Working the Web for Education Outline

Advantages to web based learning:

• Students become active learners

• Promotes student-centered learning activities
• Teacher takes on the role of guide or facilitator
• Students can access resources from all across the world.
• Current resources, opportunities to interact, collaborate and communicate with other web users
• Provides a less structured approach to learning: students can explore, evaluate and assess
• Increases the breadth and depth in which a student can research a topic or question
• Helps to build creative and critical thinking skills

Practice

• Teachers must learn how to create web based learning opportunities
• The role of the teacher is to establish goals, parameters and learning expectations for these web investigations
• Teach students how to research topics using the web
• Hotlist: a teacher provides a list of links
• I Search: students investigate links related to a topic
• Multimedia Scrapbook
• Students gather information from a variety of sources and organize it
• Practice identifying sources and assess the validity of a source
  

Investigation Opportunities

• Treasure Hunts:
• Students explore a list of links and retrieve specific information from each site.
• The teacher establishes the links and the goal for searching each link
• Students answer a culminating question to demonstrate what they have learned from the hunt

• Subject Sampler:
• Students explore a set of web links and evaluate the information provided
• Students join a community of learners
• The teacher provides a forum to review and comment on each link
  

• Web Quest:
• Students research a given topic by following the guidelines established by an essential question.
• Students explore a variety of web sources and must organize, evaluate and assess the information gathered.
• Students must use web links to research a specific topic.
• The teacher establishes a purpose for the Web Quest, provides links for research and a guidelines as to how to demonstrate knowledge gained.
• Students will create a plan to accomplish a task or they will formulate an opinion or answer to a question

Tools to Create Learning Activities Using the Web

• Filamentality
• A program that guides an educator to create a treasure hunt, subject sampler or Web Quest.