WebQuest Progress

After considering and rejecting a number of different ideas, I decided to have students play a game as part of my WebQuest.  Since probability is used in game playing, I thought this would be an appropriate use of the probability rules.  I'm hoping students will be motivated to try and figure out how the rules can help them win.  I chose the game show Deal or No Deal. I found a number of different simulations of the game online and am having trouble deciding which is best.  Currently I have included  3 on the WebQuest because they each have certain advantages  In one of the games the offers are unreasonably low, but the graphics make it easier to record the results.  I Can't quite find the right combination.

The primary thing remaining to do is to finish the worksheet and play with the appearance. I want to ask the right questions on the worksheet to help students learn to apply the probability rules to the Deal or No Deal game.  Students need to grasp the concept that it is not likely that they selected the million dollar case and they should make the best deal they can based on which cases are eliminated. I also want students to  understand the effect the high dollar cases have on the expected value of the game and incorporate that into their decision making strategy. While luck is a big part of this game, I want students to learn to recognize when the probabilities are against them.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to create a simulation of this game to test their strategies over a large number of trials.

I found QuestGarden to be fairly easy to work with.  It is a bit difficult to type into the program directly, pasting information works well. It was easier to link to a video than to have the video visible on the page. I think that there should be more of a focus on the quality of the lesson than on the presentation, but perhaps that is too difficult to evaluate in the classroom.  While I have no problem allowing others to use my work, I really don't like the idea of publishing a WebQuest before it has been tested in the classroom.  Of course, maybe someone will like the idea and create a similar project for their classroom. This has been a useful exercise and I think I might want to use this technology in the classroom.  However, I don't think I have come up with the ideal application of the technology for the classroom.  Also, I elected not to turn this into a group project which I might reconsider after trying it out in the classroom.