my second blog entry

As I am going to be putting several hours of work into a curricular integration project, I want to make sure it is something I will actually use in my classroom next school year. Because there is currently not very much technology integrated in my U.S. history class, I've decided to create a Vietnam War webquest that would fit well within that curriculum, and would get students interacting with a variety of web-based resources. The final product of the webquest will be a letter written from the perspective of a soldier about to come home from Vietnam near the end of the war. The student will put himself/herself in the shoes of a young soldier, and will show a deep knowledge of what the war was like, and what was going on at this moment in U.S. history.

A - Here's what I'll need to do to complete this project.

1 - Other webquests- look at others to get a feel for what a good webquest looks like.

2 - Review background materials - Universal Design for Learning, Making webquests interesting, NETs, and Michigan social studies content standards.

3 - Create the webquest in the form of a Google doc that will be shared on my moodle site. (Creating this will involve coming up with an idea, providing suitable online resources for students, writing a rubric, and adding pictures and formatting flair.)

4 - Write teacher notes. These will be detailed enough to help other U.S. history teachers implement this webquest in their own classes if they desire. Also included in this will be documentation of how this project meets curricular and educational technology standards.

5 - Write an outline for a presentation to give to 619 class Thursday. Create presentation using Prezi (or PowerPoint).

B - What I hope to learn.

I hope to learn how to make a webquest. Early on I realized that while I've assigned many webquests in class, I have not been doing them correctly at all. This will be my first proper webquest and I hope to learn what exactly goes into one. I also hope to learn how to develop a project with UDL principles in mind so that it is approachable to all students, and reaches students in many different ways.

C - Connection to my teaching practices.

What I mentioned above about Universal Design for Learning is something I hope to focus on not only for this project, but I hope those principles will be more evident throughout my curriculum. I also hope that the intentional examination of standards alignment will be something I can keep in mind more often (I rarely do at present). Lastly, my current U.S. history curriculum is fairly traditional, teacher-centered, and does not have much variety or technology. This project will definitely change that. It obviously implements technology, it encourages student exploration, creativity and the application of knowledge, and my hope is that it will truly get the ball rolling toward technology integration that leads to better teaching and learning in the U.S. history classroom.