Activity of the week! Webquests

This week's activity is designed to keep our technology mad students motivated!

Webquests are basically tasks given to students that they must complete by hunting for the information online. The idea is to encourage students to use their love of technology to learn for themselves, with the teacher's supporting and directing in the background.

Webquests are motivating and fun for students, encourage learner autonomy and are an easy way to bring technology into your teaching!

Why webquests?

There are lots of reasons for using webquests in the classroom. They are an easy way to make use of the learning opportunites provided by the internet, which many students have access to on phones or home computers.  Webquests can be used to practise English, but can also easily be used for work on other subjects too.   You could ask your students to find information about history, science or art, for example. 

Webquests encourage critical thinking skills like comparing, categorising, making deductions and analysing mistakes.  They are really useful tools in Competency-based Language Teaching! 

What are the stages of a webquest?

The introduction stage is normally used to introduce the topic of the webquest.  It's here that you'd give background information and introduce any language that the learners will need to understand while completing the task.  

The task section explains very clearly what the learners have to do to complete the webquest.

The process stage is where the learners start working on the webquest.  They are guided and directed by the teacher through a series of activities or research tasks. The activities are web-based and are usually presented in a task document with links the students can type in or click on to access the relevant sites.   

The evaluation stage includes self-evaluation, comparing and contrasting what they've learned with other groups and giving feedback on what they found out or achieved.  It will also involve feedback from the teacher to the students.  

Try example webquests connected to London and zoos here and here. 

There's more information on webquests here.  

And there's a framework for creating your own webquest here. 

And look out for a very simple webquest in tomorrow's Friday competition on our Dinternal Education Facebook page.