I beg your pardon??? I never promised you a Quest.Garden

 Along with the sunshine.... there's gotta be a little rain sometimes

Let me take you on a journey, dear reader. Let's imagine a simpler time. Toy Story- the first ever computer animated film in history has just released, Windows 95 is in every household- terrorising people with 'fatal exceptions' and 'Clippy'. A mobile phone was, unbelievably, used primarily to make phone calls, and me? well I was about to murder my annoying younger sister- as she had allowed my lovingly nurtured Tamagotchi to perish. Siblings huh?  The year is 1995 and as well as the things I've just mentioned 'WebQuest' has just dropped

What the hell is a WebQuest? I hear you cry, well fear not. Created by Bernie Dodge, PhD, he describes it as:

"The goal then, and now, was to create lessons that make good use of the web, engage learners in applying higher level thinking to authentic problems, and use everyone's time well. Since that beginning, one of the ongoing challenges has been to make it faster and easier for teachers to do all these things. QuestGarden is the end result of those 22 years of effort."

And here, still looking like it's 1995, is the current QuestGarden homepage:

I'm sure you are wondering why I'm telling you all this, why should we care about some surely defunct website from the 90s right? Well, in actual fact Quest Garden is still going strong today and this blog intends to examine if it is still useful in a modern world dominated by Kahoot, Wordwall and the like.

Now the first and most important thing to note is Quest Garden is not free, however a one year subscription is only $9.95 which seems more than reasonable, however even more reasonable than that you can sign up for a 30 day free trial. Once you have signed up for the trial, you can create your own WebQuest's, I signed up myself and upon clicking create a WebQuest, this is what you see

As you can see from above, the site is very user friendly to a WebQuest newb, taking you through the process step by step.

*Important note* whilst you need a subscription to create your own WebQuest, anyone can go to the site and utilise 'ready made' WebQuest's that teachers have created and made public. A lovely quest I found ready made is here:

http://questgarden.com/210/02/0/220129064123/

This is a WebQuest to learn about different cultures within your class, created by  Tameka Grant.

These ready made ones are however a blessing and a curse, as I enthusiastically logged in, took up my 30 day trial, all set to create my 'London Calling' WebQuest only to find a page of similar quests already there (one even with the name I planned to use) Of course, you can take some of the ideas here and adapt them/update them if they were created a while ago (depending on when they were created- bearing in mind how long Questgarden has been active- some of the website links may no longer be active websites.)

However despite this, I decided to still go ahead and make my webquest, and drum roll please..... dum da dummmmmm, here it is, my web quest:

Living that London life: Introduction (questgarden.com)

Well the first thing to say is, that was quite an ordeal. Firstly WebQuest does not really like Google chrome, so I had to switch to Microsoft Edge internet browser, secondly, whilst in progress, whenever you clicked on return to dashboard, the site would simply time out and you would have to log in again. However, once you 'get going' it's reasonably straightforward, if not extremely  time consuming.

To formally score QuestGarden:

Organisation and Layout

Created in 95 and it shows, the layout for me is a nice throwback to a simpler time, it doesn't really work for a modern audience however.  3 Nik-knacks

Content and Features

Content is strong, with an abundance of ready made WebQuests you can browse and utilise. Features are okay- when the site does not time out (which happens often). 3 Nik-knacks

Ease of Use and Navigation

QuestGarden is fairly easy to navigate, not that easy to use really, you will be going backwards and forwards to the same screens A LOT. 2 Nik-knacks

Target Audience

Finally I can sing this websites praises- you can create a WebQuest for any audience, for any level, indeed you can create and then adapt to suit different levels. 5 Nik-knacks.

Summary

Sometimes it's best to leave the memories alone. Is that the case here? I don't think so, I think WebQuest has a place in the modern world. The structured loop is a really nice lesson format. I'm not sure the amount of effort it takes to create a WebQuest is worth the reward if you only use it once in an academic year. However if you were teaching on short courses, and it could be used multiple times. It is well worth investing $9.99 in.

Overall: 3 Nik-Knacks

I've sadly realised that  no-one is going to get the song title reference of this blog (even though it's an all time classic) so here is the song:

That's it for this weeks blog, and as Moira Rose once said: "You should see my schedule. I'm positively bedevilled with meetings, et cetera."

So, if Like Moira you just don't have the time, Quest Garden is probably not for you. But if you do have time to put the work in, the reward is worthwhile!

Bye Bye.