What Would Socrates Say?

According to Mr. Cookson's article, Socrates "believed that we learn best by asking essential questions and testing tentative answers against reason and fact in a continual and virtuous circle of honest debate". It would seem that today's availability of information would make that task so much easier and faster. One minute we could be wondering why something in nature is the way it is, and the next minute, we could be finding on the internet that someone just figured it out! And that there are 150 responses with their own personal hypotheses.

I think that Socrates would find a webquest very useful in resesarching the "fact" part of his circle of debate. He might see it as a valuable tool to be used to further our understanding and knowledge. But he might also be perceptive of the enormous amount of disinformation, misuse of information, and lack of reason that is very prevalent online. I think he would approve of undertaking steps to ensure that students with impressionable minds, be permitted to use only those formats that provide an opportunity to "ask essential questions and test tentative answers against reason and fact".

Socrates would approve of the webquest "Enthusiastic About Edison" because of its design to engage students in thinking about why Edison was a great scientist and how his influence has been felt worldwide. It was designed as a "compilation task" in which students were required to gather factual information, analyze and organize it, draw a conclusion, and present their findings to the class. They were to gather information from different formats (websites, books, online photographs) and compile it into a presentation (a photostory). They were also required to make decisions about what information was to be included in the presentation.

In conclusion, Socrates would favor those webquests that invoke investigation of facts, and the use of logic/reason to ask important questions such as, "What does this mean for us?".