WEBQUEST EXPERIENCE

Meena Chelvayohan, 8th grade

Winburn Middle School

http://www.winburn.fcps.net/teachers/centurion/webquests.htm

    Do you enjoy adventures on the Internet? If you do, you'll appreciate the WebQuests my eighth grade science class created. There are eight different ones, and they are so versatile. From weather to genetics, cells to evolution, we made them all. They are all really fun, but they took extensive research and time. Piece by piece, here's how we put our puzzles together!

    In the beginning, our science teacher, Mrs. Powers, and the technology teacher, Ms. Overstreet, introduced us to WebQuests. Many of us had never worked with them before, but as time passed we became masters. We first took a look at different WebQuests created by teachers and students from around the state. By learning about Microsoft Front Page, my class and I were able to get started on our WebQuests. After splitting up into groups of four, we were given a topic to do our pages on. Fortunately my friends and I received the Solar System. Now came the tough part, or so we thought.

    As we made an outline, we determined the project we were going to assign to whoever was doing the WebQuest, and what our format would be. We started off by making an outline on Microsoft Font Page, and then we went separate ways. One member would look for links we would use, while another found cool graphics and others focused on the main writing sections. Different things started to come together, and in a week or so, we had ours basically done. Then came the evaluation part. We decided what stayed, what changed, and what left. As an added bonus, one of my group members knew how to put sound on our page. Then we took all our links and hyper-linked them to our page, and we hyper-linked other data. Next came the presentation to our class members, and we found out that there were many different ways to make WebQuests, all of them being interesting. After this was done, our new task was to complete another group's WebQuest. This was so we could learn about different topics, yet at the same time we were evaluating their WebQuest. After doing so, we wrote down the exceptional things they did, and those that they could improve on. Each group received the critique sheet and went back to make changes, thus finishing up our projects.

    When making these WebQuests, many of us thought it was just for a grade, but we were wrong. By doing the WebQuests, we learned about many different aspects of the "computer world". After finishing this, we realized that this knowledge could help anyone just the way it has helped us. Another thing it showed us, is that you shouldn't be afraid to try new things. As I said before, this was new to many of us before we began, but since we gave it an effort we were able to accomplish what we set out to do. Anyone can make a WebQuest; it just depends on whether they want to or not. I'm glad that I received the chance to work on something like this, because you never know when it will come in handy.