Teaching Portuguese and the Webquest

Webquest is a research methodology designed to utilise the Internet in education, a resource used in the research. It comes from the web itself, and thus comprises a series of didactic learning activities that take advantage of the immense wealth of information in the virtual world to generate new knowledge. It was proposed in 1995 by Professor Bernie Dodge, from the University of San Diego, with the participation of his collaborator Tom March. It is an investigation of information in which students interact with the knowledge they have learnt in the classroom and apply it in the WQ. The data can optionally be captured in supplements, video conferences, chats, forums, e-mails and the use of other resources for the production of collaborative writing, such as wiki, blogs etc. not only from the web, but it can also be the information passed on in class. Etymologically, web/quest means a network of hyperlinks/questions, search or research. With the use of the internet in mind, WQ was created to transform and optimise Portuguese language teaching in schools, in order to make learning interactive.