Pre-Columbian Civilizations Encyclopedia Maker

This website can be effectively used in high school world history classrooms to develop each individual students understanding of the Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations. Students will not only have the opportunity to explore a fair quantity of content relating to these civilizations, they will be able to do so progressively over the course of creating a document of their very own. Students will have the opportunity to engage with one specific topic in depth, which not all of their classmates will be working on. This allows the student to excercise choice in their selection of educational content and encourages students to not only be engaged with their material but to take ownership over their educational experience. I picture this website being used prior to the begining of in-class lectures on the Pre-Columbian civilizations. Students who have already been exposed to basic material will be more confident of their capacity to understand the material when they are being exposed to it in class, and that will remove one of the main obstacles to effective lecturing which is students feeling confused and left behind early in the lecture and giving up on understanding the material. Furthermore the fact the students will have a chance to feel like an expert on a particular subject, to feel like they have something to add even to the lecture material will increase their engagement in the material of the lecture and students who learn by hearing another student talk about what they already know will more confident of their ability to comprehend the subject themselves.

 

The Learning objectives of this activity are not limited to content exploration of the aspects of Pre-Columbian civilizations dealt with directly by this website (Government, Economy, Relgion, Warfare, Gender Roles, Art and Architecture) but also include production tasks and general cultivation of critical thinking and analytical skills. I would say that the site should be helpful in prompting students to accomplish the following objectives;

- Students describe the basic outline of two of the three civilizations covered by the site (The Inca, The Maya, and The Aztecs).

- Students apply knowledge gained through reading materials in order to explain details of a specific topic in regard to the civilizations mentioned above.

- Students compare and contrast the civilizations mentioned above on the basis of the particular topic which they have chosen.

- Students create an original document of their very own on the basis their interpretation of the materials which they have encountered during their time on the site with the aid of a set of instructions provided by the site.

 

In addition to these objectives, there a couple other benefits which a teacher might hope for students to draw from their engagement with this site. The topics chosen for specific analysis (Government, Economy, Relgion, Warfare, Gender Roles, Art and Architecture) are still relevant in the modern world. This presents a theme of history to students, which is that people in the past dealt with many issues, both as individuals and societies, that we still deal with today even if they dealt with them in very different ways. I hope this webquest will help students to see this connection between past and present and perhaps it will make the past a little less remote for students. Furthermore I hope that students find this webquest to be not only an engaging learning experience but also a creative experience. While students are not left without a path to follow they are encouraged to expand on any point that is interesting to them and to relate experiences to their own lives. The document which will be the end outcome of a students work on this website will hopefully be a personal document reflective of what the student themselves put into and hoped to get out of the experience. I hope that this website give students the opportunity to work in the area between too little freedom to explore and not enough instruction for them to have any idea what to do.