Latin WebQuest

There seems to be quite a scarcity of Latin WebQuests online, but luckily Latin classes include a great deal of emphasis on history, mythology, and archaeology. One of the better WebQuests on archaeology is available from a Kentucky-based distance learning company. Although the use of higher-order thinking is not essential to this project, students are constantly having to gather and apply information on the project and communicate effectively with members of their community.
The project is designed to make students consider the ruins of yesterday and how buildings today might share some similarities with these ruins. At the same time, the WebQuest familiarizes students with several recently excavated archaeology sites. 

A Site for Site Evaluation (It's very meta)

The Discovery website has excellent resources for educators, and one of these exceptional resources is Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators. This site provides worksheets for educators to hand to their students (or use themselves) in evaluating different types of websites. This page even breaks down into evaluation rubrics for different grade levels (there are rubrics for elementary, middle, and high school students).

Website Evaluation

I definitely do not recommend this website. Although it was meant for use in a K12 classroom, the layout of the site is so unappealing that students would likely dislike having to use it. The site could be useful as a quick reference for students who do not have a dictionary handy or who want to clarify who a certain mythical or historical figure is, but the information is often less detailed than that which can be found on Wikipedia, and there are far more useful Latin dictionaries which can be found online. This site might be useful for a major project, as it would allow students to use one source rather than skip around the internet trying to find multiple types of information; however, the best thing that could be said for the site is the teacher resources in the form of sample lesson plans and worksheets. Still, these worksheets are fairly uninspired and do not follow any particular companion text, so they would be inconvenient for beginner classes.


Before this exercise, I really hadn't thought about how important that it be that a website have a specific author. I had realized this abstractly, I suppose--we know not to trust Wikipedia very far due to the virtually limitless number of authors a page might have. Still, it hadn't occurred to me to apply this principle to other sites. The questions about the layout of the site also got me thinking about what would be appealing to my students in the classroom. In the end, the design of website will have a lot to do with how engaged they are in learning the material presented to them on a particular site.

Wikis

I've found most new technologies fairly intuitive, given that we've had a computer with internet access since I was about five years old. Wikis are turning out to be no exception. Working within a format so similar to the Word application has allowed me to complete my assignment with almost no problems. I did have a little trouble inserting images at first, but once the issue of that awkwardly placed toolbar was resolved, I was sailing smoothly.