Web Quest features and the rationale behind them
The view that the Web is the giant "CD ROM in the
sky" is a narrow and incorrect view. Similarly, the view that you can get
anything you want from the Web is simply untrue. If no one has put it up on the Web,
then you can't get it!
As the number of teacher-users has grown, so has the view
that there is nothing but useless junk on the Web. Teachers who are not
"natives of the Net" tend to see only the lunch time activities of young people
surfing and chatting in the resource centre. They judge the Web by what they see
being accessed by the lunch time crowd.
The Internet is a communications medium. The Web is a
service on the Internet and is open and public. It is neither centrally organised
nor is the content vetted and quality assured. To use the Web as a learning tool,
educationalists need to have underlying reasons for using it. Read the article by
Tom March (http://www.ozline.com/webquests/intro.html) and itemise some of the features of WebQuests and their underlying
rationale. You may also find useful ideas in the article WebQuests: A Strategy for Scaffolding Higher Level
Learning by Bernie Dodge at http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/necc98.htm
