November 7 Post

Integrating the Internet into the Curriculum (Ch.8)

I am very interested in learning about how to use the internet in the classroom. When I left the classroom in 2003, students at my school did not have access to material on the internet at school. As a result, I only used the internet as a productivity tool.

In chapter 8, I learned that I do need to be careful about my eagerness to integrate the internet into the classroom. I learned that it is very important to think about the relative advantages of internet use in teaching because web-based activities take a lot of time to develop and implement and because they are difficult to make accessible and useful for instruction. To ensure that the internet is not misused, teachers should make sure that the instructional activity meets the following criteria.
1. The web activity should meet a regular curriculum objective so that computer use is a means to an end and not the end in itself.
2. The web activity should require students to do something with the information they find on the internet (requiring higher level thinking and skills). The activity should culminate in the production of something new that shows what the students have learned.
3. The web activity should be "doable" in a timely manner and with the resources available to the teacher.
4. The web activity should be something students can't do without the internet. In other words (as I learned from early readings about affordances), if you can teach the lesson without the computer, do it.

The text discussed many good reasons for using web-based activities in instruction.
They include:
1. To support student research by providing sources of information.
2. To motivate students to write by participating in activities like epals and electronic publishing.
3. To develop collaboration skills through cooperative research projects, electronic publishing, problem-based learning, and social action projects.
4. To provide opportunities for multicultural experiences through virtual field trips and social action projects.

I also appreciated the WebQuest Rubric as a good tool for evaluating the quality of web-based activities and for choosing the best activities to meet student needs.