Introduction

Mother nature has her own ideas about the weather. How do natural disasters occur? What kinds of risks do we take while living in the path of destruction. You will become an expert about one specific natural disaster after completing this webquest. It is important to gather as much information as possible so that you can educate people on the potential hazards of living in the path of danger.

Task

Your task is to find out weather conditions, degrees of destruction, geographical data, and basic facts about your chosen catastrophe in order to prepare a multimedia presentation to the class. This way people can make educated choices about where to live.

Choose from the following titles: drought, tornadoes, hurricanes, slope failures, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, blizzards, and wildfires.

Process/Resources

To accomplish this task you will be working in groups of three that will be assigned by the teacher. Your group will choose a catastrophe to research. Each of you will have a specific job title. One will be the meteorologist who specifies the weather conditions of the catastrophe. The second member will be the researcher finding information about the catastrophe and keeping track of the web sites and other resources used. And the third member will be the graphic (images of the catastrophe) and layout designer of the project while also keeping the group on task.

Your group will need to find information on the topic including:

• Where does the majority of this type of disaster take place geographically?
• How often do these disasters occur? (time of year, certain seasons)
• What weather conditions are present at the onset of this disaster?
• How severe is the damage to the environment when it is over?
• How does someone protect themselves and their property from this disaster?
• What should a person do during this catastrophic situation?
• History of the disaster; the worst, dates, deaths, destruction, etc.
• Having done the research what 3-5 specific items are most important to know when discussing this topic.

You may use the Internet sites given in this section or any resources from the library and classroom. You will be developing a slide show of at least 4 slides of information plus a title slide with an introduction to the catastrophe and your names and a concluding slide with your resources. The graphic designer will save all files to his/her folder. Decide as a group what the heading will be for each of your informational slides (4+) according to the information you gathered. Organization is key. You may copy and paste the above questions into a word processor and print or use it for notes.

Resources: Start at these two sites and go from there.

Use this site first for information on all catastrophes: http://www.germantown.k12.il.us/html/title.html

This site contains information on all catastrophes: Gathered sites

Evaluation

You will be graded on the following areas:

• Oral presentation
• Content of all slides (text)
• Graphics/Attractiveness

Rubric for Multimedia Presentation

Conclusion

At the end of this webquest not only will you have become an expert on your group's catastrophe, but also learn facts about other catastrophes from the presentations of other groups. You now have the knowledge to make an informed decision on where you may choose to make your home.