Dr. Trina Davis, President of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) welcomed more than 18,000 educators from more than 50 countries to the opening of the 2008 National Educational Computer Conference (NECC) in San Antonio last night. The keynote session was Texas-sized, filling the ballroom and broadcast throughout the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

Special thanks to the Southwest High School Mariachi Band. If they were at all nervous about performing in front of that large an audience, it didn’t show. Music, singing, and a little dancing got things off to a lively start.

In keeping with the conference theme of convene-connect-transform, Davis encouraged teachers to be “powerful advocates for change.” She encouraged us to share our passion, to showcase student work, and to dream big.

Keynote speaker James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, outlined conditions needed to make the kind of smart groups described in his book. He acknowledged the potential of technology in providing a way to aggregate the individual opinions of a group (95% of which will be wrong) into a collective judgment (which can be amazingly accurate).

He discussed the value of encouraging diversity with in a group, calling it “the most important component.” He stressed that, while socioeconomic diversity can be valuable, cognitive diversity will best provide the variety of perspectives needed to form a “smart group.” Homogeneous groups are easier to work in, but, Surowiecki stated, “The more they talk, the dumber they become.”

The third quality Surowiecki mentioned was independence. For a smart group to develop, people need to be able to think for themselves. They need a small amount of support to move beyond imitating others, and they need to be open to the kind of healthy disagreement that leads to seeing things from a different point of view.

The next couple of days are going to be fun. I’ll keep you posted!

All week I’ve been blogging about WebQuests, a terrific teaching/learning strategy that also integrates technology. WebQuests lend themselves well to author studies. The trick is to make sure students don’t limit themselves to a written report as a demonstration of their knowledge. Here are some possibilities:

Mem Fox
Mem Fox Author Study
Students learn about Australia’s unique animals. They create a story, play, poem, or song presenting their learning.

Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou
She’s Special, Too!
This WebQuest investigates the contributions of African-American women, including Hurston, Morrison, and Angelou. Students produce a presentation with a timeline, as well as a short paper.

Leo Lionni
Meet Leo Lionni
This WebQuest is designed for first graders, suggesting that we’re never too young to start reading and researching.

Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe: Father of Horror
Students create a program and a playbill for a Poe festival.

William Shakespeare
Will the Real William Shakespeare please Stand Up?
Students debate three possibilities: Marlowe, de Vere, and Shakespeare.

Mark Twain
Mark Twain and Laughter
Students explore Twain’s style of humor and compare it with modern comedy.

Generic Author Studies
Author Study WebQuest
Students collaborate on the design for the cover of a new book by the author of their choice.

Write On!
Write On!
Students explore an author’s writing, then produce either an author card or a booklet.

In honor of Independence Day, today’s WebQuests focus on literature related to 1776. April Morning by Howard Fast An April Morning Students assume different personas, research, and compile information about the time period into a newspaper page. Does Historical Fiction Help or Hurt History Students? Students respond to a hypothetical letter to the editor with a recommendation of their own.

Benjamin Franklin

• Benjamin Franklin
  Students produce an age-appropriate almanac modeled on Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack.
• Who are the Founding Fathers?
  Students research the lives and beliefs of Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and other founders.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

• The Real Johnny Tremain
  Students produce a slide presentation comparing the real and fictional Johnny Tremains.
• SpongeBob vs. Johnny Tremain
  Who demonstrates better citizenship and why? Students use the Seven Core Values of Democracy as guidelines.

My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

• The Debate — Loyalty or Liberty?
  Students “timetravel” to participate in a debate between Loyalists and Patriots.
• My Brother Sam is Dead
  Students select items for a time capsule based on the experiences of the Meeker family.

About this time of year an e-mail often surfaces, one that details the price the Founding Families paid for signing the Declaration of Independence. Its purpose is to encourage patriotism. Snopes.com has conducted its usual thorough job of investigating the claims in this e-mail and sharing the results online.

The true story is compelling enough: it was an act of courage to commit to independence. It was an act of courage to hold to that commitment during the Revolutionary War. And acts of courage have been required of Americans great and small throughout our history. Take a moment today to honor that courage.

Happy 4th of July!

My ninth graders had to do a research paper. Not a single one of us was looking forward to this unit. They didn’t find writing appealing; I dreaded the hours of paper grading that would come at the end. Still, it had to be done.

The research paper unit came hard on the heels of our reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Inspired by that and the book Murder, Mischief, and Mayhem by W. Keith Kraus, I decided to steer my students toward topics that involved a mystery. They would research the facts, investigate the leading theories, and propose a solution, either by explaining which theory best accounted for the facts or by proposing an interpretation of their own. In order to help them with the research, I put together a list of a dozen topics and a few good sites to support each one.

Once I realized the task would be Web-based, the WebQuest format was an easy choice.

Because WebQuests are inquiry-based, a research paper is not usually a good product for a WebQuest. I fictionalized the task by asking students to assume that they were preparing background information for an upcoming documentary about the topic of their research. The disguise didn’t fool them for a moment. (Well, I tried.)

So imagine taking 27 chattering freshmen to the computer lab, asking for silence to get everyone on the same page, asking for silence again to explain the task, and then stepping back to see who would need help first. The most amazing thing happened: the room grew quiet. Were they lost? Were they confused? I tried to figure out what was wrong.

They were READING.

Each student had selected a topic in just a couple of minutes. They had found information quickly because the WebQuest provided some links. They had started researching without any of the traditional complaints (”All these topics are boring.” “I can’t think of anything to write about.” “I can’t find anything about my topic.”) They were utterly engrossed in the task at hand.

That WebQuest led to the best batch of research papers I’d seen from freshmen in years. Most of them were about the same topic, but that was OK.

I called the WebQuest Unsolved Mysteries, and it became an annual event. Students would ask on the first day of school, “Is this the class where we study Jack the Ripper?”

Well, sort of!

More WebQuests dealing with mysteries:

Unsolved Mysteries
This WebQuest asks students to assume roles in a collaborative group.

The World’s Unsolved Mysteries
Students present their findings in a slide presentation.

Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History
A list of 21 WebQuests on 6 topics, divided by age group.

The streets and roads of the late 1800s and early 1900s saw the introduction of a new technology. At first the vehicles were small, sometimes seating only two. Some were steam-powered; some used just a stick for steering. They were dirty and noisy, and they frightened small children. People called them “horseless carriages.”

The name “horseless carriage” reflects the way we adopt technology. When we are given a new tool, our first inclination is to seek out the similarities with which we are familiar. It is usually later that we appreciate the differences. A farmer like my grandfather who needed to travel just into town each day to sell his milk would see no value in the new-fangled contraption and would stick to his horses, thank you very much. Not until the winter that he wanted to go to Florida would he understand the value of going horseless.

Education has adopted technology in much the same fashion. In the late ’80s we embraced word processing. (One of the earliest word processors was in fact called “Electric Pencil.”) Teachers noted gains in student writing once revision became more convenient. We were limited to green screens; we had to learn enough code to set the margins and power the printer; and we had several students for each computer. But the kids were writing. Games that taught academic skills would follow soon.

Enter the Internet. Creative educators embraced it almost immediately. We could use it for research because we saw it as a kind of library. (One famous definition called the Internet “a library with all the books on the floor” as it introduced the concept of a search engine.) Looking at its e-mail function, we treated it like a post office and created e-Pals or KeyPals programs. We posted our students’ work online, using the Web as a kind of bulletin board. When WebCams were introduced, we saw it as live television.

In 1995 Bernie Dodge, Tom Marsh, and other teachers in San Diego came up with an approach that took education and the Web to a new level: the WebQuest.

The WebQuest is the equivalent of my grandfather’s trip to Florida. It requires us to rethink our use of the Internet. In a WebQuest, finding information is not a goal, it’s a means to an end. Once the information has been researched, it must be transformed into something new: a newspaper article, a simulated diary entry, a brochure, items for a time capsule, a song, a skit, an ad campaign … the possibilities are extensive. It is the transformation of the information into a new product that distinguishes a WebQuest from a Treasure Hunt, a Hotlist, or a simple report. The WebQuest requires us to use the new tool in a new way.

WebQuests have been around for 12 years, and last week the WebQuest.org site was updated and relaunched. This is a good time to look at WebQuests in detail. I’m planning to blog about them all week, and I’d like to hear your stories, too!