Teaching with WebQuests

Before this week, I had never heard the word WebQuest. I knew there were online learning activities for students, but I was unaware of WebQuests and how they can be utilized as a creative tool for the classroom. WebQuests were invented by Bernie Dodge and Tom March in 1995, and are inquiry-based, on-line learning activities. The focus of a WebQuest is to promote learning and understanding via the Internet. Students have met the activity objective when they are able to demonstrate what they have learned.

To go along with this lesson, I had to create a WebQuest for middle school Art or Drama students. I first chose an Art lesson plan that I felt was suitable for creating an activity for use in an online WebQuest. My lesson plan revolved around Environmental Art and the Elements of Art. Second, I added a story line to the lesson plan to create an exciting and imaginative activity for the students. I thought Environmental Art could lead to an interesting outdoor adventure!

Once I had the basics down, I registered for a temporary account at QuestGarden.com and began creating my WebQuest. QuestGarden.com was really easy to use and walked me clearly through each of the steps as well as supplied examples and advice along the way (which I found very helpful).My only concerns regarding the WebQuest would be planning, evaluation and time.

I had to rework some of the copy in the sections as I delved farther into the activity. I would get a great new idea and add tweaks that would then affect prior information or I simply added the wrong information in the wrong section and needed to correct it. So, this tells me that I did not planning adequately. My general planning notes did not include all of the necessary details that I needed.

The other major task that I encountered was the evaluation. I could identify each evaluation item, but the corresponding situations were difficult to construct and I was not quite sure how to adjust them. The template QuestGarden gave you seemed to simple and generic, but I may be wrong.

WebQuests take a lot of time to complete, but they create a really cool, interesting learning activity that I think my middle school students can learn from and appreciate! Feel free to take a look at my WebQuest and let me know what you think. My WebQuest, An Environmental Art Excursion, can be viewed at QuestGarden.com.