I have used Webquests before only as a student, never as a teacher. In highschool I had the opportunity of doing a few Webquests. One was in Biology, where we had to use a webquest to discover the different parts of the cell, with our end project, being to create a three dimensional model of the different parts. Another Webquest I did was one in which we discovered two perspectives on a topic in our debate class (I don’t remember what the topic was), and at the end each group had to pick a side they wanted to defend and we participated in a debate on the same topic.
One other time I participate in something similar to a WebQuest was a scavenger hunt that my dad made one year for Christmas. Each year my dad would hide one of our larger Christmas gifts or a shared gift and he would hide clues all over the house for us to follow and find our presents. But one year he switched up the tradition and did an online scavenger hunt similar to a WebQuest that was both educational and fun. Each site we went to had something for us to either do or learn about that ultimately led us to the location in our house where the gifts were hidden.
As a teacher I once created a WebQuest for a similar technology class that I took during my undergrad. I created it for the Kindergarten class that I was teaching that year, but was never able to actually use it because I did not have Internet access in my classroom. I found it frustrating to spend so much time and effort on my WebQuest, but being held back by a lack of technology in my classroom in order to implement it. This year I am in a different school district and Youtube is blocked which also limits the types of WebQuests that I can use with my students.
Because I cannot access Youtube (as well as many other websites using the schools internet access) this will severely hinder my abilities to expose students to specific WebQuests, as well as many free educational websites and videos that could be beneficial supplements to my traditional classroom instruction. Because of this I hace come to the conclusion that WebQuests could be a great educational tool, but in many cases it may not be practical or possible to use depending on your schools available technology, internet access, and parental control settings.
One other time I participate in something similar to a WebQuest was a scavenger hunt that my dad made one year for Christmas. Each year my dad would hide one of our larger Christmas gifts or a shared gift and he would hide clues all over the house for us to follow and find our presents. But one year he switched up the tradition and did an online scavenger hunt similar to a WebQuest that was both educational and fun. Each site we went to had something for us to either do or learn about that ultimately led us to the location in our house where the gifts were hidden.
As a teacher I once created a WebQuest for a similar technology class that I took during my undergrad. I created it for the Kindergarten class that I was teaching that year, but was never able to actually use it because I did not have Internet access in my classroom. I found it frustrating to spend so much time and effort on my WebQuest, but being held back by a lack of technology in my classroom in order to implement it. This year I am in a different school district and Youtube is blocked which also limits the types of WebQuests that I can use with my students.
Because I cannot access Youtube (as well as many other websites using the schools internet access) this will severely hinder my abilities to expose students to specific WebQuests, as well as many free educational websites and videos that could be beneficial supplements to my traditional classroom instruction. Because of this I hace come to the conclusion that WebQuests could be a great educational tool, but in many cases it may not be practical or possible to use depending on your schools available technology, internet access, and parental control settings.