This trail is a collection of Trailfire trails created by graduate students in ECI 511 (distance education technology integration course) at North Carolina State University. Most of the students in ECI 511 are teachers who have created a trail for their own K-12 students, so the various trails in this collection should provide some topic ideas for Trailfire trails in K-12. I personally think the best trails go beyond annotating the Web page and include instructions for students to try out something on the page (e.g., take the quiz, do the simulation), or questions for students to answer from the information found on the page. Some of the students' trails below include guiding questions. See, for example, trails by Kelly Glover, Lisa Johnson, Earnestine Pollard, Robert Thomas, Valerie Faulkner, Alice Hager, Karen Hughes, and Kathleen Mapson.
A trail of
31 pages
This short trail was created to demonstrate the ability of Trailfire to hold questions for students. If you mark a selection of Web sites for students to view in a trail, you might also embed questions at each mark on the trail to help focus students on specific elements on those Web pages. Otherwise, they may just browse aimlessly without ever picking up any information. You could have students answer the questions by leaving a comment on the mark, but that would give away the answer to other students. You could also have students work in groups and click the "email" link that sits atop each mark and send the teacher their responses via email. Or you could just give students a handout with all the questions or give them a file with the questions so they can take notes on a computer. Finally, note that instead of the teacher creating a trail for students, a great way for students to learn about a topic is to have them create trails and questions for a study partner or their peers.
A trail of
9 pages
