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"McKee Gardens: Virtual Tour"

"McKee Gardens: WebQuest"

Project

Designed for Middle School students, this tour through McKee Gardens offers a unique tour through a restored semi-tropical jungle. Since the original land acquisition in the 1920's, its development and evolution paralleled that of Vero Beach, Florida and provides an understanding of the history of this area. A coordinated webquest expands upon the relationship of the garden with local history.

Context

• Completed during a three-week summer school program that involved the pooled efforts of 21 students from two classes of 5th, 6th, and 7th graders.
   
• Students, enrolled in a Multimedia course, had little if any previous knowledge of HTML, web design, or digital photography.
   

Conditions 

• Student access to the gardens was limited to a guided one hour field trip.
   

Scope 

• The project successfully focused student learning of photography and basic video and photo editing.
   
• The significance of a simple field trip was enhanced by the participation of the students in webquest role-playing activities. An understanding of the process of creating a national landmark was conveyed.
   
• It is intended that these materials will be made available to others beyond the school community.
   
• Lack of a streaming server made it impossible to include student audio describing their reactions to the project.

Role

• I created the webquest in anticipation of the class to expand upon the historical context of the field trip to our local botanical garden. The idea for the virtual tour developed during the class to showcase student-developed video, images and text.