Webquest with Web 2.0 product creation

Every year, I have my Spanish II students watch the movie In the Time of the Butterflies based on the novel by Julia Alvarez in order to help them recognize not only a different perspective of Latin America but also how important that actions of one individual (and family) can be.



I designed this Webquest - Latin American Dictators - as a lead-in to watching the video. Originally, I had planned for this to be a quick, one-day assignment with the students writing 1-page essays about their assigned dictator. After all that I have learned about Web 2.0 resources and the online collaboration possibilities, I decided to incorporate three of them into the assignment. Now I want the students to work in online collaborative groups to create a Wiki of their research findings, which will be used by the whole group to create a single PowerPoint visual. At the same time that they are getting all of this experience collaborating, I also need to know that each student is getting something about the history and culture from the assignment, so I will expect each student to use the PowerPoint visual to create a PhotoStory presentation in their own voice in which they personally narrate what they have found out about the Dictator and his rise to and fall from power.

Once my students have completed this assignment using the Web 2.0 resources, I will post some feedback of how it went. If anyone else decides to try something like this, I would like some ideas for tweaking or any possible pitfalls I need to watch out for. Of course, I plan to front-load lessons on each of these resources as well as online collaboration before I would even introduce this assignment to them.