Webquest
A webquests is a task-based activity that students undertake using websites that are recommended in the Webquest description. This not only saves students time in searching for information, it prevents them from going to useless or even dangerous sites, as well as from academic sites. Try a search on Pyramids for example. While the first thing comes to our minds is the Pharoahs of Egypt, pyramids are also major topics in geometry, architecture and even finance. See the Word Association Thesaurus data for this.
Webquests have swept the world. They are extremely popular in education circles at all levels for subject teaching, including foreign language teaching. A web search for webquest yields thousands of returns as many departments of education support their development.
Creating your own webquest for your students is a time-consuming business, and is better done after you have used some existing ones, with your students or even as a student yourself.
Google sites has one excellent template for webquests. It provides all the pages and information about what should go on each page. It looks like this. And it can be used as a template.
About Webquests
See Wikipedia
See Webquest.org
Search the Webquest Garden for exampes of existing webquests.
For EFL/ESL students, try .... They are categorised according to the age of the student.
See the Google Sites webquest template
Revisiting WebQuests in a Web 2.0 World
How developments in technology and pedagogy combine to scaffold personal learning by Thomas March.
Here is the abstract
The WebQuest was launched in 1995 to scaffold advanced cognition by integrating the “ill-structured” nature of the World Wide Web with a process that guides novices through decisions and experiences that characterize experts’ behaviors. Recently, the Web has morphed into Web 2.0 with its social networking sites, blogs, wikis and podcasts. Given this richness, revisiting WebQuests is in order. This paper reviews the critical attributes of true WebQuests and reviews recent research in thinking routines and intrinsic motivation to recommend new paths for WebQuests that could scaffold student use of Web 2.0 environments, enabling a shift toward authentic personal learning.
Language in Action: From Webquests to Virtual Realities
Bob Godwin-Jones
Virginia Commonwealth University
A Taxonomy of Tasks
The Taskonomy page gives a little information and some tips about each of these:
Retelling Tasks
Compilation Tasks
Mystery Tasks
Journalistic Tasks
Design Tasks
Creative Product Tasks
Consensus Building Tasks
Persuasion Tasks
Self-Knowledge Tasks
Analytical Tasks
Judgment Tasks
Scientific Tasks
Tools
Google sites has some templates. Browse the gallery for more templates, enter webquest into the search and choose Webquest template. You will see a few others already created.
The Webquest template tells you everything you need to know about creating a webquest, really.
Webquests workshops: a portal to many more resources than appears on my page!
Webquests
What in the World Wide Web is Web 2.0?
A Webquest by Karen Montgomery
A Science and Literacy WebQuest for Grade 2
Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker
...what will my next career be?
