Response Blog #2: The "5 Commandments" of Web Quests and some Web Quest Reviews

I have to admit, I was completely wrong in my understandings of a web quest. This is what I visualized when I heard "web quest": Students would go online, search pre-determined sites, and gather information. And this was the technique that I used when I had my students complete web quests. I never knew about the 5 steps (or, what I call "commandments") that are basically the backbone of any good web quest: 

1. A good introduction that gives a broad overview of the quest.

2. The specific task that the students are about to complete.

3. A step-by-step process of what the students should be doing.

4. A way for students and teachers to evaluate their completed task (preferably a rubric)

5. A conclusion that wraps up the whole process.

If a web quest contains all 5 of these steps, it will most likely be a meaningful and educating experience. 

While searching online for some web quests, I found a couple of great ones that I could definitely use in my classroom:

• European Exploration This web quest is a great way to start off my 8th grade curriculum. I am always pressed for time at the end of each school year because I spend way too much time on my European explorer unit; however, I teach American history. I feel that students must know reasons why Europeans came to the Americas, but I never found an effective way to mold all of the reasons into one lesson. This web quest, however, does just that by focusing on "God, glory, and gold", which are the three main reasons for European exploration in the 1400s and 1500s. It also presents different countries and their reasons for exploration, not just Great Britain (which is sometimes refreshing because American history is often presented from a British-perspective). 
• Parliamentary Defense and the American Revolution: This web quest really struck me as a great way to teach American history from a different perspective. Since it is an American history class, I always teach the Revolutionary War from an American colonist's perspective. This always leads to reasons why Britain was infringing upon the colonist's freedom and rarely does the British argument arise in my classroom (for example, sure, the British were taxing us without representation, but why were they doing it? There must have been reasons for that to occur!) This web quest does just that: it raises the question as to whether or not the actions of Britain (more specifically, Parliament) are able to be justified. Students must try to defend the British side of the argument. 

Both of these quests follow the 5 commandments of a good web quest and I plan to use them next year in my instruction. Now comes the hard part... creating your own web quest. 

TeAchnology provides a really good template to use for creating web quests and WebQuest.org provides a great summary of how to create a really good web quest. I am now seriously considering creating a web quest for my final project.... now I just need to narrow it down to a topic!