by Ethan
H. Calk
Campus Instructional Technologist
Holmes/Business Careers High School
In this online activity, we will learn to create a web-based Treasure Hunt lesson for your classroom. After deciding on a topic, we will search the Internet for interesting, informative websites to support our topic, then create the Treasure Hunt using Netscape Composer.
NISD teachers may receive 6 hours of Professional Development/Teacher Choice hours upon completion of all three activities.
A Treasure Hunt is a collection of internet resources which are used to research a topic and find answers to related questions. In addition, a "Big" question is included to sum up the information and encourage synthesis and evaluation of the topic.
A smartly designed Treasure Hunt can go far beyond finding unrelated nuggets of knowledge. By choosing questions that define the scope or parameters of the topic, when the students discover the answers they are tapping into a deeper vein of thought, one that now stakes out the dimensions or schema of the domain being studied. Finally, by including a culminating "Big Question," students are afforded the chance to synthesize what they have learned and shape it into a broader understanding of the big picture.
There are four main parts of a Treasure Hunt: Introduction, Questions, The "Big" Question, and Internet Links.
Introduction
In this section, you will introduce the topic and give a few directions for completion of the activity.
Treasure Hunt Questions
Students will use various internet links to answer up to 10 questions about the topic. Questions can be informational in nature, or can require higher-level thinking skills.
The "Big" Question
This higher-level thinking skill question has students combine and synthesize what they've learned in the Treasure Hunt in order to get "the big picture" about the topic.
Internet Links
This is a list of websites the students will use to research their questions.
Take a few minutes to explore some Treasure Hunts on the Web. Click on the links below, then click the BACK button to return.
| Save the Rainforest | Space Chase |
| El Niño | What Are You? |
| The Sixties | World War II |
| Job Search | Men & Women of the Revolutionary War |
| Tigers | Food Pyramid |
Activity #1
Download the Treasure Hunt Evaluation Rubric (Word document). Using the rubric, evaluate two of the above treasure hunts. E-mail the completed Word document to your instructor (ethancalk@nisd.net).
Follow these steps to design your Treasure Hunt:
