WebQuest UK was produced by the Worcestershire Learning Technologies team in 2001 following a visit to Quebec in 2000 with a group of secondary teachers looking at the way in which ICT was being used for learning.
Among the 'gems' you find on such trips was WebQuests which had been developed by Bernie Dodge as San Diego State university as a means of harnessing the then emerging use of the net in classrooms throughout the USA. The concept was soon to go way beyond this initial aspiration to create a tool for higher order thinking that challenges learners to investigate an issue or area of learning by exploring the web. The Webquest format has not changed much in the various countries that now use them but sadly in the UK this approach to learning is still not extensively used.
As we move into the worlds of social networks and learning platforms or VLE's the need to provide new structures for learning materials and for scaffolding the learning experience become ever more important and that must be a key skill of the educator.
Creating young people with the skills they will need in the web wide world is a major challenge and WebQuests provide a model for allowing kids out onto the net (rather in closed spaces) but with the structure they need to make their research productive and efficient.
Bernie spoke to an interviewer on the US web station KidCast in June this year during which he considers the future of WebQuests. He evidently has the same enthusiasm for his creation as he did way back when WebQuests were first thought of.
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