Source evaluation webquest

History Detective

(Create a Scavenger Hunt)

A WebQuest for 9th-12th Grade History Class

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Introduction

In order to learn to be a History Detective, it would be most appropriate to learn from the master sleuth himself - Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes would be a great teacher, but here is the dilemma - There is evidence to show that Sherlock Holmes was only a fictional character. There is also some evidence that leads many to believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real living breathing crime-solver, after all, millions of visitors visit his supposed residence every year at 221B Baker Street, London. Isn't that enough evidence to prove that the man was not just a figment of Arthur Conan Doyle's imagination? A character on the pages of a book? There seems to also be some evidence from a book entitled, The-Seven-Percent Solution, that the real living breathing Sherlock Holmes met with Sigmund Freud about a drug addiction. There even exist actual letters, people who wrote him, wanting to hire him to solve their mystery. Also, the internet is full of websites that claim he is real, and we can always trust the Internet.

Before we discover the answer, think about the questions that follow these instructions, open a new document in your word-processor, type the answers to the questions, and save the document in your file or on your disk as sherlock. We will discuss these answers later.

1. What evidence exists to prove that Sherlock Holmes is a real person?

2. What evidence do you know of that proves he was only fictional?

3. Where would be a good place to find even more evidence?

4. What different types of evidence are there? (Make a list.)

5. How could you categorize and organize the different types of evidence? (Categorize and Organize your list)

6. If you had a piece of evidence in your hand, what questions would you ask about it?

7. How could you insure that your thoughts about a certain piece of evidence are correct?

8. How would you keep track of the evidence you collect?

9. How does this connect to the study of history or government?

After you have completed all of the questions, click on the link below to find the correct answer.

Click here to go to: The Straight Dope: Did Sherlock Holmes Really Exist?

So which is it? Fictional ?or Real ?

Of course you knew the answer all along, right?

In the words of Sherlock Holmes himself, "It's elementary my Dear Watson."

After you have completed the opening activity, take a look at the skills and information you will learn from completing this WebQuest.

Curriculum Standards

Social Studies Standards Addressed:

• Students will understand and evaluate sources.
• Students will learn what sources and artifacts are.
• Students will learn the different categories of sources: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary    source
• Students will learn to identify and categorize historic sources.
• Students will learn to evaluate a source for credibility, bias, and errors.
• Students will learn how to cross-reference, triangulate, cross-check, or corroborate their    information in order to check for consistency.
• Given a source, students will be able to cite the source in one of the three acceptable    formats: Turabian (Chicago), APA, or MLA style.
• Student will gather background information to document the context of the information
• Students will define and recognize Plagiarism.

Thinking Skills

• Students will compare different sources and information
• Students will classify each source as Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary
• Student will use Deduction and Induction based on the given evidence to form a thesis.
• Students will compile evidence to support their thesis.

Task

Phase I

The first phase of this project is to learn about sources. Using the provided web sites and documents, you will learn about finding, documenting, evaluating, and citing sources information.

After reading the web sites and documents, you will print and answer the questions on the Sources Worksheet.

Click Here for: Sources Worksheet PDF File

Phase II

The second phase is where you will start practicing what you have learned. Either as a single student, or with a partner, you will find ten different sources, each containing a quote or piece of interesting historical information. The sources should vary in the format or type of source, and should vary in the historic content of the source. What does that mean? You need 10 sources from either books, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, on-line databases, professional journals, etc. Each of the sources should be about a different historic event or person. When you find a source of information that you find interesting, and you want to use it, you should fill out a note card for each source of information. Be very thorough in filling out the card, because you will use the information as clues, when you create your scavenger hunt.

Click For: Note Cards PDF File

Phase III

When you have completely documented all the information required for the ten Sources Note Cards, you will begin to make a PowerPoint presentation that will be your version of the History Detective Scavenger Hunt. This will be created by each partnership or student, and then each group will trade with another group, and try to find the other groups ten peices of information, and their ten sources for the information.

Scavenger Hunt:

The PowerPoint presentation will have five slides for each source, for a total of 50 slides in the presentation. Each slide will contain two peices of information: a hint about the content of the quote or peice of information, and a hint about where the source is found. The last slide will have the Bibliographic and Paranthetical citation information. The hunters will be timed to see which group can find their ten items the fastest, and with the least ammount of clues.

Quiz or PowerPoint Game:

As a final part of the PowerPoint presentation, each group will create a quiz, or PowerPoint Game that will quiz the other group on the information in the Sources Worksheet. Cover all of the information on the worksheet, including vocabulary, examples, questions, and how to cite correctly.

Click Powerpoint Game for templates and Ideas from Dr. Lloyd Rieber's WWILD Team

Free Microsoft Office On-line PowerPoint Templates

Phase IV

Evaluation will be completed by using the evaluation ruberic found at the bottom of this page.

Process

Phase I

Open up a new document with your word processor, and answer the following Research Questions, and make Notes of thougths or things you learned as you went through this quided activity. As you read through the information sources for this lesson. Save the document as detective_questions, then. Next, open, print, and complete the sources worksheet on your own.

Click Here for: Sources Worksheet PDF File

1. Visit these links, and answer: What are the different types and catagories of source?

2. Visit these links, and answer, What are artifacts?

3. Visit these links, and answer, How do you evaluate a source? What should you look for in a good source? What makes a bad source bad?

4. Visit these links, and answer: How can I be sure that my information is correct?

http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/poff.htm

5. Visit these links, and answer: How do I cite and document my source?

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources/contents.html
http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html (APA style)
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/netciteFARQ.html
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/RUSA/#four
http://www.oslis.k12.or.us/secondary/howto/cited/ (MLA style)
Mr. Hatch's Citation Manuals (Turabian (Chicago), MLA, APA)

6. What is plagiarism, and how does it affect students?

Now complete Phase II, III, and IV

Evaluation

Each student will be evaluated individually, based on the following ruberic. If the assignment is completed with a partner, each assignment must be comleted individually, excluding the PowerPoint Presentation preparation and creation. This collaborative section must be accompanied by a contract between the two students, outlining what the responsibilities of each student are. All portions of the contract must be completed in order to be evaluated for a grade.

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4
Pre-Activities
Sherlock Holmes Introduction Activity	Completed all questions, with little effort and thought.	Completed all question with marginal effort and thought.	Completed all question with adequete effort and thought.	Completed all question with exceptional effort and thought.
Sources Worksheet	Completed all questions, with little effort and thought. OR Score (<5)	Completed all question with marginal effort and thought. OR Score (5-9)	Completed all question with adequete effort and thought OR Score (10-14)	Completed all question with exceptional effort and thought. OR Score (15-20)
10 Note Cards	Completed with an extreme # of errors.	Completed with many errors.	Completed with very few errors.	Completed with little to no errors.
Research Questions and Notes
Types and Catagories of Sources	Poorly defined.	Marginally addressed and described.	Adequately covered with good reasoning.	Addressed Exceptionally well with good examples.
Types of Artifacts	Poorly defined.	Marginally addressed and described.	Adequately covered with good reasoning.	Addressed Exceptionally well with good examples.
Evaluation of Sources	Poorly defined.	Marginally addressed and described.	Adequately covered with good reasoning.	Addressed Exceptionally well with good examples.
Corroboration or Triangulation of Sources	Poorly defined.	Marginally addressed and described.	Adequately covered with good reasoning.	Addressed Exceptionally well with good examples.
Source Citation and Documentation	Poorly defined.	Marginally addressed and described.	Adequately covered with good reasoning.	Addressed Exceptionally well with good examples.
Plagiarism	Poorly defined.	Marginally addressed and described.	Adequately covered with good reasoning.	Addressed Exceptionally well with good examples.
PowerPoint Scavenger Hunt and Qiuz or Powerpoint Game
Content	Scavenger Hunt includes 2 hints and all of content from Source Worksheet: Questions, Examples, Vocabulary, etc. (0 or 4 Points)
Organization	The message is so disorganized you cannot understand most of the message.	The organization of the message is mixed up and random. The listener must make some assumptions about the sequence and relationship of ideas.	The message is organized. The listener has no difficulty understanding the sequence and relationships among the ideas in the message. The ideas in the message can be outlined easily.	The message is overtly organized. The presenter helps the listener understand the sequence and relationships of ideas by using organizational aids such as announcing the topic, previewing the organization, using transitions, and summarizing.
Creativity	Repetitive with little or no variety; insufficient use of materials / media	Little or no variation; material presented with little originality or interpretation.	Some originality apparent, good variety and blending of materials / media.	Very original presentation of material; captures the audience's attention.
Delivery	The slides and game can be hardly understood, and deliver an confused and misleading message in writing and format.	The slides and game can be understood with extreme effort, and deliver an marginally clear, somewhat confusing message in writing and format.	The slides and game can be adequetly understood, and deliver an adequetly clear message in writing and format.	The slides and game are exceptionally easy to understand, and deliver a clear message in writing and format.
Quality of Writing	The communication demonstrates little or no attention to the use of necessary conventions of writing.	The student does not use some required conventions of writing or demonstrates errors in the use of some conventions. The communication demonstrates an attempt at using the necessary conventions of writing but has significant errors or omissions.	The student uses all necessary conventions of writing without error.	The student uses all necessary conventions of writing without error. Additionally, includes some conventions that are not essential to the communication but add to the overall quality of the communication.

Conclusion

Congratulations on completing this WebQuest. Upon completion, you should now understand the different types of sources, docementing, citing, corroborating, and evaluating sources. You should also understand Plagiarism, and how to recognize and avoid it.

Extensions:

The following list are valuable lessons about research and writing that are not covered in scope of this WebQuest, but deserve futher study:

Finding information on the Internet effectively: It's a big cyber-world out their, and we only have so much time in our life time to search..

Internet Ethics; We can do many things, but should we?:

Writing Using the Seven Traits of Writing

The Five Paragraph Essay

Credits & References

Thanks to anyone who provided resources, help or inspiration.

Thanks to Mr. Grant Harkness of Two Rivers High School. Please visit his Website at

Grant Harkness

Thanks to Dr. Lloyd Rieber and the WWILD Team from the University of Georgia. Please visit their web site for great ideas and to share your creativity with them by adding the cream of the crop of your creativity to their database.

For teachers wishing to create their own WebQuest or find other WebQuests to use, click on these links to The WebQuest Page, the Design Patterns page, and the Template Page.. You may acquire the latest version of the template and training materials I used to build this page.

The Looking Glass graphic at the top of the page was graciously provided free of charge by Animation Library.com

Thanks to bellsnwhistles.com for free animation and graphics. Here is their posted link, as per their request.

We all benefit by being generous with our work. Permission is hereby granted for other educators to copy this WebQuest, update or otherwise modify it, and post it elsewhere provided that the original author's name is retained along with a link back to the original URL of this WebQuest. On the line after the original author's name, you may add Modified by (your name) on (date). If you do modify it, please let me know and provide the new URL.

Last updated on (July 25, 2004). Based on a template from The WebQuest Page

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