Webquests... timing could be everything

 I have used WebQuests before with success, but...

In April of 2005, for a 12th grade English Language Arts class, I had built a WebQuest that had the students exploring the radio events of October 30, 1938. We were studying narrative and media literacy. Specifically, for this WebQuest, they were looking at a particular broadcast that was put on by Mercury Theater on the Air. Of course, most of the 12th graders that year were familiar with trailers and previews of a movie that released in June of 2005: War of the Worlds.

That specific War of the Worlds WebQuest was quite successful in all sections of the class that I taught that year. It's success was wrapped up in the hype for a Tom Cruise movie that also starred the young starlet, Dakota Fanning. The students were extremely engaged learning about the original radio broadcast that lead to panic in and around New York City. The students where equally as fascinated to find out that the event was duplicated here in Western New York. A broadcast from WKBW in Buffalo, 1968 (30 years and 1 day after the original), resulted in the Canadian military storming the Peace Bridge to protect their country from the martian invaders who had landed on Grand Island.

On their own, students located other War of the World events around the world, one that is particularly interesting was in Ecuador, 1949.

Despite my lack of a solid task, that particular WebQuest was successful. Driven by Hollywood hype, an interesting historical event and a parallel event close to home, with locations that the students have been to before, the students made huge connections with narrative, motive, media literacy and cultural literacy. The students were so engaged that they even went out on their own to do some independent learning.

That being said, I do not think that WebQuest would be successful today.

I know that I would have to have a much more solid task (honestly, I know it was weak because I don't even remember what it was). I also know that I could not ride the hype for that specific movie. I would have to find another movie that is being hyped and find other versions of that story that have made significant history. That alone sounds like a daunting task. All-in-all, timing was the most crucial factor in that WebQuest and I think that the unintended success was more focused on sociology, U.S history and cultural literacy than it was ELA, but we got there.