WebQuest Evaluation

The WebQuest I chose to evaluate is “Rebelling for Freedom”.  This is a WebQuest designed by Jennifer Armusewicz, Emily Breiner, Kate Dougan, and Kate Wheeler from the University of Richmond,Virginia.  In this History and Social Studies WebQuest, students are asked to visualize themselves living in 1973, in the time period right before the American Revolution.   The colonists living in Boston, Massachusetts are asked again to pay ANOTHER tax on goods.  They are fed up with paying taxes and are going to stage a peaceful rebellion against England.  The students’ job from this activity is to figure out the best way to rebel peacefully to prove to England that they are sick of being controlled and told what they have to do.  

           The strategies used to teach this lesson would be a hands-on, meaningful learning approach.  Students would have knowledge of the ongoing problems between the colonists and England.  Their content knowledge will help them understand why the colonists are so angry when they are told they are going to pay MORE taxes.  They use deductive reasoning to construct the best way to have a peaceful rebellion.     

This lesson is a great activity for my fifth graders.  In the fifth grade curriculum, students learn about the American Revolution and how and why the thirteen American colonies were formed.  One goal for “Rebelling for Freedom”  is for students to write from their own perspective and explain their reasoning.  This lesson also has the ability to extend students in thinking about a current issue in society.  They could learn about another rebellion that has happened recently in the United States and compare and contrast both rebellions.  

  

           This WebQuest does not mention using technology.  However, students could not only a textbook but the Internet to search for the variety of reasons the colonists were sick of English rule.  They could search for ways other groups have rebelled peacefully.  Students could also be required to post their response on a Wiki page or on a blog so other classmates could respond.  Although technology is not mentioned, it definitely could be utilized effectively for this particular lesson.   
    
           The problem I see with this WebQuest is that there is not a lot of direction to it, lacking in specific step-by-step directions. Although I really liked the idea, the lesson does not go into much detail on how to effectively implement this into your classroom. If I was to improve this WebQuest, I would give more information how to successfully use this in the classroom, maybe providing a rubric of what the final product should look like.  This WebQuest does credit its sources, but is copyrighted from 2002-2006 so it could be updated.     

Here is the screenshot of the WebQuest I found- http://screencast.com/t/RWRrxxHnw

Here is the link to the webpage- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zk65o73mzntf6llBQmQteyu2fheTeaQWdGLR23R0DKk/edit?hl=en_US