A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO WebQuests

  One of the most current activities effected by the pupils in Internet is the search of information, often with help of the search engines as Google, Alta Vista or Yahoo. Nevertheless, these investigations are difficult activities that take a lot of time and that can turn out to be frustrating if the aims are not reflected clearly and explained initially.

  WebQuests is structured and guided activities that avoid these obstacles providing a definite well task to the pupils, as well as the resources and the slogans that allow them to realize them.

  Instead of losing hours in search of the information, the pupils appropriate, interprets and exploits, the specific information that the teacher assigns them.

  To investigate in the Web is simple and of simple application, since it is easy to realize and it is allowed that both raw and expert in Internet they take part. Investigating in the web one incorporates the students in effective tasks, stimulates to the collaboration and discussion, and is of easy integration in the school curriculum.

  The teacher must suggest a topic of exploration and point at some sites of the Web where the pupil will look for the information that they need. As the teachers go familiarizing themselves with the web and the mechanisms of search, and they learn to develop strategies of optimization of his knowledge across the communication, search and processing of information, they pass to propose the topics and the pupils are going to look only for the solutions. In the last state of total autonomy, the students can propose topics of interest to the teacher who happens to choose between them what is more suitable for the personal learning and of the group.

  That of the WebQuest, it is a didactic strategy in which the pupils (from half of primary up to university) are those who really construct the knowledge that then they are going to learn. One organizes them in groups; roles are assigned to them and have to elaborate a product that goes from a presentation, or a document, up to a theatrical staging or a wireless script, etc., representing as exactly as possible the different positions (attitudes) of the roles. It is a very promising design.

  This is not only a new way in order that the teachers teach, but also is a new way in order that the pupils learn. And finally, here you have two of the most important sites about WebQuests

http://www.world-english.org/webquests.htm
http://www.webquest.org/