One of the things that it is very difficult to do is to find effective resource from Google. This is difficult for teachers but even more difficult for students. Try typing in some "normal" RE words into Google and see what kind of hit rate you get. I tried God (474M) Brahmin (1.8M) Chanukah (2.1M) and Khalsa (1.59M) [Search 10th Feb, 2009] and this is without the difficultly of spelling that RE throws up!

There are a couple of ways to tackle this problem. The first is to use the RE Online search engine which does part of the job for you and seeks to reference only sites that are useful or good for RE. This means that for the same terms as above, when limiting my search to Key Stage 3 I was received the following 'hits' God (48) Brahmin (7) Chanukah (7) Khalsa (15). This is a huge advantage and gives me a real chance of finding something useful. However, I have to accept that as these have been filtered I am working on a data set that is chosen by someone else's rules.

The second is to develop a 'webquest' a series of links to pages that will guide your students to the on-line resources that you have found and already used. This means that you can be sure that your students are using the time on-line productively. You should make sure that this is not just an information finding exercise but that your students have to process and use the information.

Practical Issues

You can set up a webquest as an "e-worksheet" quite easily and quite quickly. However to make it look good and be easy to use it is useful to have a working knowledge of HTML and how to use a website creation package such as Dreamweaver.

RE Online - The RE Online search engine can be found at: www.reonline.org.uk. You can search for one or all of the words in a search term; for whole words or starts or words; for a particular religion (from Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism) and within a particular age range (Key Stages 1 [5-7], Key Stage 2 [7-11], Key Stage 3 [11-14], Key Stage 4 [14-16] and Post-16). This will then reference you out to website that have been checked by an RE professional. As well as websites you can search for sounds files and artifacts.

Web Quests - Another way is to develop a set of weblinks yourself that students can access. Then set up a trail around these weblinks that your students have to follow finding out particular pieces of information which they have to collect, use, analyse or evaluate [See attached sheet on Bloom's Taxonomy for developing cognitive processes]. See the attached worksheet on Muslim Prayer which asks pupils to look at a series of websites and collect, use and analyse information.

Discerning Students - Encourage your students to critique web sites and to suggest how they would develop web resources of their own. Consider the question how would the internet allow you to experience a place of worship? YOu might set these criteria for the pupils or you might develop these as part of a class discussion. Now get the pupils to look at a couple of places of worship and then produce a proposal for how a virtual visit should look for this to best be accomplished.

Activity Description

The teacher wanted some pupils to consider how Christian Aid helped people in the developing world and why Christians felt it was their duty to help others. She decided that she would set up a webquest for her students so that they could investigate a story from one of the young people that Christian Aid help and then look for, and consider, some biblical sources for helping others.

There is a special section of the Christian Aid website called Global Gang which was very useful for this, but it is quite a large site so the teacher wanted to point the students to the particular pages that would be useful. This made the lesson more efficient as the lesson objective was not about using the internet but that the internet gave the students a particular and relevant resource. The teacher also used a website called Bible Gateway so that the students could access the verses of the bible that she wanted them to explore. Again the teacher did not want to spend a long time teaching the students to find places in the bible but wanted them to consider the texts.

ICT resource used

• Webquest at http://www.mmiweb.org.uk/retodaywebquest/
• Computer Room or laptops in classroom, at least one per group of three pupils
• Something to make notes with

Learning Objectives

• To identify with the lives of some of the very poorest people in the world
• To explore some of the things that will help this person
• To examine why helping people is part of the Christian tradition

Commentary on the ICT use

The webquest focuses pupils on the key websites that you want to use for a project and the use of the web allows access to materials that would otherwise be very difficult to do. Also it means that these resource are updated by others and also as this is from the aid organisation they are authentic materials.

• RE Online - link
• Webquests - link