Webquest

I absolutely love the idea of Webquest. I often get nervous about young children using the internet. There is SO MUCH sketchy stuff out there. It's a great way to provide information on a specific subject and a great place to put pre-approved websites for students. It just seems like an excellent tool to use. For my webquest I would love to use Second Grade social studies standard 2, Students will develop a sense of self in relation to families and community. Objective 2: examine important aspects of the community and culture that strengthen relationships, indicator b. compare rural, suburban and urban communities. I think I could find some really great resources and could create a great webquest for my students to use. They will be able to see the differences, and do some research, without running into irrelevant and sketchy material. I think it's especially good for younger students because they are able to use the internet without having to use search engines that can be tricky. It's a lovely resource!

EXCEL

This week in one of my other classes we were asked to pick a topic to do a large group unit on. My group picked A Healthy Lifestyle and I specifically chose to do Physical Fitness. I had a great idea of how to integrate technology into this lesson, and it incorporates an Excel Spreadsheet. I wanted to have my students take turns using a pedometer and recording their results on a class spreadsheet. We would create this spreadsheet together and use columns such as:

Using this spreadsheet, we could determine how many steps we walked as a class, or how many minutes we spent exercising.

Spreadsheets can also be good for recording scientific data, total books read independently or even make job assignments. I like using Excel a lot!