In a Subject Sampler learners are presented with a smaller number (maybe half a dozen) of intriguing Web sites organized around a main topic. They are asked to visit the sites and respond to information found there. The selected sites can include photographs, art, music, text, and a variety of other types of information. What makes this a particularly effective way to engage students is that the teacher has chosen Web sites themselves that offer something interesting to do, read, or see about a given topic. Teachers can use a Subject Sampler when they want students to feel connected to the topic, to get emotionally involved in the topic, and to feel that the topic really matters.
Subject Sampler-Essential Questions One of the challenges we face as classroom teachers is learning to use Essential Questions to guide our students' learning experiences. Creating Essential Questions that truly give a student the opportunity to engage in the learning process is a difficult endeavor.Your job is to sample and explore a minimum of five of the sites listed below. As you visit the sites, write down your thoughts on the questions asked below. You'll be expected to be your group's expert on Essential Questions and when you meet again with your group, your role will be to share with them what you've learned about writing Essential Questions. Smart questions are essential technology for those who venture on to the Information Highway. Without strong questioning skills, you are just a passenger on someone else's tour bus. You may be on the highway, but someone else is doing the driving.Without strong questioning skills, you are unlikely to exercise profitable search strategies which allow you to cut past the Info-Glut Info-Garbage and Info-Glitz which all too often impede the search for Insight.Sometimes this New Information Landscape seems more like Eliot's Wasteland than a library, more like a yard sale than a gold mine.
The weaker the questioning and learning skills, the less value one is likely to discover or uncover.Schools without a strong commitment to student questioning and research are wasting their money if they install expensive networks linking classrooms to rich electronic information resources.As long as schools are primarily about teaching rather than learning, there is little need for expanded information capabilities. Considering the reality that schools and publishers have spent decades compressing and compacting human knowledge into efficient packages and delivery systems like textbooks and lectures, they may not be prepared for this New Information Landscape which calls for independent thinking, exploration, invention and intuitive navigation. There have always been plenty of questions in schools, but most of them have come from the teacher, often at the rate of one question every 2-3 seconds.
Definition A Subject Sampler presents a small number of sites organized around a specific topic that offer something interesting to do, read, or see. A subject Sampler helps students connect affectively to topic because they are asked to respond from a personal perspective. Right and wrong answers are not the focus, but rather students are invited to join the community of learners surrounding the topic. Subject Samplers communicate to students that their views are valued. |
| Curricular Goal
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| Steps for Creating
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Process description
- Teacher create list of Internet sites for students.
- Students are asked to respond to the Web-based activities from a personal perspective (their perspectives on topics, comparisons to experiences they have had, personal interpretations of artworks or data, etc.)
Required resources
Computer, Internet
Examples
1) China: http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/China/sampler.html
2)Exploring Past Leaders Subject Sampler: http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/ca_150/
3)http://www.chccs.k12.nc.us/mdelem/webquests/smith/OBX%20Sampler.html
4)http://www.edclicks.com/
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