to choose the river for a one-week whitewater tour and plan the exact route to be travelled. The nutritionist plans all the meala for a one-week long river trip. The media specialist is responsible for creating a brochure selling the tours that includes a map of the route drawn by the map maker and the menu, planned by the nutritionist. Really clear directions in the process section and rubrics in the evaluation section provide scaffolding for the students. Total instructional time needed would be 4-5 class hours for planning and research before group presentations could begin. However, I didn't like having to scroll all the way back to the top once I reached the bottom of a particular page. The designers may want to consider placing the navigation bar on the side instead. I really liked that this task was so gender-neutral, but the resource list should be less biased toward the Grand Canyon and instead provide more sites for discovering unique river trip sites.

In addition, I also checked out part of Dr. Bodzin's Coastal WebQuest about the controversial move of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse found at http://www.ncsu.edu/coast/chl/index.html This one grabbed my attention since we visit the Outer Banks of North Carolina every summer.
This WebQuest has much less structure than the other one, but this may allow for even more open exploration within the rich resources of the site.