Christine Rodriguez

ECI 511 - WebQuests

Description:

WebQuests are designed as websites or webpages that have a specific activity to be completed by the student or specific objective to be mastered. 

Findings:

In the article, ?Five ways rules for writing a great WebQuest?, Dodge offers a basis for creating the best WebQuest.  Dodge uses the acronym FOCUS to remind us how we should go about our journey to creating a WebQuest.  The F stands for Find.  Finding a good WebQuest is determined by your students level and the activity or objective that you wish to accomplish.  The O stands for Orchestrate.  It is necessary to set your students up before beginning a WebQuest so that they have all the knowledge to successfully complete the quest.  The point is for them to utilize the site completely to master the goal and to utilize you as little as necessary. Independence is the key. The C stands for Challenge.  As teachers we need to challenge our students to think while they are engaging in their WebQuest.  Dodge explains how important it is to give our students the opportunity to break away from the monotony of standardized testing.  Creating an exciting and clever quest, will give them just that opportunity.  The U stands for Use the medium.  The WebQuest is designed to offer a challenging question to students that they must figure out by engaging on this quest to receive the answer.  Giving students various websites that they can utilize to help them figure out the answer to their challenging question is the key form to ?using the medium?.  The more specific interesting websites we give students while on their quest, the more they may learn on their journey.  The S stands for Scaffold.  Although we want to challenge our students, we do not want to set them up for failure.  We do not want to create quests that are so challenging that our students cannot meet the demands of completing it.  Therefore, it is necessary that we give them tools that will help them be successful along their quest (i.e. how to use the resources we may provide them along the web).

Reflection:

There are many WebQuests available online for almost any subject area you can imagine! Due to the transparent nature of the internet, like Dodge mentioned, it is necessary to be very careful when picking out a pre-made webquest.  When I have my students engage in WebQuests I always make sure that I have gone through the entire quest and have checked all hyperlinks to make sure that they are still current and appropriate.  Although this may take a little more time and effort on the teachers part, I suggest creating your own WebQuest.  There are a multitude of sites that help teachers create WebQuests and even give a template for completion.  When you create your own WebQuest you can really tailor and scaffold information that your students receive the best from the objective/question you have provided.

Posted at 10:05PM Nov 27, 2006 by RODRIGUEZ, CHRISTINE in General  |  Comments[0]