Biographical Dictionary Puzzle Webquest

What's a biographical dictionary? A dictionary of people — who they are, when they were born/died, and what they've accomplished.

This Webquest introduces you to a variety of biographical dictionaries and helps you learn how to use them. You'll find this skill useful whether you're looking for information about your ancestors or doing a school assignment.

As you visit the biographical dictionaries you'll find the answers to a series of questions — these are your CLUES. At the end of the Webquest you'll combine the clues in a self-correcting puzzle.

These are the skills you need to have or develop for this activity:
1. Read and follow instructions.
2. Web site search skills — Locate specific information on a given Web site.
3. Text scanning — Scan content looking for specific data or information. With Internet resources you can use the Find feature of your Web browser.
4. Gain an understanding of the different types of Biographical Dictionaries and the kinds of information that may be found in each of them.
5. Note taking skills — Record required data for future use.
6. Apply critical thinking skills to take collected data and apply it to the puzzle being solved.

Steps in this activity:
1. Gather the clues by visiting the different types of Biographical Web sites listed and finding the required information from each site.
2. Write down the clues (answers to the questions) in order.
3. Solve the puzzle by following all of the steps outlined in the last section, Solve the Puzzle.

First, let's do a quick tutorial on using the Find or CTRL F command with your Web browser:



Use the find function to find specific information or words on a Web page.

Gather the Clues

1. The first type of Biographical Dictionary you'll explore is a Retrospective Dictionary that covers people involved in a certain era in history. Visit this Biographical Dictionary of WWI and locate the entry for the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia: http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/WWI_Biographical_Dictionary Scan the article to find out in what city he set up the first Russian aviation school in 1909 prior to the start of WWI. Write it down.
   


2. Your next Biographical Dictionary is also (mainly) a Retrospective Dictionary, however, this one is universal or covers people from around the world. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/index.shtml What was the title of the book George Orwell published in 1945?
   


3. Your third Biographical Dictionary is a current Biographical Dictionary prepared by NASA about all of the astronauts in the space program. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/astrobio.html To get your clue here answer the question: The active astronaut, Eric A. Boe, was born October 1, 1964 in what city?
   


4. The final Biographical resource we're going to use is a Biographical Index, which organizes biographies. This one uses alphabetical and chronological indexes. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/BiogIndex.html Find out the first name of the mathematician, König, who lived from 1712 - 1757.
   

Solve the Puzzle

1. Take the first letter of the first word for each of the first three questions that provided the clues. Write them down in order: _____ _____ _____
2. Take the first three letters of the answer for question #4 of the clues. ____ ____ ____
3. If you have the same word in part #1 and part #2 you've solved the puzzle!

Apply What You've Learned
You've learned and practiced some important skills finding information about people. While these are online biographical resources, you'll use the same skills to find people in print biographical resources.