Just Another Day's Work at the WebQuest Clinic

Introduction

Imagine that the WebQuest idea has spread so widely that hundreds of teachers around the world are writing new ones every day. So many, in fact, that the Department of Education has funded a WebQuest Clinic to serve as a resource to those teachers. You are lucky enough to be on the staff of the clinic. Today's e-mail has just brought you a new batch of requests for help.

The Task

Working with a team of WebQuest specialists, you will examine two WebQuests and generate some suggestions for improving them. Each member of your team will approach the problem WebQuests from a particular perspective. Your recommendations should combine at least two of those perspectives.

The Process

Phase One - Get a Preview of How the Team Works Together

1. As a first step, you'll be divided into groups of six. Webquestology has evolved to the point of having subspecialties, and your team represents this fact. Because the development of higher level thinking skills is critical, all of you are Altitudinists, and each of you has a favorite way of evoking these skills.
2. To get a sense of how the team works together, take five minutes to scan the Immortality WebQuest. Don't get into every nook and cranny; just get a sense of the topic and what the author was trying to bring about.
3. Next, imagine that the Immortality WebQuest was brought to the clinic in search of suggestions for improvement. Eavesdrop on the thinking of the team by exploring the Clinic Brainstorming Session.

   Phase Two - Working Alone, Understand Your Role

4. The next step in the process is that you'll be assigned one of the following roles. You'll also be handed a worksheet for your role, which you can examine by clicking on the role name.
   
   Take five minutes to understand your role by exploring the WebQuests linked to the role description
   
   

   Ralph, the Activist Altitudinist You are a great believer in the idea that a good WebQuest involves engaging learners in issues from the world beyond the school walls. You think that school-aged children should learn to take an informed stand, that they should care about current events and make their opinions heard, as in Tom March's Does the Tiger Eat Her Cubs? or Keith Nuthall's Conflict Yellowstone Wolf. When you troubleshoot a WebQuest, you look for ways to integrate issues of public policy and social justice.	Eve, the Multifaceted Altitudinist To you, the best learning activities are those that require the synthesis of multiple perspectives. These perspectives can be based on occupational specialties, as in America Dreams through the Decades. Perspectives can be chosen because they complement each other or because they embody a natural conflict with each other as in Evaluating Math Games. Sometimes it seems best to you that learners all look at the same information from different perspectives. Other times you deliberately engineer conflict by having learners look at things that reflect opposing opinions.
   Data, the Analytical Altitudinist You like WebQuest tasks that provide access to lots of data and ask learners to look for patterns in the data. These WebQuests provide guidance on how to study information closely and how to sort and sift through it. The Titanic WebQuest, for example, has learners looking for generalizations from a database of passengers. When you try to improve a WebQuest, your first impulse is to look for opportunities for learners to look at a lot of data and find patterns in it.	Marie, the Scientific Altitudinist In many ways, you are like your colleague Data. You like WebQuests that go beyond analysis, however, and apply the scientific method. You like WebQuests that guide learners to collect data (either in their immediate world or at a distance using sites like the Ocean & Earth Science Data page). The learners choose data with a hypothesis in mind, and the WebQuest provides guidance on how to develop and test those hypotheses.
   Emily, the Simile Altitudinist One of your favorite teaching tools is the Venn Diagram. You like tasks that force learners to think about the similarities and differences among things and to think about the causes and consequences of those similarities and differences. For example, The Ann Frank WebQuest does this to some degree, as learners compare her experience to others. When you look at WebQuests, you ask "What else is this like?"	George, the Inventive Altitudinist Your specialty is creative problem-solving. You like WebQuests in which something new must be created to fit a given situation. You try to find ways in which learners put things together in a new way to solve a problem. You also enjoy WebQuests like the Gold Rush Players and the Santa Fe Trail Game Design. In all these cases there is an invitation to create, but the solution must work within the constraints of the medium.

   
   Phase Three - Working with Your Role-Alikes, Perform Your Role
   
5. Next, you'll meet with others playing the same role looking at the two new WebQuests that came in today's e-mail. Each of them has merit, but the authors are looking for your ideas to make them even better. Here they are:
   

   	Elementary	Middle / High
   WebQuest 1	El Camino Real	Reflections of Vietnam
   WebQuest 2	It's a Zoo Out There!	Desertification

   
   
   
6. Use the worksheet for your role to brainstorm ways to modify and improve these WebQuests. Play off of each others' ideas. Go back to the Immortality Brainstorm if needed to see how your character thinks.

   Phase Four - Working in Teams of Six, Pool Your Insights

7. When each role-alike group has finished brainstorming, we'll then reconvene back into your original groups (those you were sitting near at the start). Within those groups, your job is to look at each of the sites to be improved and come to consensus on some suggestions. These suggestions will come from combinations of ideas from each of the six roles. You may put together more than one package of suggestions for each site as appropriate.