Another example of new media in foreign language education are WebQuests.
Definition:“A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web.”[1]
Have a look at the video below of “Palm Breeze Café” (a webshow which presents instructional tools for educators) which provides you with information on www.webquest.org or visit the homepage directly to discover the opportunities WebQuests provide. On this homepage you can find a collection of WebQuests created by other teachers, create an own WebQuest and share it with others and a lot more.
Structure:
The most important elements of a webquest are: 1. The introduction which raises the students’ attention, motivates them and introduces the central questions, 2. The task which is the most important element and normally should require thinking and creating, 3. The process which presents the steps the students have to follow in order to complete the task, 4. The evaluation where the results and the working process will be evaluated and which forces the teacher to think about what he expects from his students, 5. The conclusion which summarises what the students have learned (facts, new ways to find information, certain skills, a new opinion about something etc.) and 6. The teacher page which includes everything that other teachers need to know before they use the webquest.
The following links lead you to some examples on how WebQuests could look like.
A webquest about a day in the life of Harry Potter
A webquest about creating a travel brochure
A webquest about Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
A webquest about Romeo and Juliet
If you enter “WebQuest” into the search box of wordpress.com, you will also find information on WebQuests and a lot of examples.
Of course there are also webquests about webquests, for example:
WebQuest about WebQuests for teachers
German version of the WebQuest
If you are looking for more webquests then visit:
It is also possible to create your own webquest, for example if you do not find a webquest about your favoured topic or if you just want to become creative yourself. If you enter “webquest generator” into the google search box you will provided with over 85000 websites. It takes much time to find a good webquest generator, that’s why I would recommend the webquest HTML generator 1, 2, 3 Your WebQuest For Free. Everything you have to do there is to enter the title and texts of your webquest and choose a fitting design. It is adviseble to create a good task and the other pages first and afterwards choose the design because the most important part of a webquest is the task and creating a design can take a long time and keep you away from the more important things.
Advantages and Disadvanatges of WebQuests
Pros:
You can improve your in-class lessons with webquests because they are not teacher-centred, so the learners become active themselves and become motivated to work on their own. The amount of help can be according to the class level decided by the teacher. Webquests allow that students with different learner types or more advanced and slower learners can efficiently work together on one project. A constructivist way of learning is permitted. For the teacher, webquests help to save time and there are databases and link lists so that you do not have to create a webquest on your own.
Cons:
Webquests take a lot of time. As a teacher you have to acquire knowledge on how to use webquests in class correctly and test the task before it is really waterproof. Furthermore it takes a lot of time to find suitable resoucres on the internet. Doing a webquest with you students requires access to a number of computers. Of course there are always risks when you work with the internet, for example that in your lab it is down completely so you always have to prepare an alternative lesson plan.
In my opinion webquests are a good method to get your students become active themselves. If I had the opportunity (computer lab in school, enough computers, internet access and enough time slots in the school’s computer lab), I would integrate webquests in my English lessons. Of course webquests should not be used constantly but if it is possible to work on a topic with a webquest, it is a good way to provide your students something new and encourage them to become creative.
