Webquests

This latest blog post is all about my current Instructional Tech project: webquests.
Webquests are projects assigned, researched, and possible even completed online. The teacher creates a website or a wiki specifically for this webquest that covers the following topics: an Introduction, a task, the process, the evaluation/rubric, and the conclusion. Some webquest sites even include a resources page. The goal is for students to follow the guidelines laid out in the website to complete a project using the internet as their only source of information. Hopefully from this they will learn how to search the internet and distinguish between useful and "fluff" information.
Someday, in a classroom of my own, I will use webquests as either group or individual projects in the beginning of the school year. This type of project can be more structured and guide the child(ren) to the information we want them to glean all the while teaching them the necessary steps. It could even be a precursor to a research project because with this project the websites are provided but with a research project the students would have to find the information on their own using skills learned for webquests.
The pros of webquests: they are a guided way to teach research and how to pick out quality information, they teach internet literacy, and they are a way for teachers to monitor what websites their students go to.
A con: setting up a website for each and every specific webquest is a time consuming task for teachers.

Here is my opinion of communication then and now in a video format. The first video was practice and this one follows the actual guidelines of the assignment.