Internet-Based Projects and Webquest

What are Internet-Based Projects?

These projects are a way for teachers to begin to incorporate the Internet into the language English classroom. It is implemented throughout a series of lessons.

The use of projects encourage cooperative learning and stimulates interaction within students.

The Internet can be thought to be a huge encyclopedia. It gives learner quick access to an enormous amount of information. And these projects also encourage critical thinking skills.

WEBQUESTS

These are mini-projects. Most of the material is supplied from the Internet.

There are two kinds of web quests: teacher-made or learner-made.

Dogge considers that there are two types of webquests:

1- short-term webquests: Learners will grasp new information and make sense of it. Students achieve a set of learning aims by visiting a selection of sites. They last for 2-3 classes.

2- longer-term webquests: students will analyze a body of knowledge and transform it in some way. By transforming it, they will demonstrate their understanding of the material by cheating something online of offline that other can solve/respond. These projects are a few weeks or a term/semester long.

Webquests usually are built up by four main sections:

1- Introduction: This stag is used to introduce the theme of the webquest. It involves background information, key vocabulary elements, language learning context and concept students will need to understand to complete the tasks involved.

2- Task: This section explains what the learners will have to do. These tasks should be motivating and deal with topics of interests of students, associated to real-life situations.

3- Process: This stage guides the learners through a set of activities and research tasks (often using a set of predefined resources). The resources are internet-based and presented as active links to websites within the task document. The process stage will have one or several products which learners will have to present at the end on the evaluation stage.

4- Evaluation: This stage can involve students self-evaluation, comparing and contrasting what they have created with other learners. Giving feedback is also important in this stage. It also will involve teacher evaluation.