Etwinning

Zunal, queen of the Webquests

Suitable for any educational level and subject, the Webquest consitutes an authentic guide aimed at organizing and orienting the work of the pupils and teachers. It offers the possibility to suggest and propose a well structured, clear and creative project, with tasks destined to improve the pupils’ competencies in handling, summarising, evaluating, classifying and organizing information.

The activities included can be programmed for the short term (not more than three or four classes, in which case you can also use the Miniquests) or for the long term (a week, a month or longer).

Webquests have a fixed structure: the introduction should provide the pupils with guidelines and directions for the task to be completed in a clear and motivating manner. This is conceived as the result of the work carried out on the Webquest, which can be materialized in videos, multimedia presentations, web pages, etc. But to complete it, the pupils have to follow the steps of a process facilitated by the large quantity of digital resources selected by the teachers. The evaluation of the work by the pupils has great importance in the Webquest model and precedes its conclusion and final comments.

We can find examples of the use of Webquests in eTwinning projects in An ET(winning project) between us and in Searching twelve labors to Hercules, used as a reference point so that the pupils can see the global idea of the project and not just a series of tasks.

A Webquest can be created in many ways: using a Wiki, Google Sites, or programming directly with HTML. However, a simpler alternative is to generate it using free online software like Zunal. This tool allows a Webquest to be created with an unlimited number of pages and an attractive design from 100 available templates. The interactivity and multimedia aspects are provided by the files and videos which you can add from Youtube and GoogleVideos, Google maps and games.

Zunal makes it possible to create a Webquest as a test and get a preview before its publication. You can manage the privacy of its contents, hiding or showing the different pages it contains.

Perhaps one of the most useful aspects of Zunal is the possibility of evaluating the work done by the pupils using the rubrics, which in the form of modifiable templates, are conceived – in general terms – to achieve an improvement in teaching and learning processes. We can see a good example of this in the activity Old games in Sicily-Catalonia.

So now you know, if you want a good tool which allows you to develop all your creativity and that of your pupils, have a look at the different references to Webquests as a teaching resource: a very illustrative web page created by the Weblinex working group at the Don Benito-Villanueva Teachers and Resources Centre and an article by the ITE Technological Observatory. If you also want to get more in-depth knowledge about using Zunal don’t forget to visit the tutorial on its official web page and these video tutorials.