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WebQuest: Web Resources:
The problem statement is the most important element of a PBL WebQuest. It should present the lesson goals to the student in an interesting and engaging way. The process steps should only serve as background. The real focus of your WebQuest should be contained in the problem statement.
For help in developing your problem, explore the page The Question is the Answer by Jamie McKenzie. You may wish to frame your problem so that your students are required to formulate their own questions related to the problem. Asking good questions is a skill your students should be developing also!
Update your WebQuest template by adding your problem to the "Task" section. You should have the problem fairly well worked out, but realize that as you go on to develop the "Process" and "Evaluation" sections of your WebQuest, you may be returning to modify the problem. We will be developing the process section in the next assignment, and then the evaluation in the assignment after that. You may wish to think in general about how the problem task, process, and evaluation will work together.
Graphic images can be used to enhance your WebQuest student pages. Images can be used to help illustrate topics or create interest. You should try locating and inserting a couple images into your WebQuest student pages to verify that you can do it. That way any questions or problems can be resolved early. Here are some tutorial pages for how to add images to your web pages.
You can begin collecting graphics for your WebQuest pages. When you see a graphic image you would like to use, double click (MAC) or opposite click (WIN) on image, then select "Save image as" in the pop-up menu. You may wish to start a folder for the images you find. Feel free to rename the images with file names you will understand when you go to insert the images into your web pages.
General Clip are sites are good for custom buttons, backgrounds, and bullets. They may not be as good for project specific graphics. Some general clipart sites can be found at
You may find it better to search for specific types of graphics related to your project. A Yahoo search using the words "agricultural graphics" produced a long list of sites which included these
As you begin to create your web pages and add graphics you must check that you are always using relative paths to your graphics and other web pages. If you have absolute paths in your HTML, the links or graphics will not work properly when you upload them to the class server. The Web Diner has a good tutorial About Paths.
Note that Claris Home Page displays links in the link editor window and image location in the image window as absolute links when really in the HTML they are relative. This can be confusing. If you need to check the links in HTML using Claris Home Page use "Edit HTML Source" in the "View" menu.
Document titles, link colors, and backgrounds are settings that apply to the entire web page. You should set the Document Title to something short and descriptive for all web pages that you create. The Document Title appears in the title bar of the browser when people view your page. It is also used as the link text by most Internet search engines like Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, Google, etc.
Link colors are used for the hypertext links in your document. If you change the background color of your page, then you may also need to change the link colors. Make sure you select a combination of text color, link color, and background so that your web pages are easy to read. Be careful with background images so they do not make reading difficult.
If you change the background color, you may notice that some of your graphic images have an unwanted border around them. In the next lesson we will be looking at how to make the borders of your images transparent. This will let the background show through. So if your images have an unwanted white border, do not worry, we will learn to get rid of that in the next lesson.
Here are some tutorials on document titles, link colors, and backgrounds:
You should continue searching the web and adding links to the resources in the teacher information section of your WebQuest template. Feel free to continue adding notes, ideas, and outlines to other sections of the template.
Upload your WebQuest template to the same folder you used before. Overwrite the previous template with the new updated version. The major requirement for this assignment is that it now includes the problem in the "Task" section. It should also include some graphic elements to add interest to your Web pages. A background image is optional. Tables should be included to vary the page layout in an attractive and useful way. All of your pages should have short but meaningful titles. Keep in mind that the 'eight-dot-three' convention for naming pages is appropriate here. ('pagename.htm' is OK because it has alphanumeric characters with no spaces and a 'dot' followed by the three letter extension which tells what kind of file it it .... htm for example.)
