Production of WebQuests

1
Production of WebQuests

• The Task

2
WebQuest Design The Task

• What do you want your learners to know and be
  able to do at the end of the experience?
• Visit the WebQuest Portal http//webquest.org/ or
  the CU WebQuest Resource Bank http//www3.fed.cuhk
  .edu.hk/community/webquest/ to see if there are
  sites that can be your reference.
• The following are some possibilities

3
WebQuest Taskonomy

• Retelling Tasks
• Compilation Tasks
• Mystery Tasks
• Journalistic Tasks
• Design Tasks
• Creative Product Tasks

• Consensus Building Tasks
• Persuasion Tasks
• Self-Knowledge Tasks
• Analytical Tasks
• Judgment Tasks
• Scientific Tasks

4
Retelling Tasks

• students is to absorb some information and then
  demonstrate that they've understood it.
• report by way of PowerPoint or HyperStudio
  presentations, posters, or short reports.
• task requires looking for simple, sure answers to
  pre-determined questions, is not a WebQuest
  butjust worksheets with URLs.
• A modest WebQuest could be based on retelling if
• the format and wording of their report is
  significantly different than what they read
  (i.e., the report wasn't produced by cutting and
  pasting)
• students are given latitude about what to report
  and how to organize their findings
• skills of summarizing, distilling, and
  elaborating are required and supported.
• Examples
• Will That Volcano Spoil Our Party
• Kia Ora
• Deserts of the World
• Tropical Travelers

5
Compilation Task

• Students take information from a number of
  sources and put it into a common format
• To make a compilation task qualify as a true
  WebQuest, there needs to be some transformation
  of the information compiled. Simply putting a
  hotlist of web sites or a collection of web
  images together arbitrarily isn't enough.
• To ramp up the thinking skills
• use information resources that are in different
  formats, require rewriting or reformatting
• set standards for the organization of the
  compilation, but don't make all the organization
  and formatting decisions for the students. Leave
  some of that job for them, and evaluate their
  product based on the consistency and
  reasonableness of the organization they come up
  with
• require students to develop their own criteria
  for selecting the items they put together and to
  articulate their criteria.
• Examples
• a cookbook compiled from recipes solicited from
  relatives Cooking with your Three Sisters
• a deck of cards to aid field trips Identifying
  Leaves of Pennsylvania
• a selection of web resources to build a virtual
  exhibition 1960's Museum.
• A time capsule A Separate Peace.

6
Mystery Tasks

• A puzzle or detective story
• A well designed mystery task requires synthesis
  of information from a variety of sources.
• Examples
• Aztec Adventure
• King Tutankhamun Was It Murder?

7
Journalistic Tasks

• ask your learners to act like reporters covering
  the event.
• involves gathering facts and organizing them into
  an account within the usual genres of news and
  feature writing.
• In evaluating, accuracy is important and
  creativity is not.
• To design such a lesson, you'll need to provide
  the right resources and establish the importance
  of fairness and accuracy in reporting.
• Examples
• The Vietnam Memorial
• The Mexico City EarthQuake
• The Gilded Age

8
Design Tasks

• requires learners to create a product or plan of
  action that accomplishes a pre-determined goal
  and works within specified constraints.
• Asking students to design an ideal X without also
  requiring them to work within a budget and within
  a body of legal and other restrictions doesn't
  really teach much.
• Examples
• Design a Canadian Vacation Future Quest
  Designing a Home Adventure Trip Quest

9
Creative Product Tasks

• production of something within a given format
  (e.g. painting, play, skit, poster, game,
  simulated diary or song) but they are much more
  open-ended and unpredictable than design tasks.
• The evaluation criteria for these tasks would
  emphasize creativity and self-expression, as well
  as criteria specific to the chosen genre.
• Examples Radio Days , Sworn to Serve

10
Consensus Building Tasks

• the requirement that differing viewpoints be
  articulated, considered, and accomodated where
  possible.
• Examples Vietnam Mural, Vietnam
  Memorial,Searching for China,

11
Persuasion Tasks

• requiring students to develop a convincing case
  that is based on what they've learned.
• Examples The Amistad Case, Rock the Vote ,
  Conflict Yellowstone Wolves

12
Self-Knowledge Tasks

• the goal is a greater understanding of oneself,
  an understanding that can be developed through
  guided exploration of on- and off-line resources.
  
• Example What Will I Be When I Get Big?

13
Analytical Tasks

• learners are asked to look closely at one or more
  things and to find similarities and differences,
  to figure out the implications for those
  similarities and differences.
• They might look for relationships of cause and
  effect among variables and be asked to discuss
  their meaning.
• Examples
• March Madness
• Meet the Immigrants
• What Qualities Cause a College Teacher to be
  Rated Bad?

14
Judgment Tasks

• Judgment tasks present a number of items to the
  learner and ask them to rank or rate them, or to
  make an informed decision among a limited number
  of choices.
• Examples The WebQuest about WebQuests
  Evaluating Math Games

15
Scientific Tasks

• It would include
• making hypotheses based on an understanding of
  background information provided by on- or
  off-line sources
• testing the hypotheses by gathering data from
  pre-selected sources
• determining whether the hypotheses were supported
  and describing the results and their implications
  in the standard form of a scientific report.
• Examples KanCRN Collaborative Research Network,
  Journey North

16
Characteristics of Driving Questions (Tasks)

• Frames the curricular unit
• Worthwhile
• Contains rich science concepts/principles
• Promotes higher order thinking
• Related to what scientists really do
• Complex enough to be broken down into smaller
  questions
• Helps link concepts/principles across disciplines
  

• Feasible
• Students can design and perform investigations to
  answer question
• Appropriate time frame
• Materials readily available Contextualized
• Anchored in the lives of learners
• Related to real-world problems
• Meaningful
• Interesting to learners
• Relevant to learners own lives
• Ill-structured/Open-ended
• Divergent
• No straight forward answer
• Complex

17
Summary on Choosing Tasks

• A Task should
• Involve the use of the Web
• Require students to understand the learning
  materials and reflect in certain ways
• Inquiry-based
• Normally one task for one WebQuest, although
  subtasks are allowed.
• No need for telling students the steps, this
  should be done in the Process.

18
How you can do that?

• Rephrase learning objectives to tasks
• The student will learn to recognize personal
  responsibility to the community.
• How does my community affect my life? What do I
  owe my community -- or do I?
• No need to specify the ways (or terms) which
  should be either done in the Process or be
  discovered by the students, e.g.,
• ??????,????????????????????,??????????
• ??,???????????????????????????????????????????,???
  ?????????????????????!

19
?? ?????
Good introduction

• ?????????????????????,?????????,?????????????????
  ???????????????????????????,?????????????,????????
  ????
• ??????,????????????????????,??????????
• ????????????,????????(????????),????????,?????????
  ???????????
• ?????????
• ??????????,???????????,?????????
• ????????
• ???????????,???????????????,???????
• ?????,?????
• ?????
• ??????
• ??????

Limits thinking space
Should be in Process
Should put in Conclusion
20
???????

• ?????????????????????????????????????????,????????
  ,???????
• ?????????,?????????,???????????

21
Other Examples

• suggestion on rewriting tasks

22
Assignment

• You can now begin discuss how your groups
  WebQuest can be developed by following the
  instruction shown in
• Using LV to co-construct a WebQuest
• You can also use FrontPage (or any other editor)
  to edit the web pages
• introduction.htm
• task.htm
• Upload them to Learning Community (group account
  if available)

23
End of The Task

• Continue with The Process