WebQuests how educational are they?

WebQuests have been designed for a new style and way of teaching and giving students the opportunity to learn in a new way. Students are able to work individually or small groups to complete the WebQuest designed by their Teacher / Learning Manager.

Learning Managers must make sure that when designing a WebQuest that Key Learning Areas are being incorporated and covered. Usually literacy, maths, ICT and science or SOSE are being implemented in the WebQuest. It is vitally important that Ways or Working, Knowledge and Understanding and also Assessment is evident in these quests.

For an assessment on Studies of Society and the Environment a partner and I had to create our own webquest suitable for the year level we were teaching at school.
This was a great way for us as university students to be able to create and embed this into our classrooms, trying it out on a few students who were really hook.

We created it on Energy Efficient and green house emissions, the children were designing their own houses, given choices with crops, landmarks, animals and different choices on what their house would be made out of. Students then had to create a birds eye view on A3 landscape paper what their houses look like and an assessment was designed for the end of the WebQuest. We had links to all relevant information and restrict the pages the students were allowed to view.

This is a great web based tool for Teachers to design a framework including the essential learnings to incorporate this into the classroom. As March 2003 states "Scaffolding is used to implement such approaches as constructivist strategies, differentiated learning, situated learning, thematic instruction, and authentic assessment".

The two WebQuests that I have viewed today Steven and Tom's were very different. I really think that Steven's would be more practical and will hook the students into his webquest because they have group roles and they have to pretend to be all these different characters (builders, environmentalists etc) and then have to present the whole presentation to the "President" who will assess them.
This teachers children to work collaboratively in groups, thinking and working interdepentley and job sharing within the groups.

Reference:

March, T (2003) sighted http://tommarch.com/writings/wq_power.php
Retrieved 19th August, 2009.

2003 by Tom March