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The intended audience of this WebQuest, The Adventures of Don Quijote, is High School Spanish students.  The language level is not indicated.  The goal of this WebQuest is to discuss the adventures of Don Quijote and attempt to relate these to the student’s daily life.  This WebQuest does not list any curriculum standards.

  This WebQuest is broken into three tasks.  The first task is to choose a character from the book and analyze situations from the character’s point of view.  They are to reflect on the humor and irony from that character’s perspective.  They will fill out a form online and submit it using asynchronous conferencing.  All of the student’s work is to be done using asynchronous conferencing or online conferencing.  The second part of this WebQuest is to respond to a question posted by the instructor and comment on two other student’s posts.  These two tasks must be done completely in Spanish.  This requirement leads me to believe this assignment is intended for upper level Spanish.  The final task is for the students to write a reflection about their experience using asynchronous conferencing. 

This WebQuest utilizes the problem solving strategy.  Students must answer the teacher’s posted question by thinking as if they were the character.  They must use the provided analysis sheet to answer the questions.  Also, there is evidence of the instructor using the didactic strategy.  I feel the student is learning by using the reading to produce answers.  There is little demonstration or showing what the students know other than in writing.  I believe the teacher lectures in class to teach the lessons of Don Quijote, but there is little hands on learning.  I feel this WebQuest does not use many strategies.  It is the same as pencil and paper work, with the students answer questions over their readings; however they are using a keyboard and computer.

The center of this WebQuest is using asynchronous conferencing.  Each task of this WebQuest is to be completed using the online conferencing.  This WebQuest definitely uses technology.  This online conferencing is probably appealing to students, since it is something most of them do on a daily basis.  I believe the instructor feels that by having the students do online chatting rather than discussions in class, allows students more “think time” to be more thorough in their responses.  However, I feel this same assignment could be done without the WebQuest.   It seems to me that the assignment is only to be turned in electronically rather than by paper.  Students are able to see other’s answers in the chat room, but this could be done by actual interaction inside the classroom. 

Technically, all of the links were up and running.  The teacher provided links on background information on Don Quijote.  This allowed students to see that it is presented in several forms, such as a ballet, musical, artwork etc.  There is no information on where the links are from, you just click on them and it takes you to someone else’s site.  There is no page from the author crediting sources.

            I feel this WebQuest could be improved by allowing students to research more on the background of Don Quijote using the internet.  Their tasks could be more oriented towards searching out information, themes etc. rather than simply turning in their assignments via online chatting.  The students must submit their answers using written Spanish rather than discussing them in class using oral participation.  Personally, I have a problem with this.  There are several sites that I am familiar with that provide online translating services.  These tasks could have easily been done in English, push a button and then they are in Spanish.  I consider this cheating.  I would want to evaluate if the students understood the situations of Don Quijote.  I would want to hear them discuss, in their own words, what they thought on the questions I asked.  

WebQuest Site:

http://zonorus.marlboro.edu/~jmcconn/pedagogy2/lesson.html

Author:  Jennifer McConnell