Lesson 6

Build Your Plate Webquest:
http://questgarden.com/147/20/0/120805205144/

Being new to the education field and this being my first term at UC, Webquests were new to me.  I'm sure I've run across them in Internet viewing and searches.  I enjoyed learning more about them this week and how they can be used in a classroom.  I also like how we can share Webquests with other educators to utilize in our class. 
When building our webquest for our assignment, I chose a nutrition topic since I've been working in this area for the past several years.  In my daughter's school they have a picture of the My Pyramid guide which is great to see for the kids.  That's actually been revised to My Plate.  I based my webquest on this method.  I provided websites for the students to see the plate and what is involved in each section.  I'm a big believer that kids can have an impact in their homes on what they learn.  I included a statement on taking the plate they developed home so they could show their family what a healthy plate of food looks like.  They could even share the websites with family, if a computer was available, and go into more depth on the topic.  An additional website was provided for students to search at home on The Plate method.  This site also provided information on the former My Pyramid method. 
Challenges that I encountered included some of the basics.  First, this was a great experience being my first webquest developed.  Trying to brainstorm on a topic is an initial challenge.  Since I’ve worked in the area of nutrition I went with a topic in that area.  I’ll be certified in math in the future and would be more comfortable developing in that area once I’m teaching.  Once I decided on a topic, I had to find websites.  The first site from the USDA was one I was already familiar with having worked in a health department and being a dietitian, you become familiar on many of the government agency websites.  I was able to find some other kid specific nutrition sites regarding the My Plate method.  The evaluation section posed some difficulty since rubrics are also new to me.  I found it helpful to review some other webquests and how they set up their evaluation sections in terms of category wording.  Based on the webquest process, I set up the evaluation section on each task the students were to perform. 
Of course this is only the beginning with webquests.  It was very helpful going through the development process this time to learn the areas which I think will also get ideas flowing on future topics.