As a teacher with more than 20 years experience in public and private schools, I have seen educational trends of all shapes and sizes, from teaching in modules (a '70s thing) to pass/fail grades (an '80s thing). Change is part and parcel of being a teacher in the late 20th century. Some trends, however, are likely more than a passing fad; they are a fundamental change in the way we teach and students learn. One such development is the increased use of technology in the classroom.
Technology to Boost Learning
Although many educators are catching up with technology, the National Teacher Training Institute for Math, Science and Technology (NTTI), launched in 1990 by public broadcasting station Thirteen/WNET in New York, continues to be ahead of the curve. NTTI is a national grassroots initiative in which master teachers train their peers to use video and the Internet to motivate students and to boost learning. Sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NTTI now involves a partnership of 26 public broadcasting stations.
NTTI provides teachers with specific strategies, resources, and interactive lesson plans that help them effectively integrate technologies into classroom instruction. Follow-up and postviewing study are integral to this approach, and such work usually involves classroom activities, field trips, and other real-world applications of the classroom curriculums.
NTTI advances an interactive teaching methodology in which technologies such as video and the Internet are combined with hands-on activities to enhance critical thinking, support learning, and sharpen perceptual skills. The wealth of educational programming on public television provides students with vivid demonstrations of science and math phenomena. Tied to real-world contexts, video and Internet resources help make the connection among math, science, and students' own lives.
The Internet Revolution
We have all heard the hype regarding the information superhighway. But how does using the Internet in the classroom affect the learning environment? In my experience, it is at once revolutionary and yet ultimately not that much different from many other changes in education. The revolution is that students have a new relationship to knowledge and that they are involved in actively creating knowledge.
What does the Internet offer that really changes the nature of instruction? In actual practice, I have found several compelling reasons to use the Internet in the classroom. By giving students access to and training in the Internet, we empower them to become active learners. Students can be directed to view video, text, and animation on the Internet at their own pace, in an interactive manner that allows repeated viewing and that accommodates a student's personal style for assimilating information. If students must demonstrate understanding of difficult content, such as the phases of the moon, animation provides a powerful tool for illustrating what is difficult to convey with words or static images.
Knowledge That Is Accessible to All
Whether it's the latest satellite photo from Mars or a "live cam" from Manhattan, anyone connected to the Web has access to information. What this portends is an open guess at this point, but it seems to me that humankind will advance tremendously as access to information spurs the active engagement of students worldwide. In my classroom, students make discoveries every day as they use software packages in new ways. Many of these student insights can change the scope of a project.
For example, as part of an assignment on geometric polyhedra, a teacher can direct students to many linked and bookmarked Web sites to obtain an overview of the subject. Students also add to the store of knowledge that the class has unearthed through directed Web searches. A directed Web search is one that the teacher has performed previously, checking the links for age appropriateness, content, and relevance. Such a search is specifically tailored for students to choose their own paths on the Web and to make discoveries as they aid in the creation of new knowledge. For example, I've asked students to search for "platonic solids" using a particular search engine, such as Yahoo! or HotBot. Because 759 links are returned, students constantly make new discoveries as they browse through the sites and share what they've found. "Hey, check this out" and "Look what I've found!" are heard throughout the class whenever a compelling animation, photograph, video clip, simulation, or illustration appears on their screens in this lesson.
Planning an Internet Lesson
During NTTI training sessions, we provide teachers with tips about how to prepare Internet-based lesson plans. Below, I've outlined such a methodology. Based on direct classroom experience, this method guides teachers as they integrate the Internet into the curriculum.
- Choose an "Internet likely" topic. When choosing a subject for an Internet-based activity, consider this maxim: The Web is not a book.Any well-designed Internet lesson will involve more than text retrieval, that is, students' looking at several Web sites and gathering text. Although students certainly can use the Web for text research, that kind of lesson is not addressed here because the relationship of students to the information is analogous to that of students to any text. Units on the solar system, Euclid's Elements, or animal migration patterns, for example, are all naturals for the Web. Many sites offer animation, maps, real-time data, and simulations that give students insight into complex phenomena.
- Explore the topic on the Web. Spend time freely exploring major sites. (Hint: Use several search engines to cast a wide net at the initial exploration stage.) Students can be enlisted in this stage to perform directed searches after class, if possible. Remember: The purpose is to find those sites that offer exciting, interesting, and relevant pages.
- Try to come up with a meaningful student activity that includes several Web sites. This may involve simply following the directives of a Web site that is posted for student use. (An increasing number of Web resources are geared specifically for K–12 classrooms.) More elaborate activities may involve collecting data from several sites and combining facts in a spreadsheet, on a graphing calculator, or in an interactive presentation.
- Publish on the Web to motivate students. For many learners, the prospect of Web publishing represents opportunities for growth, self-esteem, and real-world experience. Several projects that I have been involved with have convinced me of how extraordinarily motivating the Web can be. As part of the PBS Olympic Cyberschool Web site, I was one of several NTTI teachers who contributed "challenges," or Internet-based activities, which were compiled under the guidance of Thirteen/WNET's New Media Group into a major launch just prior to the Nagano Olympics. The site included more than 80 challenges, designed by NTTI master teachers nationwide, that used the Olympics as a vehicle for teaching math, science, and technology.Take a rather routine assignment, such as writing a news article based on the latest results of the Olympics. When the possibility of Web publishing was added to this simple task, the results were dramatic indications of the power of the Web to transform education. Students finished articles within deadlines with real enthusiasm and genuine pride when they knew that their articles were to be posted daily at the PBS Olympic Cyberschool site. In fact, because I had announced the project to the entire upper-school student body, many worked late at night and e-mailed articles round the clock, while others were ready to fill in as needed on short notice by means of e-mail. At the close of the Olympics, the project was extended, and students were eager to continue writing articles for two more weeks. By this time, submissions from around the globe complemented those of the students at our school.Thanks to the support and vision of the staff at Thirteen/WNET and PBS, my students were able to participate in the Olympic Cyberschool project, and they achieved recognition for their efforts throughout the school. Examples of student input in school Web sites abound as educators discover the value of Web-based publishing to enhance their curriculum and showcase student work. Since my involvement with the Cyberschool project, I try to include Web publishing in most assignments.
- Use the Web as a means of circulating information to students. Not to be overlooked in this brief survey of classroom uses of the Web is basic communication with students over the Web. If your school has its own Web site, a teacher can post a lesson to the site, and students can simply scroll the page to read directions and background information and to find links to relevant sites. The extra time taken to prepare the Web page is rewarded by the ease of use and reuse over time. In effect, a lesson posted on the school's Web site does for teachers what technology is supposed to do for us all: increase efficiency and improve communication. An added bonus is that the Web lesson can serve as a repository of student work that can be accessed again and again. I have found that students are able to build on the work of their predecessors. More and more teachers are seizing the initiative to use their schools' Web sites for instruction as well as for publishing. The Web is a powerful means of circulating information, in effect replacing the age-old mimeograph.
A Design for Teaching
My style of teaching, means of content delivery, and expectations of students have all been radically transformed as a result of my experiences working with Thirteen/WNET and NTTI. Today, I teach in a truly paperless classroom, where students routinely begin a unit at Thirteen/WNET's wNetSchool Web site for K–12 teachers (http://www.wnet.org/wnetschool). They are expected to read directions, follow links, and obtain a focus for program viewing and follow-up activities. Of course, I am lucky to have a classroom full of state-of-the-art computers equipped with high-speed Internet access. I also have the curricular freedom to implement many projects in courses titled "Multimedia" for 8th graders and "Computers As Tools" and "Computer Graphics" for upper-school students. In actual practice, I might give the same assignment to different grade levels because the material is rich and open-ended enough to support inquiry at many levels.
In the last year, virtually all of my lessons resided on either wNetSchool or my own school's Web site (http://www.polyprep.brooklyn.ny.us). We've discarded textbooks, worksheets, notebooks, and even chalk in my classroom. True to the NTTI method, though, hands-on activities remain a mainstay of my lessons. The hands-on activities tend to reinforce those skills that computer technology frequently does not address, such as manual dexterity, group work skills, social skills, and discussion and presentation skills.
I have been fortunate to receive training and guidance in my daily activities as a teacher in a connected classroom. The vision of wNetSchool as a place for K–12 teachers to receive professional development, combined with the use of the NTTI methodology for integrating video and Internet technology into the K–12 curriculum, continues to be realized. The wNetSchool site is a work in progress that accommodates the latest in video delivery on the Internet, the most recent links to educational Web sites, and other ongoing updates, all of which make it a truly transformative agent in education. The site is a great resource for teachers like me, dealing with the hype, the pressure, and the ever-changing technology of using the Internet in the classroom.
