One of the handiest additions to the Social Studies, History and Geography CD-ROM was the inclusion of at least one Webquest for each grade (1-8). Webquests provide a directed approach to student use of the Internet by providing a project based, inquiry oriented, classroom activity.

Webquests are based on a concept by Bernie Dodge from San Diego State University. Details about the process and the value that it brings to the classroom is available at The Webquest Page.

Webquests provide a fantastic resource to the classroom as expectations from the Ontario Curriculum are addressed. In support of the Social Studies, History and Geography CD-ROM, a group of teachers from the Lambton Kent DSB wrote some appropriate webquests. Locally, Susan Moroz from McWilliam created an Award Winning Novel Study to support a Grade 7 classroom and assess Language and Library expectations. I got into the act and wrote one to support the Choices into Action program.

If you look around the Internet, there are indeed all kinds of webquests available. People have been creating and publishing some terrific resources. To date, the task has been to find them and see if they work for you.

To ease the process, I created the "Webquest Locator". I found over 350 Webquests from the Internet and categorized them according to the Ontario Curriculum. The results are available as a Filemaker Pro database. You'll need version 4.0 or later to run the locator. It's available on the Curriculum Planner CD-ROM and the OESS distribution CD-ROM to name a few places!

You don't have a copy of Filemaker Pro handy at the moment? Click here to do your search live on the Internet.