Shared Sharing Practice

Internet challenges

Photo of souvenirs in Paris

Golden rules of making internet challenges

  1. Find a site or collection of sites that offers an achievable task for your students.
  2. Create a task using the template below.
  3. Double-check that your task works a day or two before you set the challenge: websites change quickly and your task might need to be tweaked.

Template for internet challenges

Introduction

Get your students into a role - you’re on holiday, you’ve got to arrange a hotel for your boss, or you need to order some food at the online supermarket. It should be entertaining, and quickly get the student away from the classroom and into the task.

Task

Give the final aim: 'book a hotel', 'order some food', 'find out the times for...'

Step by step

Each step should include:

  1. The next link to be clicked
  2. The link itself (in case the student gets lost)
  3. An indication of what the student should look for. This could be in the form of a question: 'Which button should you click if you are looking for shops in Paris?'
  4. An indication of where the answer should be recorded (on the sheet; in the jotter).       

Each step should lead to the student achieving a task and moving deeper into a website.

Conclusion

Express what the learners should have done by the end of the internet challenge.

Extension

Offer a writing or reading task that uses the information or language gleaned from the challenge.

More on internet challenges across the curriculum

Many teachers create great internet challenges. An alternative term is 'webquest', which was coined by Bernie Dodge, who runs a webquest page at San Diego State University. This site provides more detailed guidance on creating internet challenges/webquests for other teachers to use and downloadable challenges for the whole curriculum.