August 4, 2005
Presented by Dan McDowell, West Hills High School

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WebQuests

Overview

• Structured format (with flexibility!) designed so other teachers can use it
• Task should be creative, real world, significant, collaborative (sometimes), and involves a final product of some sort (paper, model, skit, etc.)

• Children of the Holocaust WebQuest (Video 24mb)
• Civil War Stories
• Industrial Revolution Newspaper

A WebQuest on WebQuests

To get the full effect of the WebQuest model, we will spend some time actually doing a WebQuest, aptly called a WebQuest on WebQuests.

WebQuest Index

Now that you have a pretty good idea about how WebQuests work, take some time to search the WebQuest Portal for a couple WebQuest that cover your curriculum. Select two and look at what you might change if you were to implement them into your class.

Creation

Design Patterns

A number of years ago WebQuest creator, Bernie Dodge, noticed that there were similar types of WebQuests popping up on the web. As a result he created a series of design patterns to help teachers plug their ideas into a specialized templated. This has helped shorten the creation process and provided teachers with a more structured template to follow.

GardenQuest

Bernie recently unveiled a cool new tool that will help you create a solid WebQuest. Basically you select a design pattern and then are walked through the process. No longer do you have to worry about writing web pages, uploading files, or making it look "pretty" - all of that has been automated and integrated into an easy-to-use web-based tool. You can look the screen shot below for a taste of it (it is not available until September 1, 2005). For more info, visit the WebQuest Portal.