Lesson 6: Teaching with WebQuests

WebQuests were developed just a few years ago, and not many people are aware of what they are and their primary purpose. However, after this week’s lesson I have come to the understanding that a WebQuest is simply a website that is developed to break down a large task into several smaller tasks. It’s a visual that aides in the learning process for students, and students are able to interact with the WebQuest to complete various lessons. Individuals or groups can create a WebQuest to teach practically anything.

There are numerous WebQuests available online; however, the one I found most valuable was questgarden.com, which also tends to be my Educational Technology professor’s personal favorites as well. WebQuest is pretty much self explanatory and takes the user through the process of development one step at a time.

In this lesson I was assigned to design my very own WebQuest. Initially, I was very intimated by the assignment and dreaded doing it simply because I was a novice at the topic. I wasn’t even aware that WebQuests even existed, so creating my own was a somewhat difficult task to complete. However, I made it through and successfully finished it! Developing a WebQuest was certainly time consuming, but very rewarding when it was finally complete. I can not wait to present my WebQuest to my computer lab students. The following is the URL to my WebQuest:
http://questgarden.com/119/20/9/110214110615/

Now, for a little description of my WebQuest… Since I am a computer lab instructor in an elementary school, I obviously chose to develop a WebQuest regarding technology. The title of my WebQuest is “Don’t Be a Chicken”. The topic is keyboarding. The material covered in this site is proper keyboarding techniques and homerow keys on the keyboard. The students are to complete a few assignments and are assessed in a test that covers the proper keyboarding techniques and a typing test using only the homerow keys. Some of you may be wondering why I entitled my WebQuest, “Don’t Be a Chicken”. Remember, chickens peck and humans type. A lot of children (and adults) peck like a chicken when they type…using one or two fingers to type whatever keys they need. When we learn the homerow keys and the basics of keyboarding, we no longer “peck”, we type. That’s how the title came about.

Challenges from my WebQuest? I faced several! The biggest challenge was just learning how to use it and what to include in my WebQuest. It was time consuming, and for whatever reason, my fonts did not turn out correctly on my WebQuest. Overall, though, I enjoyed it and can’t wait to use my students as guinea pigs when I present this for the first time. If they seem to enjoy it, I may consider registering and becoming a member on QuestGarden.