Interns from Korea working in Chicago create webquest and ning.com page

I continue to be inspired by the many ways technology is being discussed in Classroom 2.0, and hope that by my participation I'll inspire educators to use technology as part of service-learning projects, where students learn about problems in their community and the world, and use their web 2.0 technology and their classroom learning, to educate others in their community about specific issues, and about ways youth and adults can become involved in community problem solving.

In January my organization was joined by two interns from Korea who were in the US studying at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Because the students did not know anything about Cabrini Connections, or the Tutor/Mentor Connection, I encouraged them to develop a web quest, to provide a path for learning about what we do, which would help them, and would help others.

First, they had to learn what a web quest was, and figure out how to build one. Thus, over the past five weeks, they spent their time in my office, every day, learning about what a web quest is, and building a web quest project that demonstrates this form of learning.

Visit http://www.cabriniconnections.net/interns/index.asp and you can meet these interns, and use the web quest they created to learn about Korea, or learn about Soccer. Both web quests link to Ning.com page where you can give feedback, ask questions, or become a community.

My hope that this inspires others to duplicate this process. Build web quests to help others learn about your school, your city, or the challenges facing your students. As you do this you teach students many forms of poblem solving, communications and leadership that they can take with them through the rest of their lives.

If you focus your web quests on poverty, workforce development, and volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring, I hope you'll use the http://www.tutormentorconnection.org web site as a resource and point to http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com as a place to connect with others who are building volunteer based tutor/mentor programs in different parts of the world.