397: The Humble Webquest Levels Up (How-To + Templates)

I've got more and more respect, these days, for the humble webquest. Slash hyperdoc. Slash game board. Slash immersive digital multimedia experience. Slash clickable infographic. Slash playlist. Slash choice board.

When it comes to sharing information and contemporary texts with your students, there is SO MUCH available online right now. Students can see actors practicing behind the scenes at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Read John Green's thoughts on drafting. Hear Jason Reynolds' read his children's book, There was a Party for Langston, while the illustrations wash across the screen. Students can learn MLA with Purdue, watch Joy Harjo read her own poetry, listen to our country's top researchers and academics and start-up founders on podcasts and Ted stages.

So cool, right?

With so many immersive, multimodal resources waiting for our students, building their roadmaps to what's available becomes an important (and fun) job.

We want to present them with great options, and help them feel positive and excited about the experience of exploring. We want to give them possibilities across modes and from many perspectives, so students can use their agency to learn in ways that feel good to them, and connect to at least some aspects of what they discover. We want to provide options in terms of how they synthesize the information they take in so they can use it later.

As I see it, here are some of the benefits to building quality webquests for students:

• students have choice in what to explore, starting with what seems most interesting to them and continuing to make choices until they're out of time
• plugging in to the kinds of contemporary connections available online (like listening to author interviews, visiting settings, seeing adaptations, and viewing connected social media) can often make learning feel more relevant for students
• you can build in resources across genres and modes, letting students listen, watch, read, explore, view, and zoom in according to their preferences
• it's easier to provide more viewpoints, voices, and perspectives, helping you to diversify your curriculum
• sharing a webquest is less stressful than giving a lecture, and more likely to keep students engaged
• you'll save a tree, since photocopying a packet of information won't be necessary
• you can take advantage of the incredible wealth of informational resources available online

Today on the pod, let's talk through some examples.

Be sure to grab the free templates that complement the episode! These are meant to make this whole process quick and easy for you as you get started, and then you can go on to develop your own. 

Get the Free Templates Here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/webquesttemplates

Sources Considered and Cited:

Beers, Kylene and Robert Probst. Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters. Scholastic, 2017.

• This book features a helpful look at why relevance is key to engagement. Read more in this blog post.

Chavez, Felicia Rose. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021.

• Felicia Rose Chavez talks about letting students have a voice in the texts that form the curriculum, and "completing the canon" (97) to go well beyond the white Eurocentric voices so often enshrined there.

Clapp, Edward. "5+3 = 8: The Eight Barriers to Access and Equity in the Creative Classroom." Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom. MSU Article Retrieval Service. Accessed October 2025.

• The chapter from Edward Clapp discusses sharing models of creativity that don't just reflect individual creatives working in isolation, but also collective and collaborative creativity.

Rodriguez-Mojica, Claudia and Allison Briceño. Conscious Classrooms. PD Essentials, 2022. (+ Related Podcast Interview).

• Claudia and Rodriguez-Mojica and Allison Briceño showcase the increase in student performance when they can see themselves in the texts they read.

Muhammad, Gholdy. Cultivating Genius. Scholastic Teaching Resources, 2020.

• Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius calls for us to layer contemporary multimodal texts into our curriculum, something that reinforced my own long-term interest in this possibility.

Ivcevic, Zorana. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs, 2025.

"Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Episode 393. September, 2025.

• Ivcevic suggests that teachers use models and mentors of creative thought that allow students to see themselves, both in terms of their identity and in terms of the level of creativity.

Stockman, Angela. Creating Inclusive Writing Environments in the K-12 Classroom. Eye on Education, 2020.

• Angela's work on multimodal texts, makerspace freedom, and creating more inclusive curriculum is helpful in this conversation.