Web Quests: Questions and Answers
Have a question about the web quests database, or creating your own web quest? Look no further!
Here you'll find a list of frequently asked questions and instructions for creating your own webquest. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to e-mail us at babel@walkere.frih.net.
Questions
General Questions
- What is a Web Quest?
- Does it cost money to create a Web Quest?
- How do I create a Web Quest?
- Why do I need to create an account?
- Will other people see my Web Quest?
- Who owns the copyright to my work?
Web Quest Creation Questions
- What do I enter to create my Web Quest?
- How do I create extra pages?
- How do I change the order of the pages in the menu?
- Why can I not use HTML?
- Ok, then how do I format my work?
- How do I add a link?
- How do I add an attachment?
- How do I add an image?
Technical Questions and Troubleshooting
Answers
General Questions
1. What is a Web Quest?
In short, a Web Quest is an online, all inclusive, student directed lesson plan. The term was first coined by Bernie Dodge, a professor at a San Diego State University, in 1995.
Web Quests are a great way for a teacher to help students use the Internet to address academic inquiries. The general set up is a series of web pages, each one detailing a part of a task that a student should complete. The Web Quest lays out for the student the background information on the topic, a topic to persue, some resources to start with, and a task to complete.
With Babel's system, you can quickly and easily create your own Web Quests. Go to the Create a Web Quest page. Enter some basic information, enter a title and some content for each page you want, and the system does the rest for you. It's simple and automted - no web design knowledge necessary.
2. Does it cost money to create a Web Quest?
Nope. Creating and hosting a Web Quest on Babel is absolutely free. No limits, no restrictions.
3. How do I create a Web Quest?
You should start by sketching out on paper how you want your Web Quest to be laid out. Think about how many different pages you want to create and what will go on those pages. Once you have a basic outline, you can begin to create the Web Quest online.
Create an account or log in and go to the web quest creation page. At the top of the form, enter the basic information that it asks for - this will appear on the front "cover page" of your web quest.
Next, type in the information for your first page in the area below. Enter a title and type in the content for the page. When it is complete, press "Save and Continue" button. This will save your progress and add another space at the bottom of the form for a new page.
Continue adding pages in this manner until you've added all of them. Then go back and edit the earlier pages or click "Save" to save and stop editing your Web Quest. It's done! You can view it in your list of web quests. Choose "Student View" to see the page as your students would see it, or choose "Teacher View" to see all of the pages at once.
4. Why do I need to create an account?
Before you can create a Web Quest, you need to create an account. The biggest reason for this is to prevent the database from getting filled up with spam.
By creating an account, we can link your Web Quest to you - so that you and you alone can edit the Web Quest. You can also share certain information with other users. For example, if you run a website or a blog you can publicize that in your profile.
5. Will other people see my Web Quest?
Yes. Once you consider your Web Quest finished and publish it, it will become publicly viewable in our database. Other users will be able to search for it or find it by browsing in the database. However, you are the only one that will be able to edit it.
By making these Web Quests available to the general public, we can generate a small amount of revenue on advertising. This allows us to offer the Web Quest hosting service to you absolutely free.
6. Who owns the copyright to my work?
Full ownership and copyright for all submissions are retained by the original author - you. By creating your Web Quest on Babel, you are granting us the temporary right to display it on this website.
You are free to re-use or re-sell it at any time, and you are free to remove it from the website at any time. To do so, simply go to your "My Web Quest" listing and click the "Remove" link for the Web Quest you would like to remove.
Web Quest Creation Questions
1. What do I enter to create my Web Quest?
Fill in each of the fields on the Web Quest creation screen, and the system will do the rest of the work for you. If you have a question about a specific field, hover your mouse over that field's label - a little box will pop up with some extra information.
Here's a quick overview of the information you should enter. "Title" is the title of the Web Quest - displayed at the top of the page and when users browse the database. Grade Level, Subject Area, and Course Name are obvious - the Grade Level, Subject Area, and Course Name the Web Quest is intended for.
The Description is the last piece of basic information - it should be a short description (a paragraph or two). Users will see this when they browse the database. All of this initial information will also be used to generate a cover page for your Web Quest.
Logo URL is an optional field - enter the URL of an image that you would like to be displayed at the top of each page as a logo.
Finally, for each page enter a title and some content. The "Title" field will appear at the top of the page and in the menu. The content makes up the bulk of the page - and you can add formatting with a few special codes.
2. How Do I Create Extra Pages?
When you initially create a Web Quest, there will be space on the form for one page. This is on purpose - so that you work on one page at a time. Before you can begin a second page, you need to save the first one. You don't want to lose all your work if the power goes out!
If you press the "Save and Continue" button while editing a Web Quest, all of the current work will be saved. If the final page on the form was filled in, then a new page will be created - and when the form reloads it will produce an extra blank page at the bottom.
When you're done adding pages, simply leave the last page on the form blank - it won't be saved in the database or appear on your page.
3. How do I change the order of the pages in the menu?
Initially, the pages are placed in the menu in the order that you created them. To change that, go to "My Web Quests," and choose "Edit" for the Web Quest you want to re-order.
As you scroll through the completed pages, you'll see an option titled "Menu Order." Change the number in that field for each page, so they are ordered the way you want - starting with "1" and increasing. The final (blank) page has no "Menu Order" option - it is always added to the end of the list when a new page is created.
4. Why can I not use HTML?
This is for security purposes. Whenever users are allowed to enter input directly into a database, there's the possibility that they could enter html markup or other code that would break the website. This might be accidental (we all make typos!) or it could be the work of a malicious hacker.
In the interest of not having months of work wiped out by a typo or an evil-doer, all html and other code is stripped from your input before it is sent to the database to be stored.
5. Ok, then how do I format my work?
We've developed a simple mark up language - similar to HTML but with far fewer options. By using this, you can add all the basic formatting that you'll need and we can maintain the security of our database. All of the possible options are detailed below.
Bold and Italics. You can achieve these effects by surrounding the text with [b] and [/b] (for bold) and [i] and [/i] (for italics). So for example [b]strong[/b] would be displayed as strong and [i]emphasis[/i] would be displayed as emphasis. If you forget to "close" the tag, the formatting will simply be ignored.
Headers. Similar to bold and italics, enclose the "Heading" text in [h] and [/h].
Lists. You can create lists of items with bullet points like this. Surround the entire list with [list] and [/list]. Then, surround each item of the list with [item] and [/item]. Here's an example...
[list]
[item]Item One[/item]
[item]Item Two[/item]
[item]Item Three[/item]
[/list]
would be displayed as...
- Item One
- Item Two
- Item Three
If you would like to use another formatting feature, shoot us an e-mail and we'll look into implementing it.
6. How do I add a link?
There are two ways to do this.
If you open up the "Teacher's View" of your Web Quest while you are logged in, you'll see a some options on the left hand side of each page. One set will be entitled "Add a Link." Type the URL into the "Site URL:" field and a short description into the "Site Name:" field. When you click "Add Link," a link will be attached to that page. While in the "Teacher's View," it will appear to the left of the page in a section called "Links and References." While in the "Student's View," it will be listed at the bottom of the page in a section titled "Links and References."
Alternatively, you can use our markup system to create a link inside your lWeb Quest. The basic format is [link url="http://nytimes.com";]. This would create a link to that website, like
To extend the previous example... [link url="http://nytimes.com"; text="New York Times"; title="Read the New York Times online";] would be displayed as New York Times. Note that after each option (url=, text=, or title=), you should place a semi-colon.
In the future, we are going to implement a nifty little pop-up box that will build this tag for you... but in the meantime suck it up and learn some quasi-HTML.
7. How do I add an attachment?
As with links, you can choose one of two methods to attach a file to your Web Quest.
The first option is to upload the file to our server and then create a link to it on the sidebar of your Web Quest. Under the "My Account" tab, choose "Upload Files." Here you can upload a file from your hard drive to our server. Then, open the "Teacher's View" of your Web Quest. On the left hand side of each page, you'll see an "Add an Attachment" option. Choose the file that you uploaded from the dropdown menu and click "Add Attachment." While in the "Teacher's View," this attachment will be shown to the left of the page in the section "Attachments." While in the "Student's View" it will be displayed at the bottom of the page in a section titled "Attachments."
Alternatively, you can create a link to a file that you have uploaded or found elsewhere on the internet. To do so, use the url of the file and create a link as per one of the options above (Read: How do I add a link?).
8. How do I add an image?
You can add an image using a special code - very similar to the one you can use to add a link. The basic tag to insert into your Web Quest is [image url="url.com";].
"url.com" refers to the url of the picture that you want to display. This basic tag will insert the image at the point that you insert the code - and by default it will be displayed on the left side of the page, inline with the text.
At this time, we don't support hosting images due to bandwidth and space constraints. However, you can sign up for a free account with a photo-hosting service, such as Photobucket. Once you upload pictures to your Photobucket (or other hosting service) account, you can copy and paste the URL that they give you for your picture.
You can add a few other options to your tag, as well. The "Text" option will add a short line of text that will be displayed in case a user can't view the image itself. The "Title" option will add a short bit of text that will be displayed when the user hovers the mouse over the picture. The "Align" option can be used to make the picture float on the right side of your text - use "align=right;".
Here's an example of a full [image] tag using all of the options.
[image url="http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj11/spectrumplastering/cat-10.jpg"; text="Cat in a field"; title="Picture of an orange cat laying in a grassy field."; align="right";]
Technical Questions and Troubleshooting
1. Why did my formatting not show up?
When using the formatting tags (i.e. [b] and [i]), there are a few rules to follow.
- Each tag must have an opening (i.e. [b]) and a closing (i.e. [/b]). If an opening or closing tag is missing, all of the tags in that paragraph will be ignored.
- The tag must start and end in the same paragraph. You shouldn't be placing entire paragraphs in boldface anyway...!
- If you're creating a [link] tag, make sure that each piece of the tag (i.e. url="url";) has a semi-colon after it. This helps the website break it down into its pieces and build the proper html tag
If you're following all the rules and still having trouble, it just might be possible that we screwed up the code and there's a bug hanging around. Shoot an e-mail to questions@teachbabel.com. We'll fix it as soon as we can.
2. Why is my Web Quest not listed in the database?
When you first create a Web Quest, it is listed as a draft. While your Web Quest is a draft, it will only be viewable by you in your "My Web Quests" list.
In order to make it publicly viewable, go to your "My Web Quest" page and click the "Publish" link attached to that Web Quest. This gives you a chance to add the necessary pages and proofread your work before it becomes publicly viewable.
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