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Date Posted: 10:35:41 03/30/11 Wed
Author: ANGELINA
Subject: PROCESS PART 2

I'm pasting here part of this task....there's still something missing: to write about the specification of WebQuests' main components and their roles.

WebQuests are an online collaborative learning process, where students in small groups have to do researches mainly in the net, scaffolding and interacting, in order to reach the goal of fulfilling the tasks proposed. They do all this oriented by the teacher who in advance selects the sources they are supposed to use, to avoid waist of time and non trustable information.
As defined by Tom March, circa 2003, "WebQuest is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of a central, open-ended question, development of individual expertise and participation in a final group process that attempts to transform newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding. The best WebQuests do this in a way that inspires students to see richer thematic relationships, facilitate a contribution to the real world of learning and reflect on their own metacognitive processes."

WebQuests are extremely interesting to develop and foster students' interest in the digital world. Even though they are, as previously discussed, "digital natives", it is a clever way to show them our own awareness concerning this new era. Webquests provide interaction for both students and teachers in a very friendly environment where the formal distance established in the teacher-student relationship disappears. After all, they will learn a lot from the WebQuests that we create and vice and versa: we can learn a lot with the contents in which they are more familiar than us.
WebQuest model has been around since 1995 when Bernie Dodge developed it for use in a course at San Diego State University. His goal was to create lessons that make good use of the web, engage learners in applying higher level thinking to authentic problems, and use everyone's time well.

WebQuests main theoretical foundations lay on a variety of theories that includes the following areas:

• Constructivism philosophy: involves questioning, exploring and reflecting; learners must construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world;
• Critical and creative thinking, questioning, understanding, and transformational learning: that meet the HOTS: higher order thinking skills
• Authenticity, meaningfulness and situated learning environments (offer authentic tasks): learning must be ``alive``, students must care about what they are doing.
• Motivation: students must be challenged so that they feel motivated for engaging in the tasks that will lead to learning.
• Cooperative learning: students work in small groups in order to complete meaningful tasks such as solving problems or creating something;
• Differentiation: different resources must be provided in order to meet different needs and interests of the students; i.e. audio, video and texts

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