INTRODUCTION

This WebQuest is intended to have learners use collaboration, creativity, and Internet resources to work as a team (4/5 students).

Through the current WebQuest, your group will discover the functioning of the respiratory system and its relationship with the circulatory system. The relationship in question depends on the proper functioning of the organism, contributing to the functioning of cellular metabolism, namely in the production of energy at the cellular level, necessary for all activities of the organism.

Your group will search the Internet for these themes, using the links at the end of this script and others related to the topic that you are encouraged to find. Collaborative and cooperative work is essential in order for you to be able to prepare the final poster. You must follow the script step by step, conducting learning by discovery, searching the Internet, thus focusing on the work among the members of the group. In the end, the poster prepared by the group must respect some rules, which are further explained in the next sections.

But before that, here are a few things you will need to know:

TASK

The purpose of this WebQuest is to work in a group of 4/5 people in a collaborative and cooperative spirit, using the Internet for conducting desk research.

You have to search the Internet and prepare a poster where you must explain the phenomenon that occurs in the human respiratory system, its relationship with the circulatory system, what causes pains in muscles during a rapid race and answer the initial problem question.

The poster should contain:

• subtitled images/schemes subtitled,
• short phrases explaining the phenomenon that occurs in the human respiratory system, relating to the circulatory system, and what causes pains in muscles during a rapid race, answering the initial problem question,
• bibliography,
• delivery time: 15 days,
• it should be e-mailed to the teacher;

PROCESS

This Webquest must be performed by groups of 4/5 students.

1. How is the respiratory system constituted?

- Search the Internet for the names of the elements that make up the respiratory system and images of it.

2. Why do we breathe?

- Search the Internet for information about: diaphragm function in inspiration and expiration.

3. What is the relationship between the respiratory system and the circulatory system?

- Search the Internet for information on pulmonary hematosis; transport of respiratory gases in the blood.

4. When oxygen and glucose reach the cells, they perform cellular respiration producing the energy necessary to all the functions of the body, namely for the muscles during a run. Search the Internet for the name of the cell organism where cellular respiration occurs.

5. You have already realized the importance of the respiratory and circulatory systems to reach oxygen and glucose cells in order to produce energy. You have to be prepared to answer the problem question: Why do muscles hurt when you run too fast?

- Some clues: relate to the amount of oxygen carried by the blood and the need to accelerate the heart and respiratory rhythms during running. It also takes into mind the fact that muscle cells are able to produce energy in the almost absence of oxygen, for this by performing lactic fermentation, producing lactic acid, which is accumulated in the muscles.

6. Prepare the poster within the group taking into account all the knowledge acquired, answering the problem question. Do not forget to put the bibliography of the links and resources used to make the research.

7. A group member sends the poster to the teacher, according to the schedule indicated in the WebQuest (15 days).

RESOURCES

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/sistema_respirat%c3%b3rio

https://www.infoescola.com/biologia/sistema-respiratorio/

https://pt.slideshare.net/isabelalexandrapinto/sistema-respiratorio-powerpoint?next_slideshow=1

https://ensina.rtp.pt/artigo/diafragma-o-musculo-que-ajuda-a-respirar/

https://ensina.rtp.pt/artigo/visiokids-a-respiracao/

https://mundoeducacao.uol.com.br/biologia/fermentacao-latica-no-musculo.htm

CONCLUSION

Since the WebQuest was carried out in a working group, respecting the cooperative and collaborative spirit, focusing on learning on the students, they should reflect on:

• Work developed by each member of the group
• Fulfilment of tasks and deadlines previously established.
• Respect for the ideas of the other members of the group
• Respect for group working rules
• Critical spirit
• Creativity
• Research capability
• Autonomy
• Communication of scientific knowledge correctly and effectively
• Use of electronic tools
• How the use of the internet as a means of facilitating learning

Evaluation of learning achievements

In this section we will not dive very deep into the underlying educational theories about evaluation and testing: there’s too much out there than we could possibly cover in this small project report.

Instead, we want to concentrate on procedures that enable both students/pupils and their teachers to establish if the learning goals of the Webquest were achieved and, if so, to what extent. We recommend teachers make use of a combined evaluation procedure, that consists of:

1. Statements by learners (after being asked to do so)
   • telling what they learned about the subject (knowledge-oriented self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know that …
   • telling what he/she learned about herself/himself (formative evaluation, in this case, diagnostic self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know about myself that I …
     This pair of basic statements add up to a so-called learner report, in which the pupil/student reflects on what the Webquest brought him/her in terms of acquired knowledge and new personal views and attitudes concerning the subject.

   For instance:

   • ‘I learned that in medieval times the hygiene of people was hardly a concern which helped to let epidemic diseases like the Plague cause so many casualties’ Or:
   • ‘I learned the facts and I know the earth is warming, but I cannot understand why people were so stupid to pollute the world and let it warm up so much.
   • ‘I learned from the information about diseases that this subject is more appealing to me than I would expect in advance: maybe I should consider a medical career’. Or:
     ‘The Webquests confirms what I thought already: I could not care less about the climate and global warming. In fact, I thought it was all a hoax and I still do!’

   This kind of assessment seems more subjective than it actually is: in his standard work on testing and evaluation (and much more), simply called Methodology (1974), Prof. A.D. de Groot described how consistent the student’s self-evaluations appeared to be: when asked again after 5 or 10 years, their evaluation would almost be the same. De Groot advised teachers to use the learner report as a start for joint evaluations, striving for consensus between teacher and student/pupil about the learning outcomes and their value for the learner, but also compared with the learning objectives as stated in the curriculum.

2. The learning achievements are visible in the output produced by the students: it is physical evidence: reports, answers to questions asked in the Webquest, presentations, and performance during presentations (preferably recorded). The teacher completes an evaluation grid stating clearly what the learning outcomes for the student/pupil are. The categories in the grid can be modified by the teacher to cover more precisely the content of a Webquest.

   >We advise teachers to use the grid to start a joint evaluation discussion, aiming at consensus or at least understanding between the teacher and the student/pupil about the learning outcomes: were they achieved (as planned in the curriculum and communicated before the Webquest started) and to what extent? To communicate the learning goals clearly before any learning activity starts, is a transparency requirement that is widely acknowledged in the educational community. The history of making learning objectives explicit goes back to the evaluation ‘Bible’ by Bloom, Hastings and Madaus: ‘Handbook on formative and summative evaluation of student learning’ (1971), a standard work that also served as inspiration for the earlier mentioned Prof. De Groot.

The procedure also applies when students/pupils have worked together on a Webquest. The teacher will ask questions about individual contributions: ‘What did you find? What part did you write? How did you find the illustrations? Who made  the final presentation?’

All the evidence (of learning efforts and outcomes plus joint evaluations) is preferably stored in the learning portfolio of the student, or in any other suitable storage system (folders with written or printed documents, online collection of files, etcetera ).

Changes in personal points of view and feelings are harder to value and here the consensus between teacher and student/pupil about experiences during the learning process provides essential insights.

The grid below gives an example of how the evaluation of the learning process and achievements can be shaped: what kind of reactions to the Webquest does the teacher expect and how valuable are they? Is the teacher capable to explain the value or score allocated to answers or presentations given by pupils? Does the pupil/student understand the evaluation outcomes, and does he/she agree? If an agreement (consensus is not possible, it is still the teacher who decides how to value the student’s work.

Please note that the text in the grid addresses the pupil/student directly: this is important and it is in fact a prerequisite for using such an evaluation grid: it is specifically meant to enable a discussion of learning results between teacher and student and not to communicate learning achievements of learners to others who had no direct role in the Webquest.

Evaluation Grid