Most of the webquests I found were aimed at primary to high
school students. Mrs. Tibbits
9th Grade English (No apostrophe – so definitely won’t be giving
it my students!) was a good basis for what I would have liked. I noticed some
of the webquests had a URL of edublogs, so I went to that site and created my
own set of pages and links. Originally it was based on Mrs Tibbet’s webquest,
but it had changed substantially by the time I had finished. I really wanted to
include websites that were more academic and required some interactivity. I’m
very pleased with the result, and might rename the ‘steps’ to ‘topics’, expand
it a bit more and use it for remote students. According to Dodge (2007,) a “webQuest is an
inquiry-oriented lesson format, in which most, or all, of the information that
learners work with, comes from the web”. It seems that a webquest is
really using the Internet to provide the lesson outline and materials. It would
certainly suit the digital native students of today who would rather click on a
link to find a document than be given it as a handout. Providing all the lesson
material on the Internet also offers much more in terms of interactivity,
videos, audio and so on. It also gives the students some control – they can
move on when they are ready, not when the next handout is passed around.
My Information Literacy webquest is at http://narbell3.edublogs.org/
References
Dodge, B. (2007) Webquest.org.
San Diego State University. [online. Accessed 2 August 2013]
Tibbets, K. (2011) Mrs Tibbets 9th Grade English.
Sanford high School [online. Accessed 28 July 2013]
Your reflection on how the webquest could be better suited to your context was excellent. Great to see you are upto 7.1. Lisa
ReplyDeleteHi Narelle, I love web-quests and so do my students. One day I will hopefully create some good ones as resources for myself and other teachers. A lot of great primary teachers have created them linking directly to NSW syllabus K-6 units of work. I like this one on Antarctica http://antarcticaanticswebquest.wikispaces.com/
ReplyDeleteAlso,when you create a wiki it won't let you use apostrophes in the titles which is a pain, so don't hold it against poor Mrs Tibbet's...Lol
OK I'll try not to be so judgemental!! :) I can understand why kids would enjoy webquests. Using technology is so much more fun than reading and writing. They are reading and learning and don't even realise it.
ReplyDeleteThat is true Narelle but there is always one or two who still prefer not to use the computer or for some reason cannot. Again setting web quest projects would involve equity considerations. I have yet to create a web quest but would like to one day. There are already so many great primary ones out there already though as you discovered. I think I will see if I can find a web quest on accounting for Kylie as she is looking for tools to enrich her skills for engaging accounting students. Wish me luck :)
ReplyDeleteGood luck finding a webquest for adult level learning. It's not easy, that's why I adapted Mrs Tibbits'. Do you know of some "Adult sites"? (and I mean that in all innocence.. webquest sites) :)
ReplyDelete