In the Spring of 1995 version of this course, Tom March and I drafted a format for web-based lessons. Our early thoughts are captured in the paper Some Thoughts About WebQuests, which was later published in the journal The Distance Educator. In that paper, a WebQuest was defined as:
... an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing.
Since that time, the WebQuest notion, simple though it is, has been adopted and adapted by teachers all over the country. Kathy Schrock in Massachusetts, for example, teaches it to her graduate students and developed an excellent slide show to explain the concept. In some cases, teachers created lessons that went beyond my early ideas; in others, it seems that they picked up on only part of what I was trying to communicate
It's my hope that in this class you'll develop a thorough understanding of the different possibilities open to you as you create web-based lessons. One way for you to get there is to critically analyze a number of WebQuest examples and discuss them from multiple perspectives. That's your task this afternoon.
By the end of this exercise, you and your group will answer these two questions:
Here are the sites you'll be analyzing:
To answer the questions given above, you'll break into groups of four and work while seated at two computers. Within the group, each of you will take on one of the following roles:
The
Efficiency Expert: You value time a great deal. You believe that
too much time is wasted in today's classrooms on unfocused activity
and learners not knowing what they should be doing at a given moment.
To you, a good WebQuest is one that delivers the most learning bang
for the buck. If it's a short, unambitious activity that teaches a
small thing well, then you like it. If it's a longterm activity, it
had better deliver a deep understanding of the topic it covers, in
your view.
The
Affiliator: To you, the best learning activities are those in
which students learn to work together. WebQuests that force
collaboration and create a need for discussion and consensus are the
best in your view. If a WebQuest could be done by a student working
alone, it leaves you cold.
The
Altitudinist: Higher level thinking is everything to you. There's
too much emphasis on factual recall in schools today. The only
justification for bringing technology into schools is if it opens up
the possibility that students will have to analyze information,
synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance on the merits of
something. You also value sites that allow for some creative
expression on the part of the learner.
The
Technophile: You love this internet thang. To you, the best
WebQuest is one that makes the best use of the technology of the Web.
If a WebQuest has attractive colors, animated gifs, and lots of links
to interesting sites, you love it. If it makes minimal use of the
Web, you'd rather use a worksheet.
Within your groups, then, examine each of the sites on the list of resources and jot down some notes of your opinions of each from the perspective of your role.
When everyone in the group has seen all the sites, then it's time to get togther to answer the questions. One person in each group should open Claris Home Page to record the group's thoughts. The resulting file will be collected at the end of the period and linked to this page later tonight.
You'll need to examine each site fairly quickly. Don't spend more than 10 minutes on any one site. When you get together with all four members of your group, pay attention to each of the other perspectives, even if at first you think you might disagree with it.
Ideally, this exercise will provide you with a larger pool of ideas to work with on your final project. The best WebQuest is yet to be written. It might be yours!