Webquests in Elgg?

Hello everyone! I'm a high school teacher in Australia, and I've been playing with Elgg for a few weeks now. I'm very interested in finding/creating a plugin that will allow me to create webquests for Elgg like http://www.urgentevoke.com

I'm not a programmer but I'm fairly tech savvy.

Is this something else other people would be interested in?

  • what is a "webquest" ? and please don't tell me to go to that url...  just explain here.. i'm a heavy-duty progammer type ;-)

     I am ex-SydneySider LOLZ ;-)

  • A "WebQuest," as implied by the name, is an inquiry-based, on-line learning activity. During this activity students work in groups, dividing assignments among each other, so that everyone participates in a group-assigned role. The objective of the activity is to promote "transformative" learning outcomes, accomplished through the reading, analysis, and synthesis of Web-based information.

    Evoke does it by having a story line that links together a series of quests which are a series of tasks  (warm up/learn/act/imagine). The tasks require "evidence" as a blog/picture/video/mp3 for each task. People can then award a point in one of ten categories for each piece of evidence if they want.

    Imagine an education chain quest in WOW where other players can give you XP for what you've done if that helps :-)

    There's a leader board and a set of achievements for people who get a number of points or are favoured by the admin that week. Try and look at Evoke if you can, it truly is an impressive work of education and group play.

  • Maybe the "tasks" plugin could be adapted for this

  • ok, cobber.. i did lookup Evoke and did some further research as well.. and now you've got my attention. i think i'll continue with more research and see what possibilities arise. we're running a site for kids, not educational, but the need is there for provide interactivity, team involvement, learning, guidance, etc.. the same as 'knowledge synthesis'. so.. a web-quest becomes a 'game' which can be enjoyed.. while the participant is also learning new concepts.. it seems that "webquests" is not really different from ICT and VLE.. have a look here, you might find something interesting http://community.elgg.org/pg/groups/236437/elggucational-learning-environments-vle-vls-he-fe-k12/ i'll post more later.. andhaveagoodday mate ;-)

  • Regardless of what Dhruva says I disagree with him totally on our site not being Educational.

    Our website FBFKids.com gives members the ability to become members of FBFWorld a 3D VR program that teaches Children the Free enterprise system. They can become the next Donald Trump. They learn the value of economics, and the free enterprise system while having fun.

    Buy houses, decorate them, buy a car. All with FK $Dollars. rent an apt. Pay rent, Work to earn FK $Dollars and spend them on what you want (Buy a magic carpet and fly) have fun, but you must work through the economic system of FBFWorld. This teaches children the Free enterprise system and supply & demand. Dhruva you stand corrected.

  • @MJ..

    I "sit in the naughy corner" being corrected, not "stand" ;-) ... but you already know that we've had new developments since I posted that comment above and so... yes --> FK *is fun, entertaining *and quite very educational, much like the "games" used to teach pre-schoolers and also you know my interest in "elggucational" social networks ;-)

  • Wow Dhruva That has got to be the first time you have admitted to be corrected I feel Honored Hee Hee

  • I've had a look at the tasks plagin chambo67, it does seem like it might be a good place to start, with some work on it. I feel that most teachers would need a "wizard" to help them create a compelling webquest in the style of evoke, open ended tasks would prove too challenging and honestly not "game like" enough.

    I like the idea of a webquest being a task, but then each webquest would have a set of tasks that would in turn have mini-tasks (in the same way evoke has the game itself, and then quests within the game and each quest has a number of missions).

    Having a strongly linear path that guides students through the narrative and the tasks is important too, you don't want them jumping ahead and skipping steps!