The assignment we have been working on for about the last 2 weeks for Ed Tech is to develop a webquest. The activity I did for mine was having the students plan a family vacation to Washington DC. I developed this lesson with middle-schoolers (6th - 8th grade) in mind and from the perspective of some type of either beginning business education class or gifted and talented. I 'assumed' that they had studied Washington DC in their social studies class and developed this webquest as an extension of the material they had learned as a cross-curricular activity.
Three thoughts on webquests:
1) For me this was a pretty detailed assignment. I'm sure part of that is that it was my first time developing one. Hopefully the 'next' one will go more quickly because otherwise I would be hard pressed to using this format very much in my own classroom, primarily because of the extensive up-front work required.
2) I had trouble coming up with a topic because it seemed like when I Googled the ideas I had I could almost always find an existing webquest on that topic. I finally decided on the one I did after telling myself that there was no way our instructor could possibly expect that we would all find a novel topic and that it was more important that my webquest just not be a copy of one already out there. On the flip side, the availability of webquests on so many topics could be highly useful in the future as it would help to address my concerns in point 1, above.
3) I can see students enjoying activities like this.
I don't know for sure that I will use webquests in my own classroom, especially in their 'traditional' form. I guess that it will all come down to if I think that it is the appropriate format for the learning I am wanting to take place. I can see how it could easily become 'technology for technology sake' but since it also plays to the interests of a generation of digital natives I will try to keep an open mind about the use of webquests.
