What is a WebQuest?

Hello Parents/Students! Welcome to the online world of Steven Alper and Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie! For this unit we will be conducting a WebQuest utilizing tools from the Internet as well as your students' brains! Through this activity, students will explore the author, learn how to connect to a text and discover what it would be like if the novel was written from another character's point of view. Students will be assigned various tasks to perform as well as be expected to log in to Edmodo to take quizzes and participate in class discussion. The final project will be an online journal, much like a blog, written from Steven's little brother's point of view. This project is ongoing throughout the Quest and students should use their knowledge of the material and creativity to convince me that they ARE Jeffrey. This is going to be a lot of fun! Happy Drumming!

Videos and Presentations!

Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie


For this assignment, I chose to create a book trailer for the novel we will be reading in a few weeks because my Web Quest is all about the novel study. Animoto is something I've used before for other things, but not for use in the classroom. I truly believe that this tool is an incredible way to capture student interest and motivate them to take charge of their own learning; especially when they have to be really careful about which pictures to choose and the caption to write due to time and character limitations. This would be a great final project for novel study, poetry presentations (so the students don't have to read theirs aloud and be embarrassed), as well as for persuasive techniques. I look forward to using this in class very soon!

Educational Applications of Word Clouds

Educational Applications of Word Clouds

Word cloud programs like Wordle and Tagxedo are tools that allow anyone to create fun new ways to look at words. In the classroom, these can be used to introduce new vocabulary, concepts, terms or units. Programs like Wordle and Tagxedo will "perceive" the most important words and make them stand out using larger fonts or bold lettering. I use Wordle all the time because I find it more user friendly than Tagxedo. On Wordle, I can insert my own text but on Tagxedo, I haven't been able to figure out how to do this and cannot locate an answer in the FAQ's. I use Wordle to introduce new units into my classroom. My next unit is a novel study on Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick. The wordles I've created for this unit look like this:

Concepts Wordle: 

Vocabulary Wordle: 

I love using wordles in my classroom and having my kids create them as well. They love the ability to change the colors, fonts and styles.