Anyway, I am very proud to say that I am just putting thje finishing touches on my first webquest! I have spent about 10 hours on it, no joke, and I have learnt a lot about making webquests.
Firstly, yes, they can be time consuming. It takes time to find good resources that are age appropriate. Before creating a webquest it might be a good idea to check that there are plenty of good resources on the web or you might end up wasting your time!
There are two ways to cut down the time it takes to create a webquest. Firstly, you need to set out a plan beforehand of exactly what the webquest will entail. It helps gicve a structure to the formation of the WQ, much faster than making it up as you go along. Also, if you have a plan you have a better chance of finding resources that suit the tasks you have developed in accordance witht he syllabus, rather than the resources you find dictating the activities which might not fit so well with the syllabus. Secondly, if you can find a webquest that already exists, and tailor it to suit your class and your lesson, that will cut down the time it takes to make a WQ.
It is really important that you try to include different cognitive tools and types of media in a WQ. Simply referring the students to websites with pages of writing can be quite boring. Video clips are different and interesting. Comedic cartoons can bring a bit of fun to the WQ. Using different cognitive tools makes tasks more interesting and caters to a variety of learning styles and intelligences.
