Design your own webquest by QuestGarden

Website of the day: a useful website to design your own webquest --- QuestGarden

What is this?

 As mentioned in its official website mentioned, "QuestGarden is an online authoring tool, community and hosting service that is designed to make it easier and quicker to create a high quality WebQuest."  (http://questgarden.com/author/overview.php ) QuestGarden is a brilliant tool for teachers to create and share their own webquests because it offers clear guides on how to make a webquest.


Why it is good for language learning?

• Teachers no longer teaches English passively with prescribed textbooks. Instead, they have the opportunity to realize their belief and ideals in English learning and English teaching.
• Creating webquests is not as complicated and serious as making a textbook. Teachers can create and modify their webquests anytime based on their own observations and students' needs.   
• Teachers can create webquests which are more suitable for their own teaching context.
• Teachers can create webquests which are highly relevant to the topics of the textbooks used in class.
• Generally speaking, webquests can develop students' higher level of cognitive abilities like summarizing, critical thinking, analysis, and creativity as well as the  four skills. 
• The tasks are mostly highly relevant to students' real life, which bridge the gap between classroom and the world outside of the classroom. 
• Doing the task requires students to work in groups which creates an more meaningful and communicative learning environment. Besides, since each students has his/her own strength, they can compensate on another in a group through collaboration.   
• Students can decide what they would like to explore under the general category set by the teacher. In some way it promotes students' learning autonomy.
• Students are exposed to more authentic materials.   
• In QuestGarden,teachers can find loads of webquests of various areas designed by teachers around world. Teachers can modify the webquests before adapting that to their own teaching context.

How to use QuestGarden 

• First, register to be one of the members of QuestGarden so as to have the right to create your own webquest. 
• Second,  Click on the icon" Create webquests" and follow the instructions on the webpage step by step.

        

• Finally, publish your webquests and give students the link when having English classes in the language lab.
• Take the webquest designed by Antonio Pagani for example (http://www.aspti.ch/webquest/webquests_ASP/Antonio/)  

    
 1. Write an interesting and attractive introduction of the tasks. 

  

 2. Give a clear and general  description of the tasks. Adding an image might make the layout more attractive.

3. Provide a detailed and well-organized explanations of the process students have to follow. It is better to have the process designed step by step. Most important of all, teachers should at least provide some useful links for students so that they won't get lost on the Internet.

 4. Give criteria and forms of evaluations. It would be better if teachers also provide the downloadable version of  evaluation sheet. 

5. Provide conclusions about what the students have achieved in the whole learning process. Teachers can also have students fill in a feedback form for future references and improvement. 

   6. Teachers can also create another accompanying webpage specifically for teachers, which contains more detailed descriptions of how to use the webquests and possible alternative ways to do the webquest in a class. Besides, teachers can add more useful resources or links in teacher's page so that other teachers could adapt the webquest in their own teaching context.   

Limitations

• Creating a webquest takes much time and effort. It would be better if teachers collaborate and share their webquests with one another.
• Depending on different dynamics of each class, teachers might divide students in different ways. Besides, teachers have to cope with the frictions within group members for the lack of collaboration.  
• Teachers might be unable to notice students' individual problems since they all work together.
• Having students doing tasks in class instead of teaching them knowledge might raise some problems among school, parents and some students in Taiwan.  

Useful links:
Click here to read one of my blog about a great examples of webquests I found.
Click here to read one of my blog about webquests.
Click here to see other recommended webquests.