Presentación sobre la metodología WebQuest

1. WebMagic with WebQuest
Alicia García de la Santa & Víctor R. González
agarc123@alerce.pntic.mec.es vgonzale@platea.pntic.mec.es
CFIE Valladolid II – http://cfievalladolid2.net
(Teacher Training and Educational Innovation Centre in Valladolid, Spain,
from the Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León)
Socrates Comenius 2.1 “Think, Construct & Communicate”
http://cfievalladolid2.net/thinkweb
20th Conference ESP Association with COMP@CT & ECOLE

2. Is there a “magic” potion for an eMagic
educational exploitation of the Web?
Or, in other words:
«Is it possible to integrate Web
browsing with successfull
learning principles to develop
educational standards with the
students in our classroom?»
The answer is yes and
it is called…
WebQuest

3. The answer is yes and it is called ...
WebQuest
It is the application of a
learning strategy through
guided discovery towards a
process of work developed by
the students, using the
resources of the WWW .
In short, Webquest means research,
investigation through the Web .

4. Why the Web?
According to Bernie Dodge:
«There are at least two reasons that the World Wide Web is an
exciting development for educators:
 Using the Web breaks down the walls that separate schools
from everything else.
 Using the Web forces active learning . »

5. Active learning
In Dodge´s own words active learning involves:
«putting our students in situations which compel them to
read, speak, listen, think deeply, and write .
While well delivered lectures are valuable and are not
uncommon, sometimes the thinking required while attending a
lecture is low level comprehension that goes from the ear to
the writing hand and leaves the mind untouched.
Active learning puts the responsibility of organizing what
is to be learned in the hands of the learners
themselves, and ideally lends itself to a more diverse range
of learning styles.»

6. WebQuest domains
When first faced with the prospect of developing learning
environments on the web, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the
possibilities. One way to reduce the complexity of the task is to
chunk things out into these three domains:
 Inputs
 Transformations
 Outputs or Outcomes»
Inputs Transformations Outputs
(what the learner receive) (the cognitive processes ) (what the learner produces)
• compare / contrast
• references, articles • concept creation
• images, sounds • oral presentations
• analysis
• news, reports, press • reports, letters, etc.
• synthesis
releases • creative writting
• evaluation
• experts • audioconferencing
• problem-solving
• dynamic data resources • videoconferencing
• decision-making
• projects/field reports • web publishing
• policy formation

7. Web-What? ... WebQuest
An indicator of the popularity of this strategy is the number of
times that appears the term "WebQuest" in the WWW.
A search engine as Google gives back hundreds of
thousands of references (approximately 438,000 in
September 2004, and 2,440,000 in March 2006).
In the education specialized pages there are collections of
WebQuests, organized by levels and areas of contents at the
disposal of whoever may want to use them directly in their
classes, to adapt them to their students or just as a guidance to
design their own.
Bernie Dodge has been named by eSchool News as one of
the 30 main innovators in educative technology . In
short, the WebQuest is fashionable. Perhaps it is by justified
reasons and it is well worthy to know it in depth.

8. Web-What? ... WebQuest
Dodge [1], the WebQuest designer, defines it as:
 "an inquiry-oriented activity, based on a doable and
engaging task, in which some or all of the information that learners
interact with comes from predefined resources on the Internet
(and elsewhere) ”.
Yoder [2] says that it is a:
 "type of lesson plan... that incorporates links to, from and
along the World Wide Web . The students are presented a scenario
and a task, usually a problem to solve or a project to
complete. The students are given Internet resources and asked to
analyze and synthesize the information and come up with their own
creative solutions ". In addition, the students solve the WebQuest
forming workteams and adopting each one of them a perspective or
specific role, to which they have particular information.
[1] Some Thoughts About WebQuest. Bernie Dodge (1995).
[2] The Student WebQuest. Learning & Leading with Technology , vol. 26, no. 7. Yoder,
M.B. (April 1999).

9. Web-What? ... WebQuest
WebQuests do not require the use of complex, nor
specialized software for the creation of multimedia files .
One or several teachers simply need to have the following
knowledge and capacities to create a WebQuest:
 to know how to surf through the WWW,
 to know how to suitably handle the search engines of
information,
 to have basic knowledge of HTML design for the hypertextual
document creation and obviously,
 to have a good command of the contents to be taught.
Summarizing, a WebQuest is an attractive didactic activity
for the students, that allows them to develop deep
understanding .

10. What does a WebQuest activity look like?
Introduction
Task
Web
Procces
resources
s
Evaluation
Conclusio
n
Let’s look at an example...
Teacher’
s page
WebQuest blocks (sections)

11. Scaffolding
In order to make the learning easier for the student , the conexions
between inputs, transformations and outputs should be helped or
supported by the educator with the so-called cognitive scaffolds of
three types:
1) Reception 2) Transformation 3) Production

12. The WebQuest way vs. the traditional way

13. Reception scaffolds
The Web allows us to put
students in touch with resources
that they might not have seen
before.
If learners are not fully prepared
to extract information from the
Web, then everything else in a
lesson will be based on shaky
ground.
A reception scaffold provides
guidance in learning from a
given resource and retaining
what was learned.

14. Transformation scaffolds
WebQuests ask learners to
transform what they read into
some new form.
They might benefit by explicit help on
such processes as comparing and
contrasting, finding patterns
among a number of similar
objects of study, brainstorming,
inductive reasoning, and
decision making .
The goal of these transformation
scaffolds consists of going
beyond the information
structure, while the reception ones
help to perceive the structure that
already lies in the information.

15. Production scaffolds
WebQuests commonly require
students to create things they
have never created before .
The production aspects of the task
can be scaffolded by providing
students with templates, prompted
writing guides, and multimedia
elements and structures.
By doing part of the work for
students, we allow them to go
beyond what they would be
able to do alone. Over time, we
hope, they internalize the structures
we provide until they can work
autonomously.

16. And now... Let’s get to work
A WebQuest about WebQuests
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestwebquest-ms.html

17. Where can I find info about WebQuests?
The WebQuest “Home” The WebQuest “2nd home”
http://webquest.sdsu.edu http://www.ozline.com/learning

18. Where can I find more info about WebQuests?
The WebQuest “our home”
http://cfievalladolid2.net/thinkweb
And a LanguageQuest: http://www.kennisnet.nl/thema/talenquest

19. OK. So, which are the
WebMagic Constructivistic
Constructivistic
potion ingredients? approach
approach
Active learning:
Active learning:
transformations
transformations
Collaborative learning
+ Collaborative learning
Project based learning
Project based learning
Good web resources
Good web resources
Scaffolding the
process
Scaffolding the process
WebQuest
And the name of the potion is: