WebQuest Information
Exploring WebQuests:
One Way to Invite Students to Use the Web!
The Internet is more than just one more information source.
Searching, selecting, critiquing, and using the information that is out there requires students to think critically and to "take control" over their meaning-making. WebQuests provide us with a way to engage students in the kind of thinking Christine Sleeter talks about in this quote:
To empower students to participate effectively in their civic community, we must change the ways in which they acquire, view, and evaluate knowledge. We must engage students in a process of attaining knowledge in which they are required to analyze conflicting paradigms and explanations and the values and assumptions of different knowledge systems, forms, and categories. Students must also be given opportunities construct knowledge themselves so that they can develop a sophisticated appreciation of the nature and limitations of knowledge and understand the extent to which knowledge is a social construction that reflects the social, political, and cultural context in which it is formulated (Sleeter, 1992, p. 126).
Here is a website all about WebQuests: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/
Here is a WebQuest template. Download and complete it in Netscape Composer or another web-building application.
Here are WebQuests about WebQuests. Choose one and work through it, by yourself or with a partner.
Here are some examples of WebQuests to explore... Choose one or more of these and work through it as if you were a student. Think about whether and how these WebQuests invite you to think critically about this information. Imagine how students would respond to these.
Genre Studies. . .
Turning a Fairy Tale into a Play
Poetry, Picture Books and Novels
Author Studies. . .
Now, use your favorite search engine to do a search for "WebQuest" and any topic that you might want to explore in your classroom: Africa? poetry? George Washington?
See what is out there on the Web................
Add anything that looks promising to your list of favorite links!