I wrote an essay about how to incorporate WebQuests into the College Writing Class when I was taking a class that learned about WebQuests. You can read the essay at:
http://web.syr.edu/~mdlattim/essays/webquest_goes2college.html

and you can view a couple of the WebQuests I've created for classes at:
http://web.syr.edu/~mdlattim/essays/literacy_webquest/default.html
(Literacy and the Person)
and at:
http://web.syr.edu/~mdlattim/right2image/
(The Right To Image)

Thanks, Clancy, for bringing attention back to this cool form!

Deanya
http://www.deanya.com/

:-) I had forgotten about the WebQuest-y invitation to interpret the material from an array of roles, like your WebQuest here:

Roles


The roles that you will be asked to play (in loose order of my typically Moffett-structured class) are:

* the Metaphysicalist -- predestined personality? are there factors that affect our literacy potential that lie outside of our present understandings?

* the Psychologist -- blame your parents. how did / do your personal experiences and family shape your particular literacy?

* the Sociologist -- white middle-class female seeks... how does an individual's social group affect her literacy?

* the Anthropologist -- a product of your times and culture. what can an artifact (or lack of one) say about how and what a culture reads and writes?

* the Philosopher -- i'm only human! how can the individual "know" something outside of language? what does it mean to only be able to "know" something within the limits of how we define it? what could this mean for definitions of literacy?

You are not restricted to exploring the roles in any particular order.

How many semesters have you used WebQuests in your teaching? What do the students think about it? I would imagine WebQuests would be particularly useful for online courses.



CultureCat

Wow, check this out!! It's basically a meta-WebQuest on how to do WebQuests about blogs! :)

To Blog or Not to Blog? A WebQuest for Teachers of High School Journalism and English

CultureCat

I read this and other links on WebQuests. When I was teaching high school, I'd never heard of them. Now, since it looks like I'll be in high school again, I'm looking for ways to incorporate technology appropriately. I've found that with student blogs at the university, the quality is variable. Most of the course blogs I've seen are the offspring of a diary mating with a homework notebook. Lots of drivel and inappropriate stuff. But a teacher could set up a webquest blog -- students could ask questions in the comments or post questions and responses if they are given some limited admin. Setting up a blog is fairly simple, but teachers can gradually work in more sophisticated stuff depending on the class.

I like that the webquest allows students to research within a structure -- they're not just floating around cyberspace or surfing for porn (well, they probably do that anyway).
Tricia, USF

I've used the two particular WebQuests I made a couple of times each now; the students have used them and I think they really enjoy the links, but that doesn't mean that they didn't have the NBA homepage open in another window.

I think the problem that I had with them was that they were designed so specifically to each class and school that I built them for -- the Literacy and the Person was designed for a class that emphasized, duh, literacy, and the Right To Image was built for a unit on social semiotics via the visual.

So although I've used them out of context in other ways -- sending students to Syracuse's Intellectual Property link from the image 'Quest, for example -- the ones I've designed have been too specific. Interestingly, that's one thing I'd advocated in designing WebQuests: keep them specific.

Now I wonder if I couldn't design a WebQuest to do something more general. The 'Quest about blogs is a good example of an old-school, one-page 'Quest. There's something clean and neat and strangely simple about it, even though exploring all of the links she gives and answering the questions about them would require hours and hours...

Wouldn't it be cool to design a WebQuest that takes a student thru a research project? Hmmmm... Clancy, you may just have brought me back to something here....

BTW, props to your blog being recognized on the WebQuest "To Blog or Not to Blog?"!! Interesting that she linked to the one entry -- again, specificity of keeping on task.... hmmm.

"A packed room came to hear Bernie Dodge, the creator of the WebQuest concept, talk about WebQuests as they relate to Blogs and Wikis. " from here:
http://mustangblog.typepad.com/magnolia_elementary/2004/07/blogs_and_wik...

he showed webquest templates using blogs and wikis

wiki examples such as: a simulated diary (think, samuel pepys)
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/designpatterns/SD.htm

and wiki for a compilation:
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/designpatterns/COMP.htm

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
the illusion of progress: http://nearlythere.com