Notes for Workshop Leaders

Leading a WebQuest workshop can be easy. This website was intended to support your WebQuest workshop, no matter what format and time schedule you select. I've developed a list of tasks and suggested workshop formats to get you started. Because every situation is different, you can modify these ideas to suit your situation.

WebQuest Leaders

The Originals

Dr. Bernie Dodge is credited with the WebQuest concept. Dr. Dodge is a professor at San Diego State University. One of his early collaborators was Mr. Tom March. Mr. March is currrently living in Australia and working as a consultant. Dr. Dodge maintains a comprehensive WebQuest site and offers access to many wonderful training materials.

San Diego City Schools

San Diego City Schools received grant funding to work on integrating technology into their classrooms. They did a lot of work with Dr. Dodge and their teachers to create WebQuests. Throughout that process, they have made the materials they've created accessible to the public.

This Web Site

I had heard about the WebQuest concept and wanted to learn more about it. I became so excited about it that I shared it with the teachers at my school. Our first WebQuest adventures were in using pre-written WebQuests available on the Internet. As the teachers at my school became more sophisticated technology users and more experienced with the WebQuest strategy, they wanted to create their own WebQuests.

As the school's technology specialist, it was my job to take on that task. I started to make handouts, but I found so many wonderful resources on the web, that I knew I couldn't do any better. Instead, I decided to gather the very best resources I could find and organize them for the workshop participants. Thank you to all of the talented people who've shared their work so freely.

Essential Tasks

Posting WebQuests

There are numerous options for posting WebQuests once they are completed. You probably have a few ideas of how you plan to accomplish this. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Host on a school or school district server. Get in touch with a tech person to learn how to do this. You might want to check on the intellectual property policies of your district before doing this. The major advantage is (hopefully) the availability of technical support and adequate flexibility of design.
• Encourage participants to host their sites using their Internet Service Provider (ISP). You might want to suggest they learn how to do this before attending your workshop. There should be available technical support for this option, but it might not be prompt. This option should provide adequate design flexibility.
• Take advantage of a free online service such as Filamentality. This option does not allow you you to use multipage sites or graphics. There is no flexibility in site layout, fonts, or design considerations.
• Consider purchasing service from:
  • Web-and-Flow There are some advantages to using Web-and-Flow including free web space, tutorials on a variety of topics and an online community. The technical support may not be readily available, and there is a cost involved.
  • TeacherWeb If teachers are already familiar with TeacherWeb, this is probably a good option.

Promoting Your Workshop

Once you've decided on a workshop format, it's time to promote it. Your school or district probably has a mechanism in place for this. The staff development office in your district can assist you with this. Word of mouth, newsletters, and emails are effective. In your communications, be sure to advise potential participants of the workshop schedule, expected prerequisite skills, and location.

Suggested Formats

Week-long (or longer) Workshop

This can usually only happen in the summers. Ideally, your participants will get paid. I've done it like this and kept the length of the day to 6 hours. We scheduled an hour for lunch. This kept everyone refreshed and focused. Following a schedule like this, six or seven days is long enough for all but the slowest stragglers to finish. The quicker participants will probably get more than one WebQuest finished. You can probably bring it down to 4 or 5 days, but the pace will be quick.

If you have the luxury of this much time, I recommend the following activities:

• Brief overview of copyright and fair use. This should help keep participants out of trouble when they create their own WebQuest.
• Participants participate in a WebQuest. There's nothing like doing one to help your participants understand the function of each section of the WebQuest, and the importance of the Process section.
• Instructor presentation of the parts of a WebQuest, and some identified examplars.
• A thorough instructor-guided tour of the Wild About WebQuests! site. Be sure to spend plenty of time on the Resources page so participants understand what is available to them.
• Depending on the skill level of your participants, you might want to do a tutorial on searching the web.
• Allow some time for participants to browse one or two of the WebQuest collections. This will help them get ideas for their own WebQuest.
• Assist participants in selecting and downloading the WebQuest template they wish to use. If you get the templates from this site, give them time to notice the instructions included on each page of the template. I like to make a duplicate copy of the selected template. That way, if a page is unsalvagable, it's easy to get a replacement page.
• Talk about the task of the WebQuest. Stress the importance. Tour the Taskonomy pages and the Design Patterns pages and have participants start making decisions about their own WebQuest if they haven't already.
• Encourage participants to talk to each other throughout the entire workshop. Group those who work with the same age children, or in the same subject area for these interactions. They are excellenct resources for each other when addressing instructional decisions. As the workshop leader, it is important to schedule plenty of time for this throughout the workshop. Gently keep them on task, but not too rigidly. Very good things come out of these peer reviews as teachers share their plans and suggestions with each other.
• I like to do the Evaluation or rubric next. It helps focus participants on exactly what they wish their own students to accomplish through this process.
• Work on the Introduction and Conclusions next. Another peer review will help make the Introductions captivating.
• Add another peer review. The Evaluation, Introduction and Conclusion sections should be ready for input from peers.
• If you're using a WYSIWYG web editor, show participants how to start entering their words into the templates.
• I give everyone a sheet from a chart tablet (they make them sticky, too) and put out a tub of markers. Each individual creates a large chart with their topic, perhaps a working title, age of students, and participant's name. The chart can be decorated (or not) anyway they'd like. Post these around the room and/or near the computers. An additional benefit to this is that the room now looks like a "work zone." The atmosphere becomes more focused.
• At this point, I like to have individuals present their ideas to the whole group.
• Each individual also gets a small pad of sticky notes. As they search the web for great resources, they usually find things they will not use, but someone else in the workshop might. They simply jot down the URL and title of that site and stick it on the large chart. The idea is that folks don't need to interrupt each other. Often, the reality is quite a bit different. Person A finds a great resource for Person B. Person A generally is so excited by what they've found that they rush over to Person B and show exactly what they thought was so wonderful. This isn't all bad. The feelings of excitement and collaboration are worth quite a bit.
• Give an hour, or more, for participants to start finding and bookmarking sites they think they will use. If you need to give a quick demo/tutorial on bookmarks, you'll find participants are very receptive. Now, they understand how much they need to know this.
• Schedule another peer review time. Let participants work with their peers to help figure out what roles might be suitable for the task and how the resources might be divided.
• If you need to show participants how to make links, both internal and external, now is the time to do it.
• Encourage participants to start working on the Process section of their WebQuest. This take a looonnngg time. Remind everyone about the sample scaffolds and links in the Process section. Encourage them to link to those when appropriate. Let the participants know it won't be surprising to find they'll need more resources than they originally identified. As this section begins to take shape, they'll be in a better position to figure out what they need.
• Schedule another peer review to look at the Process sections.
• Provide ample time to go over the WebQuests using the various checklists and rubrics identified throughout the Wild About WebQuests! site.
• Allow plenty of time to get the identified typos, glitches, and gaps fixed.
• Help participants post their WebQuests. Make a quick homepage for all of the projects. Let everyone see the final products from their peers. If you'd like, burn a CD for each participant that contains all of the class projects. You can probably get that done while they're happily exclaiming over each other's work.
• Note: Someone will ask how to change the graphics in the navigation bar. It's easy. I've had good success using icons for this. Look inside the navbarimages folder for your selected WebQuest template. Note the names of the images. Rename the images you've found to those same names and drop them in that file. Your new images will overwrite the old images. Be careful about when you introduce the idea of changing the buttons to your group. Some people will spend days looking for just the right icons to use. It is usually a big distraction.

Before-school or After-school Workshops

It's hard to schedule time to work with your participants. Before-school and after-school meetings have their challenges. Do everything you can to keep the meetings short and sweet. Pick from the topics listed above, and use your meeting time for the instructor-guided portions. Give time for peer reviews, too. Participants will have to do most of their work between sessions.

Independent Study

Navigate through the Wild About WebQuests! site to familiarize yourself with the resources that are offered. Take special note of the yellow boxes for hints and tips about what part to do next. Ask friends and peers to review your work periodically. Ask them to give you honest feedback.

Miscellaneous Tips

Learning Theories

Every now and again, I run into someone who demands evidence that what you're trying to teach has solid grounding. That's a good thing. I wrote a paper for a class examining the WebQuest strategy in light of a couple different learning theories. Perhaps this paper will help you prepare for this workshop.

Snacks

Everyone likes to see food at a workshop. I usually bring something yummy to the first session. I also bring a sign-up sheet and tell participants they can sign up to bring food if they'd like to continue the practice. This practice has been very well-received and many of the participants enjoy sharing their specialty snack with their new friends.

Public Relations

I like to send an email to the principal(s) and district personnel telling about the wonderful time everyone had at the workshop and sharing the link to the project web page. I encourage them to take a look at one or two specific projects (the best, of course) to get an idea about the exciting things happening in the classrooms.

Frustration and Pride

Your participants may experience quite a bit of frustration if their technical skills are not up to par for this project. They may feel a lot of time pressure to get done, and some embarassment as they compare themselves to more skilled peers. Don't be caught off guard by this. Keep encouraging them, and keep nudging them to produce a quality project. They'll come through in the end and will thank you for it.

When I did a long version of this workshop, a high school Spanish teacher hugged me on the way out the door on the last day. She said the WebQuest workshop was by far the most demanding and frustrating workshop she had attended in over 20 years. She said it was also the most rewarding and she had never been so proud of herself and couldn't believe what she had accomplished.

For questions on this workshop, contact Rebecca Fiedler. Who is Rebecca?
Flower graphics from TeacherFiles.com Go to this site's home page.
Last updated on March 6, 2004. Based on a template from The WebQuest Page