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WebQuests have been around since 1995 as the brainchild of Professor Bernie Dodge and Tom March.

Lamb (2005) gives a good summary of the 1995 – The Birth of the WebQuest in

Lamb, Annette & Teclehaimanot, Berhane (2005). A Decade of WebQuests: A Retrospective. In M. Orey, J. McClendon, & R. M. Branch, (Eds.)”. Educational media and technology yearbook (Vol 30). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.

Dodge thought of them as a way of encorporating the Web into classroom activities. They now make use of the Web and are becoming even more appealing to students due to the influence of the social nature of Web 2.0. This allows further embracing of student-centred pedagogies and constructivism.

Like all buzzwords, everyone claims to be able to create WebQuests but Tom March reviews webquests to find that less than half are “real WebQuests”.

Tom March’s list of Best WebQuests is a very useful resource.

A Real WebQuest must not just collect new information but the learners must transform the information.

One simple test for a Real WebQuest (March, 2003) is – Can the results be created by “copying and pasting”? If the answer is yes then it does not qualify.

You can find many useful WebQuest links on TeacherTap (Locate and Evaluate WebQuests).

Like all quality lessons, Real WebQuests should make use of authentic tasks and open-ended questions, collaborative learning.

WebQuests have their own search engines eg. WebQuest.org and here are the secondary maths WebQuests it found.

I think doing WebQuests for our Assignment 2 is a very good way to learn about engaging students with technology as a taken-for-granted, not-to-be-ignored tool!