Introduction to our WebQuest

Students and Parents of Ms. White's Regents Physics,
In a few days we will be starting a WebQuest on momentum in class. A WebQuest is an inquiry based lesson or unit that is done all or mostly on the internet. It is designed to keep students' interest as well as allow them to take responsibility for their learning. Students will learn and improve on their 21st century skills of creativity, collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking. Students will navigate through various selected websites and learn about the different aspects of momentum, and I will act as a coach and guide the students through the unit. After learning about the basics of momentum, students will work to create a final project that will allow me to assess what they have learned from the WebQuest. Students will be acting as accident investigators and use their knowledge of physics to determine what happened during the accident. Students will determine the speed of the cars prior to the collision and whether the air bags should have deployed during the accident. This blog, as well as a social media website will be available to students as an additional resource. If there are any questions please feel free to comment below. Students, we will talk much more in detail about this project in class.

Check out the following link to view our WebQuest:
Momentum in Real Life

Educational Value of Animoto

Animoto is a great tool to use in a classroom. The program allows teachers or students to create short (or longer if you pay) videos. The program can be used to create short commercials that advertise a topic or argue an opinion. Animoto can also be used as a vocabulary strategy, which can be seen in my sample below. Within a topic, each student (or groups) can be assigned a vocabulary word. In the 30 second video they should be able to capture the essence of their vocabulary word. They can define the word and give real world applications of the word. All videos can then be posted to a common blog where the entire class can view them to learn or review the unit vocabulary.

Check out my Animoto Video on Momentum/Impulse!
 
Momentum WebQuest