Blog 3

The important concept from all the web based learning experiences is that you need to ask thought provoking questions that make the students solve problems. What you don’t want are questions that just have the students regurgitate what they find on the Internet. The questions need to get the students to gather information and then draw conclusions from the information that they gathered. I need to create questions that make my students defend a stand or a decision and/or develop their own point of view.
I will be developing an activity for my Natural Resources module in my Bio-Tech class. I want to specifically target wind energy. What I want my students to do is design their own wind turbine for use at their house. The two specific things I want them to design are the blade shape, and how many blades. One website from Florida International University shows some great blade designs and gives a brief description of them. Before I use this site I will have to make sure I am not breaking any copyright laws, as this site specifically warns against using there material without permission.  Here is a list of the other sites I was looking at:
 
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=wind_home-basics - Basic wind turbine knowledge.
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/publications.html - some in-depth research on everything related to wind turbines.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/avgwind.html -To get an idea for the average wind speed in our area.

For my 11th grade English class we had to write several research papers. For these papers our teacher taught us how to take notes, how to cite books and websites, copyright laws, and proper MLA formatting along with a lot of other stuff that I have long forgotten. The one thing that I do remember and have used continuously since that class was that you always want to have more then one source supporting your work. The teacher always stressed if you can only find a fact in one resource then you should question that fact and most likely leave it out of your paper.  This one piece of advice is the same piece of advice I give to my students when they are finding information on the Internet. I don’t think this is the end all to making sure a source is reliable but I do think it can help especially with all the other techniques we discussed in our class. If you can find multiple sites to back up the information that you are looking at then I think you are headed in the right direction. This one piece of advice is trying to get them to think critically about the information they are finding.

With the introduction of the Internet, research has gone from a simple task of looking up information to a more complex task needing higher end critical thinking skills. Ithaca College has a guide to navigating the Internet titled “A Guide to Critical Thinking About What You See on the Web”. Students need to constantly question whether the site they are on and the information they are looking at is legitimate. The critical thinking skills they use to distinguish this can then be applied to all areas of their lives. Since I teach high school, this is a skill that is easier to teach, since their brain is more developed. It is also a very important skill for them to have since they will soon be released into the “real world” left to fend for themselves.

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I believe the Internet is a very useful tool in the classroom. It is a tool that combines and builds on other traditional sources of information. Since my classroom has access to the Internet questions the students have, which I cannot answer, are now easily looked found on the Internet. I am frequently looking up how-tos, tutorials, and trivial knowledge. With the help of the Internet these questions/problems are answered in a fraction of the time compared to if I had to find the answer using traditional methods i.e books, other teachers, or calling a technical support desk. Many of the questions that arise in my class are software based and with the help of the Internet and forums (if they are not blocked) can be answered quickly. I found a good website that had a section on “What can the Internet do for my classroom?” that talked about the internet as an expanded resource. (on a side note the internet at my school is currently not working so I guess I will waste some time playing games on my iphone until it comes back up) (on another side note don’t worry about Downingtown East students education because it is after school hours and I am allowed to waste time if I want.)

Now that the Internet is back up and running it is time to complain about using the Internet in the classroom. Though I love the Internet and feel lost and vulnerable without it there are a lot of concerns when using it in the classroom. One concern is students love to play games on the Internet. It was the first thing I did when I was in high school and it still is the first thing these students do, as soon as they have access to the internet they load a game. It is important as a teacher to be able to manage students while they are using the Internet. If a teacher cannot do this I feel the Internet doesn’t provide an educational value to the student. Vancouver Island University address this problem on their website with an article titled “Managing Student Use of the Internet During Instruction”. This article has some good tips on how to keep the students on task. I also think that the assignments assigned have a lot to do with how the students use the Internet. When students are given easier assignments that students can finish quickly they are more likely to use the Internet inappropriately. On the other hand when students are given rigorous (buzz word) work that takes up the whole period or time slot then they don’t use the Internet inappropriately.

When it comes down to it the Internet is a great tool that has the potential to enhance the teaching and learning process, but it just needs to be used correctly.