WebQuest

WebQuest is a new educational tool designed to provide a new learning system for students and through the integration of the web in the educational process. As an educational tool, it is flexible and can be used in all grade levels and in all subjects and disciplines.

It aims to develop the capacity of student thinking and building researcher student can assess himself, in addition to that the teacher gives students the opportunity to explore information for themselves and not only provide them.

I find WebQuest gives students the ability to search in specific points in a deep and thoughtful, but through the limits selected by the teacher same time .It saves the sequence of the lesson. This would help a lot on non-dispersion of students and to intensify their efforts in the desired direction of the activity that they are doing.

Web Quest leads to provide students with research skills on the Internet creatively and product (Creative researchers) this goes beyond being just browsing web sites.

WebQuest with a good design, good materials , additional links sites (sources) to enrich the lesson in a positive way and enabling the student to work independently, All these are factors helping to build a successful WebQuest.

Inquiry based learning

As we all know traditional education focus on ‘what we know’ (facts), it is a direct transfer of knowledge from teacher to student where the teacher’s role is dispense knowledge and student’s role is receive knowledge. But inquiry based learning focus on ‘how we know what we know’ (evidence); this is kind of Indirect transfer of knowledge where the teacher’s role is facilitator of learning and student’s role is active, independent learner (investigator).

“Inquiry is something that students do, not something that is done to them.”

This type of learning is flexible and adaptable for a variety of projects. It helps to build self-esteem through allowing students to be more active in their own learning process, rather than passive via traditional lecture based methods.

It also reinforces and builds several skills of students in the areas of physical, emotional, and cognitive and it can work with any age group.

On the other hand I find there are some disadvantages which are it doesn´t work for all topics , it requires more planning, preparation, and responsiveness from the educators,educators must be skilled in helping students learn the art of asking a good question. Finally, as we know time is the biggest enemy so this kind of learning requires more class time and may be less able to meet goals of standardized testing.