How to Navigate the Atlantic Ocean

Focus: 

This WebQuest focuses on helping a teenager become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe alone.  Your students will be responsible for helping her navigate across the Atlantic Ocean.

Objectives/Goals:    

This WebQuest is intended to have students engage in differentiated tasks with the ultimate goal of teaching them historical and current navigation methods.  Along the way they will engage in a little history, math, and social studies.  It is intended to excite middle school students and transfer knowledge through inquiry based activities.

Resources:    

1. Prerequisite skills:  Students will need access to computers.  Since they work in pairs, one computer for every two students is recommended (larger groups would work also).  They will also need basic computer skills to access the activities and web-based links.
2. Time Required:  This depends on how much you do together as a class, and how much you allow the students to do on their own.  A minimum of five class periods to perform all activities with a sixth period for presentations is recommended.
3. The attached activities come from The Institute On Navigation website located at www.ion.org/satdiv/education.cfm  I have included Lesson 1, Lesson 2, and Lesson 8 in this WebQuest.  Each lesson on their website comes with a complete teacher's lesson plan.  The lesson plans come with answer keys included, so you will have to prepare packets of each activity to provide your students.  Each activity provides a materials list near the begining.  If you feel your students need more guidance, you could run all or some of the activities as classroom projects.  
4. As an example of a hypothetical situation consider the following:

After six days of travelling, Ms. Dekker realizes her GPS is not functioning correctly.  She takes a reading on the sun at 12 Noon and finds that she is one hour west of Amsterdam.  That night she finds her latitude to be 53 degrees 55 minutes North.  Where is she?     Answer: Off the west coast of Ireland.

How can Ms. Dekker be sure of her longitude?  What tools does she need, and how does she use them?     Answer:  She needs a clock telling her the time at her home port, Amsterdam.  She also needs to make note of the local time at 12 Noon.  The difference in hours multiplied by 15 degrees results in her longitude from home port.  She then adds the home port longitude to this and arrives at her current longitude.

In the course of her travels Ms Dekker encounters 4 days of cloudy, rainy weather.  Her GPS cannot connect to any satelites and the sun and stars are covered by clouds.  How can she estimate her course during these days?     Answer:  She can record her direction from compass readings regularly, and estimate speed.  If she updates her charts after every recording, when the weather lifts she should be close to her actual position.