Essential question - How can different cultures express themselves through art? How can art influence and connect with people in different cultures?  
Ideas: I believe it is important for students to learn and understand different cultures and what they have to offer. With provided websites and information through the internet, student's can explore what different cultures view as art. The students will be responsible for picking a piece of art from a culture different from theirs. With this piece, they will research the artist, the history, the perception, and the importance of the artwork. Then the students can come up with their own perception of the piece.

Art and Culture The world is an incredibly diverse place. The purpose of this WebQuest is to discover and discuss a symbol or theme prominent in art, and determine it's origins and how it has either changed or stayed the same over time and culture, and why. Last published: Jun 15, 2014    Word count: 1381

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Grade: 9-12 Art/Music Social Studies

9.4

Essential question- Why is it important to

Living In Poverty Students will be assigned a four-person family with an income level just above the national poverty level of $22,080. $2705 will be deducted from the paychecks for taxes. They have to coordinate all aspects of their life in order for them to survive solely on their income (without any government or outside assistance). Students will use their experience to create a presentation showing how they did or did not survive and their thoughts on the poverty level system (and how much more money they would need to survive). Last published: Sep 22, 2011    Word count: 1998

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Grade: 6-8 Business English/Language Arts Health/PE Life Skills/Careers Info Literacy/Library Math Professional Social Studies Technology

7.5

Webquest Worksheet

Your Role

_X__Efficiency Expert

___Affiliator

___Altitudinist

___Technophile

Your Impressions

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
John Wilkes Booth	The Diary of John Wilkes Booth allows students to go through each stop in his journey after killing the president. It's set up like a mystery and almost encourages and entertains the students as they learn more about that piece of history, and acquire the knowledge and skills to come up with some creative writing of their own.	The Webquest didn't have a lot of steps to it. It was very open for students to come up with what they wanted of the story.. This might be an advantage for some students, but others might need a little more assistance and direction.
Landfills	This Webquest allows students to work together to come up with different reasons about where and why a landfill should be placed. This focuses on the importance of pollution reduction, working together as a team, and coming up with a decision based on the evidence shown.	The Webquest could maybe add more factors that would make up why the students picked what they did to play into the geographic importance of the landfill. Or Highlight the reasons why it is important for the landfill to not be in certain areas ex. - pollution kills fish and contaminates the water.
Ancient Egypt	This Webquest allows students to work in groups to come up with a brochure that shows all Ancient Egypt has to offer. Each student is responsible for a PowerPoint slide during the final presentation. While working on the brochure, the students will gain a better understanding of the history, culture, and geography of Ancient Egypt.	Add more guidelines to make sure the students are actually researching information about ancient Egypt in order to make the brochure and not just constructing a coloring page of the area.
Creative Encounters	The creative encounters Webquest allows students to go over place values and the number system. Students much research, share, create their own new number system for the aliens, and then teach that number system in a presentation to the rest of the class. Its a very creative way for students to understand the concepts and the reasoning behind place values and the number system.	The directions are a little complicated for a middle school student. Make the Webquest more navigable by already having links attached to the pages, or providing spaces for the students to write their responses instead of having them pull up 4 different pages and minimizing certain ones so that they can see what they need to do on their drive.
Discussion	1.)Our favorite Webquest was the Diary of John Wilkes Booth because the content and the assignment was very helpful for students to not only gain more understanding of that part of history, but also use their creative writing skills.  2.) Our second favorite was the Ancient Egypt Webquest because it allowed students to research information and come up with a brochure to present to the class what they learned.	3.) Our second to least favorite Webquest was the  Creative Encounters because we thought the instructions were over a middle school student's head. It was too busy and a little confusing. 4.) Our least favorite Webquest was the Landfills because it didn't provide enough instruction for the students to understand why the landfills needed to be placed in a particular location.

Bernie Dodge, Department of Educational Technology, SDSU

The importance of a Webquest

Three important ideas/things from the reading today are

1.) cognitive psychology tells us that if we want novices to perform at more expert levels, we need to examine how experts go about their work and then prompt novices through a similar process.
2.) Real Webquests facilitate meaningful use of the Web for educational ends
3.) The use of the internet and technology can help create a better learning atmosphere for students
but the most important thing I learned is that the best Webquests leverage more learning by integrating other powerful learning strategies.

Visual Metaphor:
authentic task to motivate students'

Diversity with a visual metaphor

Through out the reading for this week, I discovered many factors that play a roll in the importance of diversity; especially in schools. The first thing I noticed in the reading was that diversity encourages creativity. It allows people to look for several different perspectives. If students are not introduced to any kind of diversity, they will not get those kinds of important perspectives, and they will not be able to understand the advantages diversity can bring to their lives. People who are different from one another bring unique ideas to the table. This allows us to successfully progress into new understandings. Understanding and accepting diversity provokes thought. It changes the negative perceptions people see in each other and brings us together to discover and advance through this world together. By accepting diversity, students can use each other as a learning tool to gain different perspectives and ideas that would have otherwise not been introduced to them.

Important Idea: Diversity creates more perspectives

 

sond analysis

All Kinds of Kinds, by Maranda Lambert is a song that I feel encourages individuality and diversity. It supports the idea of being different from everybody else in the world because, "ever since the beginning, to keep the world spinning, it takes all kinds of kinds." Without the ideas and cultures that seperate individuals, the world would not have the abilitiy to grow into a successful society. That is why it is important to encourage and support learning diversity into the classroom. In Precious Children: Diversity in the Classroom, the article highlights the improtance of reaching out to younger children because it is critical to help them develop a positive self-image and grow to respect and appriciate the differences in their peers. Any form of bias regarding race, gender, social class, or disability creates a serious obsticle that prevents children from a healthy development. In order to prevent negativity from ever coming into the classroom, parents and teachers can suppport diversity by counteracting any bias. This includes talking positively about anyones differences, show no bias to friends, teachers, or anyone in the community, provide children with opportunities to be introduced to differences through class activities, and remind them that everything they say or think is important. 2nd song analysis - Imagine, by John Lennon is a song that we feel supports diversity in the classroom. Through out the lyrics, Lennon concentrates on all the factors in the world that causes conflict. However, these factors are only a product of diversity, and if individuals would understand and support one another, there would be no need for that type of conflict or violence. That is why it is important to support diversity in the classroom. What many people don't understand is that the differences in individuals are what make the world unique. It also provides many different perspectives that help the world advance to a successful place. In Precious Children: Diversity in the classroom, It highlights the importance of understanding diversity at a young age because without acceptance, children will face many obsticales that will prevent them from ever moving forward. The lyrics to imagine, really help listeners visualize this aspect because the song shows what will happen of we don't support diversity.

My Top 5 Songs about Diversity

All Kinds of Kinds - Miranda Lambert

Colors of the Wind - Judy Kuhn

Street corner Symphony - Rob Thomas

Soulshine - The Allman Brothers Band

Imagine - John Lennon

Other songs \ - Can You Feel It - The Jackson 5
Different Colors - Walk the Moon

 

How Diversity makes us Smarter

Three important ideas/things from the reading today are :

1.)  Diversity encourages creativity. It allows people to look for several different perspectives, which leads to better decision making and better outcomes.

2.) People who are different from one another bring unique ideas to the table. This allows us to successfully progress into new understandings.

3.)  There have been many studies that prove the positive role that diversity plays in a group or team setting.

 The most important thing I learned today is that understanding and accepting diversity provokes thought. It changes the negative perceptions people see in each other and brings us together to discover and advance through this world together. By accepting diversity, students can use each other as a learning tool to gain different perspectives and ideas that would have otherwise not been introduced to them.

Diversity Reading

Three important ideas/things from the reading today are that America is known as a kaleidoscope for its divers people, children do not come into the world understanding the differences in people, the are taught discrimination, and being understanding in diversity can help you enhance many aspects of your life, but the most important thing I learned today is that teachers play a crucial role in helping students understand the importance of diversity.

Reading Instruction for all Students

Three important ideas/things from the reading today are: There has recently been more focus on reading comprehension in all grade levels instead of just the elementary age, the Common Core State Standards say the all students need to be able to comprehend text of steadily increased complexity through every grade level, and when students come to school with prior knowledge of reading text often excel in future reading comprehension, but the most important thing I learned from the reading is that teachers are responsible for choosing the complexity of the text for an individual student because the teacher knows the student best.  One way my UDL book might support reading instruction for all students is a recording of my voice to read along with the text. This will help a student that might be struggling to understand the text and better learn how to read it on their own.