**4. Signs-as-agents in WebQuests**

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from one or more websites [35]. The following screenshots are from webpages that were incorporated into pre-service teachers' designs for WebQuests. Webquests typically involve teachers creating questions and choosing internet-based links so that students can follow the links and collect specific information on a topic.

The following examples illustrate how the typology for signs-as-agents, developed in the first analysis from the Tandem tool, can be applied to websites incorporated into WebQuests. WebQuests are particularly interesting to analyse, because depending on the WebQuest designer, the web sites included in the quest may include a wide range of internet pages with diverse modes (e.g., static, moving images, videos), functionalities (e.g., ability to 'like', 'dislike', leave textual comments on the site) as well as 'housing' different intentions which may be designed for educational purposes or not.

The following screenshots (**Figures 9**–**12**) were taken from a screencast video recording of a pre-service teacher trying out various webpages as part of WebQuests designed by other pre-service teachers. It is a common educational (social) practice for teachers to try out teaching and learning activities to check whether they are appropriate for the students that they are going to teach. They

#### **Figure 9.**

*A screenshot of a screencast video recording of a pre-service teacher trying out the 'Cool Kids Facts' webpage.*

*Rethinking 'Affordance', 'Agency' and 'User' from a Semiotic Technologies Perspective… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99699*

#### **Figure 10.**

*A screenshot of a screencast video recording of a pre-service teacher trying out the 'Cool Kids Facts' webpage.*

#### **Figure 11.**

*Pop-up translation tool offering a translation of the English website to 'Espanyol' (Spanish). Offered by Google translate.*

#### **Figure 12.**

*A Britannica kids banner with '7 day free trial' in another colour.*
