Teacher's Page
This webquest is designed to appeal to older bilingual students, meaning Year 10 to A-Level. The main difficulties will not
only be the understanding of the text but the need to filter the asked for information. And, of course, the understanding of the social situation at large. By playing different roles the
whole course will, in the end of all presentations, have seen the Industrial Revolution Britain at a certain point, in the Manchester of 1944, from similiar yet different
perspectives and will thus get a good picture of it.
Personally I decided against a fourth group of "factory owners" to be implemented in this webquest, since such a role would
automatically divide the course and could lead to diffferences and disharmony. It could and would eventually become a
"winner / loser" scenario.
Additionally it has to be stated that this webquest is designed to be used in conjunction with other lessons, activities and approaches concerning the Industrial Revolution as it would lead to a quite one sided and emotionally negativ beset understanding of the Industrial revolution. It could benefit as well as be a benefit for any British cultural or literature studies focusing on that period of time, e.g. Victorian England.
Of course it is possible to get the most
basic information in about two lesson's time, but I would recommend a much longer period since it is a good idea to leave free time
between working sessions to think about the topic and to become creative about e.g. "volunteer's" and "newspaper writer's" and to study and discuss the material given thoroughly.
tasks.
In the end all results, formerly discussed and reviewed in the three groups, must be revealed to everybody and whether you make it a roleplay event, taking place at Victoria Square at Manchester or an Exhibition in the class, the school or somewhere else, is for you to decide.
As this webquest is designed for clearly advanced students who have possibly had some years of experience in being taught bilingual history, it asumes that plenty of media applications are known as well. Tasks like "mindmapping", using pdfs and creating hypertext should be no new experience for all participants.
For later use and facilitation some useful tools will be linked in the following section to be used by the moderator or to help to prepare for this webquest:
Mindmapping the easy way - Free Mind provides an easy to use shareware tool.
Since some files used are .pdf documents your course will need the Adobe Reader
Any html commands necessary to alterate this webquest can be found here
Personally I see a lot of potential in Webquests or web-based learning in general but it has to be made clear that it is as much trouble to implement it into a running course than any other method of teaching device.
- Mr Tom March "Why Webquests?"
All accessed and linked pages where double checked for false and misleading information and worked out on September, 31st 2007.
Referrals and links: The author is not responsible for any contents linked or referred to from his pages - unless he has full knowledge of illegal contents and would be able to prevent the visitors of his site fromviewing those pages. If any damage occurs by the use of information presented there, only the author of the respective pages might be liable, not the one who has linked to these pages.