Content Collaboration

WebQuest
I was unfamiliar with WebQuest before this week, and I am so glad to have learned about it.  Most of my thoughts regarding WebQuest are about the teachers that will be using it.  I like how the creator of the WebQuest does not need to have a lot of webpage creating experience (and can use the QuestGarden), or if the teacher is interested in doing web editing, they can do it all themselves as well.  This seems like a great tool for teacher collaboration - it can be introduced in a professional development session, and then teachers could work together to develop WebQuests that connect the curriculum, connect the school year and the summer, and even connect the community.  Examples below:

• If an ELA teacher is teaching Blown Away by Joan Hiatt Harlow (a middle grade novel about a hurricane in the Florida Keys in the 1930's), a science teacher has a favorite weather website, and a social studies teacher wants to teach about the Great Depression using primary source material such as photographs, they could easily use the QuestGarden to create a WebQuest combining all of these things.  Students would be able to work on their WebQuest in all three classes.
• WebQuests could also be perfect for summer reading assignments -- both to make sure that students are actually completing them, and to make them more fun and engaging.  A simple WebQuest that asks students to explore one or two websites related to what they're reading over the summer is a much better way to get students thinking and sharing than writing a book report when they come back to school in the fall.
• If a school system or community has a "Great Read" project, where everyone in the school, or everyone in the community reads the same book, a WebQuest could be a school- or community-wide experience, with different sections for different ages.  Geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com/) is a great activity for whole families and communities, and could easily be part of a successful WebQuest.