WebQuest Now Behind Me What Next?

After looking over classmates WebQuest's I am in awe of their awesome, creative and instructional abilities. I like being able to look over the different templates that they used--I used zunal--easy to use template for a beginner but limited in color and text capabilities. Zunal was easy to navigate which I think students will like. Breaking it down on to different pages made it seem more manageable.

Some of the quizes and videos that my peers choose were very good and age appropritate. Once again I found that to be the most time consuming part--finding the perfect resources!
I did bookmark them all in Delicious--which gave me easy access to them when I was ready to link them.

I learned that when I link I need to have them all open up in a new window so that navigation will be easy for the students. So next time I will do that as I go along! I need to make my title of my links hotlinked rather than listing the title and then the link.

I enjoyed looking at the webquests and now it is time to start focusing on podcasting and website formation! Karen :)

My First Encounter with Web Quests

According to Thomas March Article, Revisiting WebQuests in a Web 2 World, a web quest is a "scaffold learning structure that use the world wide web to motivate students to investigate." He also said that, "scaffolding, motivation, thinking and compelling online resources stand central to every web quest".

So I thought wow a web quest is going to be a great higher level thinking tool to use with students. So I was with a veteran teacher who really loves to use technology and she said she does not like web quests--didn't see the value in them. A science teacher who use them fairly frequently thinks they are great for inquiry learning. So now I am on the quest to see if web quests can be an effective web 2.0 tool to use with Middle School Students.

There are a couple of great ideas that I got from this article:
First the Thinking Routines.

I want to make a poster and start practicing thinking with students.

Thinking Routine
See-Think--Wonder
1. What do you see
2. What do you think about it?
3. What does it make you wonder?

Claim--Support--Question
1. Make a claim about the topic

2. Identify support for your claim

3. Ask a question related to your claim

What Makes You Say That?

1. What's going on here?

2. What do you see that makes you say that?

The goal is to move students beyond learning as "knowledge" to view learning as "understanding".

So often I see learning going on with no understanding--so my question to ponder today--is that the students fault or the teachers? And can a web quest move students to understanding?

Til later------Karen :)