My project is finally complete. Hooray! While I am quite proud of the finished product, it honestly wasn't the easiest thing I have done. Back in the day, I would bookmark sites and call that a "WebQuest," but I hardly thought through a concrete task and process I wanted the students to go through. I am glad that I had the opportunity to actually create an authentic Quest.

One thing that I was stuck on was the idea. How to create an "essential question" ala our Understanding by Design class, that would challenge our students to think for themselves. I needed a topic that was open-ended, arguable, that wasn't leading or had a right or wrong answer. I also challenged myself to find something current and relatable to my students, as the WebQuests I liked the most were very valid and current. So the issue I had the toughest time with was choosing the topic.

Also, my teaching background is in the primary grades, first and second grade. Currently as a Lead Tech Teacher I work with middle school students. Planning a lesson for a group of students that I don't explicitly teach core subjects to was also a challenge. I had to really pour through a lot of resources to find ones that I thought would be easy for a 13 year old to comprehend.

Finally, I'll admit that the evaluation was the last thing I worked on, when I know full well that looking at the standards and creating an evaluation should be one of the first things done.

On the plus side, the actual making of the website was fun for me. I've taken design classes in the past, so making things aesthetically pleasing is always a rousing good time!

What does the future of WebQuests look like for me? Well, I definitely plan on sharing this with my teachers. I know that another co-worker in my school has just learned how to create WebQuests too, so together we can help teachers form inquiry-based units.

I also noticed that Mandy did her Quest on a Wiki. Smart! I did not purchase Dreamweaver, therefore my software will shortly be expiring. But Wikis are free and we can easily design them well and link to other sites, so I will recommend my teachers to use Wikispaces to create their own Quests.

My final project sure was a lot of work, but I am glad I had this opportunity and gave it my all.