To be perfectly honest, I thought WebQuests were..."so four years ago."
When I first started working as the computer lab instructor at a local elementary school back in 2008, I worked with a couple of classroom teachers who were excited to find and use WebQuests with their students. A number of these WebQuests were very engaging--incorporating various forms of digital media and prompting students to synthesize the collected knowledge; the majority of others however were no more than "follow these links and fill in this worksheet with the answers you find" types of tasks (lower order thinking). And then, WebQuests kind of just went away. The focus then shifted more (from what I could tell) to incorporating SMART Board participatory learning in their classrooms.
Out of curiosity, I went to Twitter, and conducted a search under the hashtag '#webquest,' and 15 Tweets were returned. Then I searched for '#SMARTBoard' and over 50 Tweets were returned. Hmm...
In some ways, I think WebQuests are great for younger students because an educator can evaluate and select resources that are both relevant and age-appropriate, and at the right reading level for their students as opposed to sending them out to Google and hoping for the best. On the other hand, as students get older, isn't having students evaluate and select sources that are appropriate exactly what we want to teach them to do for themselves? Does pre-selecting the resources the students will use limit or bias their learning? Does following a set of prescribed links foster technology literacy? Is it authentic?
I do like the idea of educators coming together across the curriculum to collaboratively create a WebQuest that engages their students in researching a topic (i.e., poverty or innovation from multiple perspectives such as literature, science, social studies, math), and incorporating higher order thinking and Common Core Standards into their analysis. I can also envision students creating
To be perfectly honest, I thought WebQuests were..."so four years ago."
When
I first started working as the computer lab instructor at a local
elementary school back in 2008, I worked with a couple of classroom
teachers who were excited to find and use WebQuests with their students. A number of these WebQuests
were very engaging--incorporating various forms of digital media and
prompting students to synthesize the collected knowledge; the majority
of others however were no more than "follow these links and fill in this
worksheet with the answers you find" types of tasks (lower order
thinking). And then, WebQuests kind of just went away. The focus then shifted more (from what I could tell) to incorporating SMART Board participatory learning in their classrooms.
Out
of curiosity, I went to Twitter, and conducted a search under the
hashtag '#webquest,' and 15 Tweets were returned. Then I searched for
'#SMARTBoard' and over 50 Tweets were returned. Hmm...
In
some ways, I think WebQuests are great for younger students because an
educator can evaluate and select resources that are both relevant and
age-appropriate, and at the right reading level for their students as
opposed to sending them out to Google and hoping for the best. On the
other hand, as students get older, isn't having students evaluate and
select sources that are appropriate exactly what we want to teach them
to do for themselves? Does pre-selecting the resources the students
will use limit or bias their learning? Does following a set of
prescribed links foster technology literacy? Is it authentic?
I do like the idea of educators coming together across the curriculum to collaboratively create a WebQuest
that engages their students in researching a topic (i.e., poverty or
innovation from multiple perspectives such as literature, science,
social studies, math), and incorporating higher order thinking and
Common Core Standards into their analysis. I can also envision students creating WebQuests collaboratively as a class to share their learning and knowledge with other students. For example, older students could research Internet safety and put together a WebQuest to share with younger students and both would benefit.
What do you think? What's been your experience?
I see your point about how WebQuests could easily turn into a simple "go to this website for this answer" exercise without higher order thinking skills. It is something that I also thought about when reading the article about it being used in the classroom. For that reason I like your idea of having students create WebQuests on their own. Surely this will encourage creativity and higher order thinking skills, include information literacy skills and will give students ownership of their work.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree that many educators have used WebQuests without fostering higher order thinking skills. But over the years, I have seen many very good ones in which higher order thinking skills are addressed in creative ways. Like Sara, I like your idea of having students create WebQuests as products of learning.
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