WebQuests

WebQuests 2.0 – “Day 3”

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Before we begin, would you like to do a little reading?: The Learning Power of WebQuests

A little history lesson & Background

WebQuests all started with this page posted by Bernie Dodge: Some Thoughts About WebQuests.  I was team-teaching with Bernie in a teacher prep course on creating interdisciplinary units.  I soon began a three year fellowship where the first thing I did was to post the first (non) WebQuest for use outside of our course: Searching for China (version 0.9).  This was, “good, but not a WebQuest.”  Why? A few years later it became this updated version of Searching for China.

First Impressions

  1. Here’s a Stixyboard for brainstorming  “What are WebQuests?” – Add a sticky with your name and ideas

Discovery Immersion

Take a short period of time (20 – 30 minutes) to review one or more of the WebQuests below.  Then brainstorm what you consider to be the critical attributes of a good WebQuest.

By Tom

By Others

Return to the  “What are WebQuests?” Stixyboard to update  your ideas

Getting Started

Choose a  Topic

  • Choose an area of the curriculum that has enough richness and complexity to warrant deeper investigation.

Probe for Grey Areas

  • Where do students typically lack sophistication or have misconceptions?

Stakeholders

  • Who has vested interests in the topic?  What are real jobs that people have who would be interested in this?
  • There should be sparks ready to fly between more than a few of the perspectives you’ve listed.  For example, if you have “greenies,” you’d better have developers or manufacturers.

Sample Links

Real World Feedback

  • Who could you get to give students real feedback on their work?  Consider in-person and virtual, peer collaborators and mentors

Authentic Production

  • solutions?  Choose at least one that makes the most sense for your topic and also sings with some excitement for you and your students.
  • What could the students create that makes sense given the time, resources, and topic?  Ad campaigns, videos, slideshows, podcasts, etc. all make sense.
  • Remember to leverage the Group Task so that all roles are required and the outcome must transform information into new understanding.
  • You might consider the Thesis Builder – to generate thesis statements and essay outlines

Possible Questions

  • A WebQuest is guided by a big question – this empowers students to discover their own path through the topic and connect the new learning to what they already know.

Collaborative Checkpoints: add your milestones – Questions, Roles, Tasks, etc.

You’re Ready to Go!

Use the above process to draft together what could become a great WebQuest.  Use your favorite platform like WordPress to develop the WebQuest and tap into all the great Web tools you love to flatten the learning hierarchy so that you can join in on the learning fun and role-model the joy of learning for your students.

If you want to use this approach (or begin a new blog for a WebQuest) you might want to copy/paste this template into a Page on your blog.

Resources

Articles

Module 4 Scenario – WebQuests 2.0

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Learning Scenario

Suppose students eagerly adopt opinions, argue positions and debate solutions to challenging problems. Now imagine that they have even built up a body of evidence from which to launch their case?  So what’s the problem?  What happens when students might be willing, even eager, just not able? WebQuests began in 1995 as one of the first good ways to use the Web for learning.  Even as technologies have changed solid pedagogies endure.

Challenge:

Set up a scaffolded learning activity (AKA “WebQuest”) that uses an authentic scenario, open-ended questions, a range of perspectives and rich resources to help students transform information into understanding. You can do this with a Web page template or an “unfolded” process using Web 2 tools.

But before we get to this, let’s check the Agenda