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What is a Scavenger Hunt?
Once learners have experienced success with Treasure Hunts, Scavenger Hunts (with keywords) are the next step in building “surfing” skills in learners. The Scavenger Hunt is a set of questions that require students to use keywords to locate information to the answers. Beginning “surfers” are provided with keywords and links to appropriate search engines that will help the user be successful in locating Web sites that contain the information to answer the questions. More advanced “surfers” may only be given appropriate search engines and be required to think up the keywords on their own. There are several advantages for using this structure in an instructional setting. First, the use of scavenger hunts provides students with practice in “Web reading”, or scanning the information on the screen for the information required to answer the question. Secondly, the activity guides learners through the searching process so that the time learners spend browsing to find information to answer questions is effective time. And, finally, this is a great activity for beginning “surfers” because the structure keeps “surfing” frustration to a minimum. Of course, that’s also the disadvantage—the activity is structured, so learner choice as to which Web sites to select and use is limited. See Scavenger Hunt for a sample.

See more samples:

Peterson's Scavenger Hunts (http://www.usiouxfalls.edu/~apeter/scavenger_hunts.htm)
You can even check out the Scavenger Hunt generating tool!

Education World's Scavenger Hunt Linklist (http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr113.shtml)

Spartanburg School District's Scavenger Hunt Page (http://www.spa3.k12.sc.us/Scavenger.html)