WebQuest Ideas:

When we looked at the avaliable WebQuests I found that only a few were really engaging and they were the ones with really intersesting links to use for study and information. The supporting pages and sites are what entice and make you want to find out more. The WebQuest element that is diffucult to endure is the part where you pretend something has happened or you are an imaginary participant, most just want to know what the task is and what the expectations are. When we are pleasantly surprised by the information or insight provided by great pages, then we want to learn more. If the tasks are clear, even printable, I will use other's created WebQuests. I will create some to introduce topics or provide more information for research but I will probably not use them from start to finish for any big project or presentation. They are valuable to get kids thinking outside the normal 'worksheet' mentality and they love anything online to work with, so WebQuests would definitely enrich any topic.
Our group could see that a lot more time would be needed to really make a worthwhile teaching tool, but it was good practice. Creating a rubric is hard for an online activity because not all their work can be monitered or evaluated. The activities have to be meaningful and show the level of WeQuest interaction time.
Working as a team is difficult because we want to pull the project in the direction that we individually find important. Once everyone had submitted work we could start to see similarities running through our work and knew where to cut or modify to make it gel. The value of a team is bringing in other perspectives and ways to learn. Just like the students' needs to learn in different ways, different developers will emphasize those different syles and make it a better project for all students.
My next WebQuest will follow an outline better. When students are used to a format they recognize they can get to work faster instead of taking so much time trying to figure things out. I know that a tutorial where you create it as you go would best help me next time.