WebQuest Direct - Antarctica: An Unspoilt Environment on Earth

Teachers Notes

Welcome to the WebQuest I have designed on Antarctica, I hope you find this a useful resource.

Learners:

This WebQuest was designed and developed as a team project for the Year 9 SOSE Term long unit of work - Antarctica. The WebQuest satisfies the QSA SOSE Syllabus outcomes shown below.

Duration:
The WebQuest is designed to be completed in a sequential order following the order of the tasks and ideally you should allow a minimum of ten (10) lessons for students to complete. This WebQuest can be incorporated into the Antarctica term long Unit of work (8 - 10 weeks) or it could be used on it's own at the end of the Unit of work for approximately four (4) weeks.

Pre-requisites:

Students prior to commencing this WebQuest should have a basic knowledge of Antarctica. The students should at the beginning of the Unit participate in a focus lesson on Antarctica and the effects and issues of human impact on its wilderness and wildlife - allowing the students to develop an understanding and increase their knowledge regarding these complex and sensitive topics. The WebQuest will then follow-on to enable the students to further extend their knowledge of Antarctica.

WebQuest:

When choosing the teams, ensure to consider each students strengths and weaknesses. Try to make the teams balanced with a variety of skills in each.

The WebQuest process is outlined in detail on the Process page.

Successful completion of this WebQuest will enable the students to gain valuable experiences in group work, research skills, hypothesis writing and presenting in front of the class. It provides the students with a great opportunity to learn a lot about Antarctica from different perspectives.

All the work is done – all you have to do is give your students the opportunity to explore the WebQuest.

Have Fun!

To implement this WebQuest you will need the following resources:

Computer and Internet Access

Word Processing and PowerPoint Presentation Software

Links are provided to guide students through the process to successfully complete the WebQuest

Rubrics for Assessing Presentations

Student Emails

Specifically this WebQuest incorporates the following KLA Learning Outcomes:

KLA: SOSE

	Place and Space 6.1 Students use criteria and geographical skills to develop conclusions about the management of a place.
	Place and Space 6.2 Students create proposals to resolve environmental issues in the Asia-pacific region.
	Place and Space 6.4 Students use maps, tables and statistical data to express predictions about the impact of change on environments.
	Time, Continuity and Change 6.2 Students analyse changes in the management of Antarctica.

KLA: SCIENCE

	Life and Living 6.3 Students examine potential long-term effects of human activities on the environment of Antarctica.
KLA:TECHNOLOGY
	Information 6.2 Students develop and use specialised techniques to present information in innovative ways of Antarctica.

Throughout this WebQuest the students will achieve the following goals:

Learn about the Antarctic environment and wildlife.

Learn about the ownership of Antarctica.

Work in a team cooperatively to develop a number of recommendations to answer the WebQuest question.

Develop and defend an argument from one of the three suggested proposals - Ecotourism, Mining and Commercial Fishing.

Learn and accept that sensitive and complex issues can have a number of different views.

Learn about past and future issues in Antarctica.

* All Images by Antarctica Online Photo Gallery