Monday, November 7, 2011

From the desk of Fidel Castro



Today JFK gained knowledge of my plans with Russian Premier, Nikita Khrushchev. Up until now the plans to build a secret missile base in Cuba were secret. Due to the proximity to the United States JKF has ordered a blockade between Russia and Cuba to halt materials and building of any more missiles. All this could have been solved much earlier had JFK come to an agreement with Khrushchev about the missiles placed in Turkey. I, Castro did not start this war and merely took the opportunity to increase my countries power despite its size. Even though the US has tried to weakness my beloved Cuba by discontinuing its economic trade in sugar and oil we have the Russian’s loyalty aid us now!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Good WebQuest

 This is the better WebQuest:
http://questgarden.com/68/27/8/080714083531/index.htm

 I chose this webquest because it was one with every page completed. The webquest is designed to take students through the Great Depression. Students are divided into groups where they assume the role of a character from the Great Depression and then learn more about them from a New York Times article. After reading it they discuss the article and describes how their character fits into the time period. This is my only criticism is that it doesn't exactly specify that students are suppose to write their own journal  entries from their character's perspective but it would make sense that they would. So they then type a few journal entries that they will read to the class at the end of the week.

The idea is good and it is important that the webquest includes writing. The only things I would change is either have an example of how the journal entry should look or a more specific instruction sheet so they know how much to write. It does give topic ideas to discuss in the journal. The page is easy to navigate and the link to the newspaper worked fine. It says this would be a week long lesson using three days for the journals and two for presenting. I don't feel there is enough material for that and I think more material could be added and a day cut off. I would add a few more links with more pictures and things and give them two days to look at them and make notes. Then I would give them a day to focus on the writing and then two days to present. One newspaper link is not enough source info to write journals from.

Necessarily