A+WebQuest+about+Wikis+and+ELT


 * INTRODUCTION**

You work for a reasonably large English language teaching institution which caters for all levels from young learners to adults. Recently the Head of the institution, who is charismatic and inspirational but slightly eccentric, came back from a conference where she had heard for the first time about wikis for language learning. She is very keen for all the staff to start to use them with their students. However she realises that she will need to work hard to convince some of the more die-hard traditionalists in the institution to adopt this new technology.

The Head of your institution has appointed you as a working party of well respected teachers to investigate the potential of WebQuests wikis for enhancing **reading and writing** skills. She wants you to look at both the advantages and perceived disadvantages of this technology in your school and to present a balanced (but she hopes!) convincing case to the staff at the next Staff Meeting.
 * TASK**

You all have several years teaching experience. However you each have developed a different area of specialism, and it is for this particular expertise that you have been chosen for this Working Party. In your groups choose one role each. If there is another role which you would particularly like to add, please name it and add that person to the ‘brief’, making a note of the particular aspect that they will be looking out for in the investigation.
 * PROCESS**

Individually, you'll examine the sites below and use the worksheet to jot down some notes of your opinions of each from the perspective of your role. You'll need to examine each site fairly quickly. Don't spend more than 7 minutes on any one site.

[|Vocabulary Project on Seedwiki]

Vocabulary and Groupwork on Wikispaces

Norwich Info

[|A teacher's wiki with student comments]

Wiki for school children (not EFL)

Another USA school wiki (not EFL)

Dungeons and Dragons (not EFL)

PRODUCT
 * 1) When everyone in the group has seen all the sites, it's time to get together to answer the questions. Try to make sure that everyone had a chance to give their opinion.
 * 2) You will then need to decide how to document the evidence you have gathered. You need to do that on the wiki. Decide what format the discussion will have and try to give everyone a chance to edit the wiki, perhaps by making a page for each perspective.
 * 3) Finally you should summarise your findings. There will probably not be unanimous agreement but try to put aside your individual aspect and come to an agreement that takes into account all five (or six) perspectives.

EVALUATION As an individual please write a short piece on what you learned from this exercise (about reading and writing online, blogs, wikis, WebQuests, etc.) and add it to the discussion section of your wiki page (a separate tab). You can do this at anytime, even long after the workshop but it is probably better to do it straight away.