Le Debut

According to the co-creator of Webquests, Tom March, a real WebQuest is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding (see March’s blog post The Learning Power of Webquests). There are many elements that go into making an effective Webquest and yet when I did a google search to find some on the internet none of them fitted the description. True the tasks required the use of the internet but only in order to look up basic information. A cloze passage or a find a word would have been just as effective in achieving the same educational goals. Here is a link to an example of what I am talking about, French Speaking Countries Webquest, it directs the students to the exact place where all the information canbe found and they simply transfer this information into a powerpoint presentation, hopefully osmosis will have caused them to retain some of what they have learned. Now there are endless possibilities for the students to be exposed to authentic French texts via the internet (as opposed to ratty old copies of newspaper the French teacher pulled out every year when I was at school). What they are learning about can be current and relevant to their everyday lives. These webquests are another example of teachers being on the right track and wanting to incorporate the technology into the classroom but not realising the potential it actually has for authentic learning.