Internet Scavenger Hunt

An Internet scavenger hunt or CyberHunt is an educational lesson which introduces the Internet to students. It is often used as tool for teaching students how to search the Internet and how to use the resources and information available on the Internet. It is an online activity in the form of a scavenger hunt that focuses on gathering information from web sites to answer questions or to support a concept on a particular theme or content area. The intent is to hunt for facts or information to add details for the answer to the question. The questions themselves may vary from the simple fact or statement to the more complex, depending upon the age and skill level of the student. By completing CyberHunts, students learn how to navigate a web site, scan a page for detailed information, and then apply the facts or ideas to the question. A CyberHunt is an excellent way to teach beginning internet researching skills.

An Internet scavenger hunt is a fact-finding exercise where students answer a list of questions or solve problems as they practice information seeking skills. A hunt can serve as a powerful tool to introduce the study of a new subject or to supplement the exploration of various sides of an issue.

Although hunts frequently move from web site to web site, some direct a student's exploration of a single, content rich site. The single site strategy is employed to introduce users to the elements of a highly sophisticated site like the Library of Congress site, the government site Thomas or the Smithsonian site. This permits the teacher to highlight the key areas of a web site.

Recently, the Cyberhunt concept was expanded upon, by creating Extended Cyberhunts or Learning-by-Design Extended Cyberhunts by Dr André du Plessis and Prof Paul Webb of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. This newly developed strategy build on the Cyberhunt- or Scavenger hunt concept. These two academics named their extension of Cyberhunts the ‘Learner Centred Learning-By-Designing Extended Cyberhunts’ (LCLBDEC) strategy for teaching and learning in schools. The main focus of this strategy is to enable learners to become designers of an educational tool which assists them to learn during the design process, and also can be used by other learners or students to get a better understanding of a topic (see http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet27/duplessis.pdf). Learners are initially introduced to the ‘Learner Centred Learning-By-Designing Extended Cyberhunts’ (LCLBDEC) strategy by means of teacher designed Extended Cyberhunts. What makes this strategy different is the fact that there is a deliberate attempt to explore a topic by trying to answer questions that have been created based on the different cognitive levels as suggested by Bloom and the revised taxonomy of Anderson and Krathwohl. The focus is to elicit thinking on different levels and hence the teacher can indicate within brackets the level of thinking that is required. The teacher selects a topic from the curriculum and then search for appropriate web sites or web related resources that can range from pure text based online resources to online video related resources from www.youtube.com as an example. A memorandum is also created in order that the learners can ascertain whether they were on the right track. A teacher can thus create Extended Cyberhunts based upon topics that he/she might not be able to complete in class as a result of time constraints caused by whatever possible cause, but the questions to be explored be the learners have to be on different cognitive levels. However, what makes the ‘Learner Centred Learning-By-Designing Extended Cyberhunts’ (LCLBDEC) strategy unique further, is that the next step is that learners become the designers themselves as learning-as-design (see Perkins) is learning that requires a diverse range of skills. Learning-as-design undertaken by learners focuses not only on the product, but primarily on the learning that occurs as a result of seeing the design of a product or artefact as a learning opportunity where the process is just as important as the product. Learners can design Extended Cyberhunts individually or in groups on a topic related to the curriculum. This topic could a topic that has already been discussed or completed in class, but now deeper exploration can be the motive. In addition, the teacher could also identify topics that he/she has noticed that present a great challenge for learners and hence the additional Extended Cyberhunt that learners design by using different online resources that their peers can explore provide an opportunity for learners to possibly clarify their understanding. In addition, learners can also assist the teacher to design Extended Cyberhunts on a curriculum related topic that there is not time for to cover in class. In addition, learners as the designers also have to create a memorandum for the questions that they have created. Teacher designed or Learner designed Extended Cyberhunts can be designs in applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Libre Office or even on a wiki such as www.wikispaces.com. In order for learners to be able to create questions on different cognitive levels, teachers have to introduce the learners to the different levels of the taxonomy of Bloom and also provide them with the different key verbs that are associated with each level. In order to assist teachers (or even lecturers at tertiary level) to be able to design Extended Cyberhunts, the website www.nmmu.ac.za/cyberhunts/index.htm. The theoretical underpinnings of Extended Cyberhunts, as well as an in depth discussion of the process to follow, is available at http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet27/duplessis.pdf