This morning when I arrived at school, our receptionist, who is currently getting her degree in English Education, told me that her class had to do presentations on teaching one of two novels. I can’t remember the title of one, but the other was The Great Gatsby. She dug in her bag and pulled out a handout that her classmates who presented Gatsby had distributed. It had the URL to my Gatsby Scavenger Hunt, noting the activity was a really good introduction to the novel. I have to say that it is, and I can say that without being too boastful because I didn’t create it. Valerie Arbizu did. I have encountered problems with her site, namely that some of the links she created were dead. She thanked me for pointing out the dead links, but I think that she has decided not to update the page any longer. I recreated it, giving her credit of course, with all the links fixed.

Our receptionist’s reminder (I haven’t got to Gatsby yet this year) prompted me to check the page for dead links, and lo and behold, all the links to Valerie’s pages no longer work, so I had to recreate all of those, and the 1920’s slang page and one other site were all dead. One page was a little too complicated to recreate, so I simply linked to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine cache of the site, which my husband assured me would probably work unless the site’s author wrote to Internet Archive and asked that the site be removed. If you are unfamiliar with that site, you should really check it out. It is extremely useful when websites go down or are taken offline. So now my Gatsby Scavenger Hunt is in working order. Please check it out if you teach that novel. I’ve had great success with the activity. And thanks to Valerie for sharing it with us in the first place!

Update: Well, I got all excited and created all those pages for nothing; Valerie’s page seems to be working fine. Tell her how great her Scavenger Hunt is if you get a chance.

[tags]Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, teaching, education, webquest, scavenger hunt[/tags]