INTRODUCTION

This lesson was developed as part of the Professional Development requirements of the City of Schenectady School District, Schenectady, New York. This lesson was designed for use in a Middle School Technology Classroom.

This WebQuest will direct the students to:

research, both manually and electronically, a technological inventor of their choice,

compile specific information about the inventor and his or her invention,

ultimately create a 10-slide PowerPoint Presentation from the research--very specific guidelines are provided for the information that should be included on each slide,

work in small groups to design and create an "invention" of their own,

participate in a mock debate to determine whose invention is really "the best".

LEARNERS

This lesson is anchored in Seventh Grade Technology and involves Social Studies, Science, Mathematics, and Language Arts to a lesser extent. This lesson, however, could be very easily extended to additional grades and subject areas.

The lesson assumes that the students involved have some prior knowledge of Library and Internet research, PowerPoint Presentations, technical drawing, and cooperative group work.

CURRICULUM STANDARDS

This lesson incorporates several of the NYS Standards for Technology including: learning about the history of technology and presenting information using different forms of graphic communication.

The students will also be involved in critical thinking, decision making, cooperative group work, creative production, and compare and contrast activities.

PROCESS

This interdisciplinary lesson is designed to cover 20 class periods, or approximately 4 weeks. The teacher should be accustomed to students working both individually and in small groups. Also, the teacher should be prepared to conduct an informal debate at the conclusion of the project.

Click here to view the Student Process section of the project.

RESOURCES NEEDED

A few, very specific, resources and materials are required to successfully implement this lesson.

Primarily, one teacher can facilitate the entire lesson. If aides or paraprofessionals were available, they would be a great help in assisting students with ideas, research, grammar, and writing skills.

It is imperative for each student to have access to a computer equipped with Microsoft PowerPoint and access to the Internet. It is also essential that the student be provided with enough disk or drive space to save not only text files, but also those that contain assorted multi-media, such as pictures, videos, and sounds.

In addition, in order for off-line resources to be a requirement, I would suggest scheduling a few "Library Days" and/or providing an assortment of paper resources for the class to use.

A list of on-line resources can be found by clicking here. All of these websites have been evaluated by me, and at the time of the evaluation, contained relevant, appropriate content to this assignment.

I would also suggest a wonderful volume of videos from the Discovery Channel Collection, entitled, INVENTION. Each volume explores the invention of every day items including mousetraps, computer chips, and the flying car.

EVALUATION

Click here to view the rubrics for assessing student work.

CONCLUSION

The sole intent of this WebQuest was to present information required by the NYS Learning Standards in a fun , interesting manner.

To bring some closure to the activity , before the debate, I plan to link all PowerPoint Presentations together and create one large "INVENTION DISPLAY" to show to the class. This will provide a broader base of knowledge for each student.

CREDITS & REFERENCES

All clip art images were obtained from the Microsoft On-Line Clip Gallery. Click here to visit that site.

A special thanks goes to Joe Carmola for providing ideas for such a great activity.

For all other sources used, please see the RESOURCES section on this page.

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