Monday, November 30, 2009

WebQuest...

My Quest for Sustainable Environment...

Using 3 R's( Reduce,Reuse,Recycle)as workable Webquest for grade four students. Note this is my SOSE assignment which I was happy to pass. I learnt more after exploring further as we do. I love the idea of adding more picture and redeveloping another Webquest for differnt Key Learning Area. http://sites.google.com/site/neth67/

WebQuests are ideal for independent learning as well as group work and are somewhat engaging for students due to the fact that learning experiences are delivered electronically. The main benefits of a WebQuest are as follows:
• That resources and websites that would normally be accessed by students during their research have already been qualified and located within the WebQuest for students to utilise. This prevents students encountering inappropriate web sites during their research on the World Wide Web.
• It can reduce the time wasted finding suitable material and assessing whether the web site content is suitable for the unit of work.
• It allows the Learning Manager (LM) to scaffold the learning and develop concepts as students work through the various content material, questions and tasks built into the unit of work. This fits very well with Constructivist learning / teaching theories.
• Learning Frameworks such as the Dimensions of Learning can be incorporated easily as Declarative and Procedural Knowledge (learning outcomes) can be clearly stated. Activities and learning experiences that incorporate Complex Reasoning Process or that allow students to Use Knowledge Meaningfully can be incorporated into the WebQuest.
• The LM can ensure that students encounter a range of authors, opinions and the latest up-to-date research for students to access.
• Most of all the WebQuest can be created and designed in many different ways. This is my SOSE assignment WebQuest feel free to comment. I admit I have to do more wore on creating a user friendly Webquest.

Cheers Mary-Ann

3 comments:

  1. Hi! Mary-Ann

    I agree with you that we have to do more wore on creating a user friendly WebQuest. Most of the WebQuest has created very simple navigation however I found rather too simple. These days we can use so many interactive e-learning tools as we have learned and not many of them are using those. If they use more, I think WebQuest can be much more interesting and fun. However I believe any IT tools should make the life easy, not to make you or your student stressful. Although the concept of WebQuest is very interesting and valuable, I sometimes wonder and not sure the time issue to create the actual work. That is up to the educator who include this as learning tools.

    Regards
    Makiko

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  2. You are right Makiko, it is up to the teacher/Learning Manager to incorporate any IT tools that are now available.That is why we as educator must adopt different types of tools depending on where the students are at( Eieght Learning Management Questions)Smith& Lynch,2007. Because students this days..are digital natives (Prensky).There are great deal of evidence that children's learning games are designed to produce learning.WebQuest is just one of them.

    Cheers
    Mary-Ann

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  3. Hi Mary-Ann & Makiko,
    you have made some very interesting points.

    Like any tool that is e-based, I believe, WebQuests will improve and adapt with time.

    I also found some WebQuests were a little simplified in the navigation that linked students to resources; and I wondered if that might cause an issue in and of itself? Might you end up with students assignments becoming very similar and limited in higher order thinking if the mount of resources they can link to are limited.

    At lest this is something that you could check and improve if necessary before using an available WebQuest in your classroom.
    Warm regards,
    Sharon

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