Another Differentiated Quiz: Quick Observations

My class is almost finished with The Odyssey. We've discussed and written about the themes of self, name, reputation, and home. Now, we're starting to talk about the idea of the journey, which is an appropriate segue to keeping blogs as a way to think about where they've been and where they want to go. So today I set up what I called a quiz/activity (funny how tagging assignments changes them so much). It was a quiz in the sense that it checked their weekend reading; it was an activity in the sense that it introduced and helped them think about their own journeys through school and life.

The quiz:
-Identify important stops in Odysseus' journey, cite the Book in which they occurred.
-Draw comparisons to events from your own journey. (My example: Odysseus is stuck on Calypso's island at the beginning of the story. This is sort of like the girl I dated for way too long in high school, which led to us both missing out on things).
-More specific = More points.
-No required amount of events.
-Use whatever tool you feel is most appropriate to the task.

Observations:
-5 students used paper and pencil.
-8 students created some kind of mindmap using Inspiration.
-5 students wrote in narrative form.
-2 students used Excel charts.
-2 students used web resources (after I reported my observation to my students, many said, "we didn't know we could use the internet." I hadn't said anything about it.)