Introduction
The object of this WebQuest is to have groups of students work together to come up with five different computing innovations or inventions in the last 72 years. The team will need to work together to figure out and research five major computing innovations or inventions that were important to the world. They will able to go back to 1943 in Great Britain for Colossus as a timeframe. Once they find five innovations or inventions they will write out why they believe it was an important innovation or invention. They will then find when it was invented and look up the time period in the world where it was invented. If it was invented in 1983 in the US they would look what pop culture was like in 1983 in the US. They will then decide what parts they would like to include as design elements for their page.
Task
Students will create a blog on www.wordpress.com to show their five innovations or inventions as well as create a spreadsheet in Google Docs showing the information they gathered in the process.
Process
The students will work in groups of three for this project. The first thing they will do is create GMail addresses if they do not already have them. This will be key to the project. Once they create their GMail addresses one member of the team will create a shared folder and invite the other two members as well as the teacher to the shared folder. The other two team members and the teacher will connect to the folder.
The first thing they will do is create a shared spreadsheet in the folder.
The team will need to work together to figure out and research five major computing innovations or inventions that were important to the world. They will able to go back to 1943 in Great Britain for Colossus as a timeframe. Once they find five innovations or inventions they will write out why they believe it was an important innovation or invention. They will then find when it was invented and look up the time period in the world where it was invented. If it was invented in 1983 in the US they would look what pop culture was like in 1983 in the US. They will then decide what parts they would like to include as design elements for their page.
As they find things to include on their pages they will enter the information in the spreadsheet. They will have a spot for each innovation and five to ten different attributes of the time period to include in the spreadsheet.
Once they have the spreadsheet filled out they will go over to www.wordpress.com and create a blog for their team. They will have six different blog pages for this project. The first page will be the main page explaining what the project is. It will also include links to each innovation or invention page in their blog. Each of the other five pages will include a picture of the innovation or invention, why they think it is important to history, and will be decorated with different pictures from the time period.
Once they have all that done they will email the teacher with a link to their blog. At this point the teacher will be able to view the finished blog as well as the database created within the spreadsheet that holds the information to the innovations or inventions.
Evaluation
Assessment:
The points are as follows:
Overall Project: 130 points
Shared Folder: 10 points total
Spreadsheet: 50 points total
Innovation 1: 10 points
Innovation 2: 10 points
Innovation 3: 10 points
Innovation 4: 10 points
Innovation 5: 10 points
Blog: 60 points total
Main page: 10 points
Innovation 1 Page: 10 points
Innovation 2 Page: 10 points
Innovation 3 Page: 10 points
Innovation 4 Page: 10 points
Innovation 5 Page: 10 points
Emailed Teacher: 10 points total
Conclusion
After completing this WebQuest you will have learned about the different innovations and inventions that have occured over the last 72 years as well as what the world was like surrounding that invention. It has given the creators an idea of where computing has come from as well as a little bit of history as well.