THE ARCHITECT
You as the
engineer are to investigate other WebQuests and use the information you find to
aid you in the design of your group’s WebQuest. You will also be responsible for putting all the pieces together
to form the end product for your group.
You will write the introduction to your group’s Webquest to engage the
learners in the activity. Although your
role does not require a great deal of generating new ideas, it does require a
comfort with technology and the ability to evaluate the value of design.
Before you begin,
you will need to evaluate at least three other WebQuests. Click on the links below to view the
sites. While viewing them complete the WebQuest Design
Critique form.
I
suggest that you view as many WebQuests as possible in order collect various
ideas about your design.
THE DESIGN
How
you choose to design your WebQuest can have a tremendous effect on its
success. Listed below is a variety of
resources you can use to aid you in constructing your WebQuest.
The WebQuest Design Process A flowchart
showing the steps involved in designing a WebQuest.
Lesson Templates for
Students and Teachers How do you get a WebQuest started quickly? Don't
start with a blank screen... download these instead.
The WebQuest Taskonomy: A Taxonomy of Tasks Describes 12
categories for describing what you ask learners to do, 11 of which can lead to
higher level thinking.
Fine Points Describes 14
little things you can do to improve the aesthetics and professionalism of your
WebQuest (or any) pages.
Building Blocks for
WebQuests A description of the six essential sections of a
WebQuest. Newly enhanced by the San Diego City Schools Ed Tech Dept.
THE INTRODUCTION
The
purpose of this section is to both prepare and hook the reader. The student is the intended audience. Essentially,
the introduction is a short paragraph that introduces the activity or lesson to
the students. If there is a role or scenario involved (e.g., "You are a
detective trying to identify the mysterious poet.") then here is where
you'll set the stage. It is also in this section that you'll communicate the
Big Question (Essential Question, Guiding Question) that the whole WebQuest is
centered around.
Comparative Democracy (Lang. Arts/Hist./Soc. Sci. - 8)
Rock the Vote (Lang. Arts/Hist./Soc. Sci. - 8)
Snapshot in Time (Lang. Arts/Hist./Soc. Sci. - 8)
Return of the Great Game (Gov./Hist./Soc. Sci. 12)
YOUR
PRODUCT:
Using the
information above as well as what you observed in the example WebQuests, you
must create the Introduction section of your group’s WebQuest as well as
construct the overall design of the WebQuest.
This can be done on MicroSoft word or you may use an online free website
host to construct your WebQuest page.
See the resource links below in order to learn more about creating free
web pages.
Tripod
- web based community and original conttent provider.
Bravenet
- free web site building, hosting, toolls, and more.
Yahoo!
GeoCities - free web presence provider. Web page building, site hosting,
domain names, email, and more.
Freeservers.com
- offers web sites and space, customizeed domain name, unlimited email
addresses, guestbook, direct FTP access and more.
50Megs.com
- offers 50 megabytes of space for web sites. Also includes EZ builder and
guest book.
Angelfire
Communications - free web space and page building, hosting, tools, and
more.
ProHosting
- free virtual hosting.