Monday, October 31, 2011

An Example of a Good Webquest

The following is an example of what a good webquest looks like.

http://questgarden.com/133/29/9/111013075318/index.htm

I found this website to be exemplary. From the introduction to the credits every expectation for the students was well outlined. The author used appropriate photos and the font was good, except for the few uses of lime green writing on grey background. The introduction and task were well detailed and gave students a taste of what they should expect from the webquest. The process was well thought out, but I feel that the fact that it is supposed to take two weeks is too long for students to spend on a webquest. Other than that the websites are relevant to the task and each assignment is very informative. Another drawback is that the links do not open in different windows. The evaluation, conclusion, and credits are very well done. The teacher page is great and goes in depth and mentions the state and NCSS standards. I liked this webquest a lot, but if I were to use it in my class I would have to alter it to be a little shorter so that my students would not be taking two weeks to complete it.

A Bad Example of a Webquest

The following website shows an example of what a bad webquest looks like.

http://questgarden.com/126/02/8/110504171414/index.htm

I feel that webquest was done very poorly or has not been completed. The introduction to the quest gives poor if any background knowledge but does at least tell the students what to expect from the webquest. I liked the task as working as reporters to explain the four major causes of World War I: militarism, nationalism, imperialism, and alliances. Yet I did not like that they also had to do a graphic organizer that connected the causes, the connection is the war itself. I feel like the task does not match with the introduction to create a graphic organizer that is "eye catching", why does the graphic organizer need to be eye catching? If you want something eye catching, then create a poster to demonstrate the causes of World War I instead. As for the process I was disappointed. There was a video that discussed the causes of WWI yet the video started with ads, wasting precious class time, and if you tried to forward through the video it would have to be reloaded, plus the video was not the most informative. The next link on the webquest took you to a website that had all sorts of categories an websites to go to, which would not allow students to complete this webquest in one period, perhaps three would be sufficient. The next part of the process is to read three handouts, that are not offered to be viewed, meaning that anyone using this webquest would have to create their own handouts or forget them altogether.  The conclusion, evaluation, and credits were ok, but the teacher page had blanks in every category, making it useless to even have a teacher page. So overall the webquest needs a lot of work.