Students should be primed for Internet

You just can't give kids powerful computers and information and let them loose. The teacher must create a compelling set of educational q...

You just can8217;t give kids powerful computers and information and let them loose. The teacher must create a compelling set of educational questions or tasks. There is no disputing the effectiveness of this approach. A study conducted in the early nineties found that students learning this way were twice as good as devising an explanation of data, defending their explanations and demonstrating their analytical skills.

The goal of any school is to prepare students for the world in which they will live. Emphasis on collaborative and constructivist8217; learning is perfect preparation. Students need to be primed for the world of Internet, by taking part in the school8217;s own E-mail and bulletin board system. They should be able to log on from home or at school to chat8217; with friends, confer with teachers or join online discussion groups of movies and music.

Imagine the following scenario:
College students get together in a conference8217; on vital national issues. People from outside the college could be invited to participate. The exchange is moderated by an expert on the subject and turns out to be heated and analytical. When youngsters take their own time outside the classroom to respond to questions that are important to them and become identified with positions within the larger community, it is real learning. This is the kind of personal development not possible in old fashioned approach to learning.

Now, the Internet offers, above all, multiple opportunities for shared inquiry. Because the number of people involved in the Internet is so large, there are inquiries 8220;going on8221; on the Internet about every conceivable kind of problem. Whether it8217;s concerning radio, or gardening, or urban planning, or whatever, there is some group somewhere on the Internet communicating for the purpose of solving problems.

The Internet is the greatest resource ever invented for fostering growth. It represents a dynamically evolving virtual world, with virtual communities forming all over the place, each composed of people with similar interests but diverse locations. How could this not dramatically affect possibilities for inquiry?

All educators have a moral obligation to develop the ability to involve students in on-line inquiry, because if we don8217;t, we will fail to realize our students8217; capacities for growth.

There are many different levels of application of the Internet in education. Instructors can choose various combinations depending upon educational outcomes:
E-mail: Which provides for two-way communication between students or with instructor.
Listserve: Which is really just a form of enhanced E-mail in which messages are sent to entire groups of people instead of just one recipient. Listserves are useful for generating class-wide discussion of course curriculum and content.
Gopher: Which is a way to use a simple text-based computer terminal to access textual materials stored on computer servers. It is useful for delivering and obtaining things such as course catalogs, and other valuable information.
World Wide Web: In the past three years, Web browsers have made using the Internet extremely easy to use. All you do is point and click. If we want to teach students to use the Web, we just have to ensure that they sit down at the computer for a few hours and look around. The WWW has been around for a few years, which is a major advance in how information is accessed over the Internet, because it allows for not only text but graphics, sounds, movies, and eventually real-time video. Educators can use it for advertising, registration, course materials including entire texts and libraries, chat sessions, video-conferencing, virtual classrooms, and eventually, virtual reality.