Plugged In Homeschool

The world wide web is brim full of educational facts, activities, and wonders! How does a person tap into that knowledge? Or more specifically, how do we, as homeschooling parents, guide our children through the maze of potentially dangerous or useless information to find the nuggets? Enter the concept of a WebQuest – a teacher guided foray online to research, well, virtually anything!

The idea of a WebQuest originated with a university professor named Bernie Dodge back in 1995. Of course, the last ten years have seen a radical increase in the abundance of quality sources online and the ease and speed with which they can be accessed. However, the junk and hype has increased exponentially, too, so a guided experience is still a worthwhile idea.

Not only that, many other teachers over the past years have already created WebQuests, and those prefabricated plans are widely and freely available! So you can follow someone else’s plans or create your own.

So what exactly is a WebQuest? The teacher, or perhaps the student in some cases, creates a scenario in which a problem must be solved. WebQuests are often designed to be carried out by a small team of students. A family would be perfect!

Introduction:
The first part of the WebQuest is an introduction or overview. It serves to set the scene. Keep in mind that students need to be prepared to research the topic. This means that teachers need to spend some time establishing groundwork before setting off on the quest. The students need a frame of reference to get the most out of the experience.

Task:
Step 2 is a detailed description of the scenario and it’s required task. An example of a task related to studying the solar system might be to pretend you are an alien looking for a planet on which to settle. Find out about living conditions on several planets and choose a good one to inhabit.

Process:
This part of the WebQuest lesson plan specifies the information the students need to find. Will they work alone or in teams? When giving directions, take a look at Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives from time to time to make sure you are targeting higher level thinking skills. For instance “Arrange planets in order of suitability for the survival of living creatures” or “Compare Venus and Mars for possible living conditions” require higher level thinking than “List the nine planets in the solar system.” Include directions for how they will present their findings, whether through a Power Point presentation, a lapbook, a written report, or some other method.

Conclusion:
Further instructions about the final presentation, along with your grading standards need to be presented before the student’s embark on the quest.

Standards:
If desired, you can link your learning objectives to state educational standards. This is probably unnecessary in a homeschool setting, but it might be helpful to include a separate section in your plans for your objectives. Click here for links that will put you in touch with all sorts of national and state standards.

Resource Page:
Now for the good stuff! The resource page is where you will list the web pages for your students to look for information. Good sources will make the difference between a valuable experience and a waste of time, so do your homework! If you prepare your WebQuest instructions on a program like MSWord, your list can be an actual link list, which will simplify things for your students.

Evaluation:
Here you will keep track of the actual results of the WebQuest. A good way to evaluate an activity designed to use higher level thinking skills is to create a “rubric” for yourself to go by. A rubric is a chart that lists goal areas and describes different levels of accomplishment for each. In other words, it will describe what success will look like. Here is an example of a teacher-designed rubric to follow up a WebQuest about the planets. This one is about the three branches of the US Government.

Notes:
A final section in your written plan is a place for you to jot down notes to yourself. If you wish to publish your plan, this section will be useful to any other teachers or homeschoolers who decide to try out your WebQuest plan.

As stated before, there are a number of websites which provide numerous already designed WebQuest plans. These, of course, can be tailored to fit the individual homeschooling family’s needs. Many lesson plans designed for classroom teaching don’t fit the homeschool situation, but can be a good jumping off place for a unique web experience.

Of course there are some of us who just have to reinvent the wheel every time we do anything! For us, creating our own WebQuest from scratch is ultimately appealing. You can use an online tool for writing your own at Quest Garden.