Back in May, A terrible year for Oil Spills (ABC, The Law Report) was covered. This is a great article as stimulus material for a WebQuest! The Law Report states "It has been a shocking 12 months for oil spills: the Gulf of Mexico and, much closer to home, the Great Barrier Reef, the Timor Sea and the coast off southern Queensland. When disaster strikes how well do American and Australian legal and regulatory systems respond?"

What an incisive big question!!!

Resources:

Videos of the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico 2010.

Timeline: Gulf of Mexico oil spill

National Geographic: Daily News

2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill

Oil Spill 2010: Disaster Recovery Plan Needed

I built the "My Business Rules" WebQuest for the Aboriginal Employment Strategy (AES @ Moree) a few years ago for their Youth Entrepreneurial Program. The WebQuest was used at Moree to encourage students to create and develop their own businesses - some of which are still going!!!

"The Youth Entrepreneurial Program provides Aborignals school student in years 7-9 with first hand experience of how to set up and run a small business. Held during school time or after school, it encourages Aboriginal youth to gain small business management skills through work based experience and other practical means. Our highly successful youth program is structured to deliver the following activites;

Business name
Business product
Research market activities and trends
Developing business plans
Financial record keeping
Develop, manage and conduct meetings
Develop marketing strategies
Establish an alumni group" (Source: website)

The AES using our WebQuest as the vehicle for this program.

Here are some pictures of the first year the WebQuest operated at Moree with the students selling their products at the markets:

Robert Bradshaw, the YEP (Youth Entrepreneurial Program) Officer at AES Blacktown, contacted me a couple of months ago to see if their group of Indigenous youth could use the WebQuest. "Of course" I said, "It is FREE for all teachers to use and has a focus on Indigenous students from Years 7 - 8 encouraging them to create their own businesses".

The WebQuest has been used by the AES at Blacktown NSW during the past 12 weeks with great success!

Robert used the WebQuest and here are the results: "The Youth Entrepreneurial program for our kids from Chifley College Bidwell graduated on Monday 17th May and achieved an outstanding result within the 10 week time frame set out. Here is a picture of the sports bag with the Kooris Come In All Colours logo. The business name itself says it all KCIAC".

Anyone wishing to assist this group of Indigenous enterprising young people - KCIAC - with the sale of their product - this great bag costing only $30, please contact
Sky at the AES Blacktown office:
Ph: (02) 9852 2700  
Fx: (02) 9852 2710
89 Main Street, Blacktown NSW 2148

So when you give a group of teenagers 15 hours and a bunch of pens and paper, the last thing you'd expect is for them to write and compose their own opera.

About 80 teenagers in regional Victoria were given exactly that task, staging their own modern classic.

In this report: Murray Dahm, Project director of Wot Opera, Opera Australia" explains the project!

"WotOpera is an opera education initiative that provides secondary students from participating schools with the opportunity of creating an original opera and being involved in all aspects of its creation from conception through to performance. In 2010 the program will expand to include Bendigo, Sydney and Launceston. Twenty students from each school will participate in; character development, plot creation, writing the libretto, composing the music, casting, painting the backdrop, and performance." (Source: website)

What a great WebQuest this could be!!! And yes students can based their Opera on a TV Soap Opera but to date with this program, students have come up with interesting, varied and real life scenarios!

Teachers - don't leave it up to Opera Australia - have a go at creating a WebQuest based on the premise of Wot Opera and send it into Opera Australia! They would love a quality educational resource!  This will also expand the program to include your students and school instead of leaving it to the select few!!!

Resources:

Introduce children and teenagers to Opera - this link contains a big listing of different Operas to introduce students to through DVDs.

Recently, I listened to an excellent radio report "Bullying and the Courts" (ABC, The Law Report). Go and have a look at the content of this program - it will astound you as teachers!

The reason I noted this program is that the contents would be a great scenario for a Professional Development WebQuest for Teachers by covering:

• Duty of Care by schools and teachers - within the school yard - even years after the students have left the school 
• Crimes compensation
• Cyber Bullying
• Laptop programs especially involving webcams

This "Law Report" would make a wonderful Introduction with the scenarios it portrays!