Effective Teaching with Internet Technologies: Pedagogy and Practice

This timely book helps teachers develop pedagogical skills in using the internet through a series of case studies of good practice, all of which are based on.
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To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support? Learn more about Amazon Prime. Refreshingly, it has a strong pedagogical focus and emphasises the value of technology to support learning Read more Read less. Here's how terms and conditions apply. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App.

See all free Kindle reading apps. Don't have a Kindle? Review '[This book] would be most suitable for new teachers, particularly as an additional resource for supporting consideration of learning with and through ICT in the Primary curriculum as part of an Initial Teacher Education programme' - Education in the North Synopsis All schools now have internet access, but the potential of internet technology as a teaching and learning tool is still far from fully realised. See all Product description.

Effective Teaching With Internet Technologies: Pedagogy And Practice

Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Noninteractive environments, like linear videotapes, are much less effective for creating contexts that students can explore and reexamine, both individually and collaboratively. Another way to bring real-world problems into the classroom is by connecting students with working scientists Cohen, In many of these student-scientist partnerships, students collect data that are used to understand global issues; a growing number of them involve students from geographically dispersed schools who interact through the Internet.

For example, Global Lab supports an international community of student researchers from more than schools in 30 countries who construct new knowledge about their local and global environments Tinker and Berenfeld, , Global Lab classrooms select aspects of their local environments to study. Using shared tools, curricula, and methodologies, students map, describe, and monitor their sites, collect and share data, and situate their local findings into a broader, global context. After participating in a set of 15 skill-building activities during their first semester, Global Lab students begin advanced research studies in such areas as air and water pollution, background radiation, biodiversity, and ozone depletion.

The global perspective helps learners identify environmental phenomena that can be observed around the world, including a decrease in tropospheric ozone levels in places where vegetation is abundant, a dramatic rise of indoor carbon dioxide levels by the end of the school day, and the substantial accumulation of nitrates in certain vegetables. Students in classrooms in nine states received opportunities to solve four Jasper adventures distributed throughout the year. The average total time spent solving Jasper adventures ranged from 3 to 4 weeks. The students were compared with non-Jasper comparison classes on standardized test scores of mathematics, problems requiring complex problem solving, and attitudes toward mathematics and complex challenges.

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With no losses in standardized test scores, both boys and girls in the Jasper classrooms showed better complex problem solving and had more positive attitudes toward mathematics and complex challenges see Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, ; Pellegrino et al. The graphs show scores for Jasper and comparison students on questions that asked them to a identify the key data and steps needed to solve complex problems, b evaluate possible solutions to these problems, and c indicate their self-confidence with respect to mathematics, their belief in the utility of mathematics, their current interest in mathematics, and their feelings about complex math challenges.

Similar approaches have been used in astronomy, ornithology, language arts, and other fields Bonney and Dhondt, ; Riel, ; University of California Regents, These collaborative experiences help students understand complex systems and concepts, such as multiple causes and interactions among different variables. Since the ultimate goal of education is to prepare students to become competent adults and lifelong learners, there is a strong argument for electronically linking students not just with their peers, but also with practicing professionals.

This trend provides both a justification and a medium for establishing virtual communities for learning purposes. Through Project GLOBE Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment , thousands of students in grades kindergarten through 12 K—12 from over 2, schools in more than 34 countries are gathering data about their local environments Lawless and Coppola, Students collect data in five different earth science areas, including atmosphere, hydrology, and land cover, using protocols specified by principal investigators from major research institutions.

Students submit their data through the Internet to a GLOBE data archive, which both the scientists and the students use to perform their analyses. Students in GLOBE classrooms demonstrate higher knowledge and skill levels on assessments of environmental science methods and data interpretation than their peers who have not participated in the program Means et al.


  1. Chapter by Chapter (13-15) InThe Beginning;
  2. The Gingerbread Bump-Off: A Fresh-Baked Mystery!
  3. Teaching with technology.

Emerging technologies and new ideas about teaching are being combined to reshape precollege science education in the Learning Through Collaborative Visualization CoVis Project Pea, a; Pea et al. Over wideband networks, middle and high school students from more than 40 schools collaborate with other students at remote locations.

Thousands of participating students study atmospheric and environmental sciences—including topics in meteorology and climatology—through project-based activities. Using scientific visualization software, specially modified for learning, students have access to the same research tools and datasets that scientists use.

Learners are first acquainted with natural variation in climatic temperature, human-caused increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and uses of spreadsheets and scientific visualization tools for inquiry. These staging activities specify themes for open-ended collaborative learning projects to follow. Students then investigate either a global issue or the point of view of a single country.

The results of their investigations are shared in project reports within and across schools, and participants consider current results of international policy in light of their project findings. Working with practitioners and distant peers on projects with meaning beyond the school classroom is a great motivator for K—12 students. Students are not only enthusiastic about what they are doing, they also produce some impressive intellectual achievements when they can interact with meteorologists, geologists, astronomers, teachers, or computer scientists Means et al. Many technologies function as scaffolds and tools to help students solve problems.

This was foreseen long ago: As applications have spilled over from other sectors of society, computer-based learning tools have become more sophisticated Atkinson, ; Suppes and Morningstar, They now include calculators, spreadsheets, graphing programs, function probes e. In the Middle School Mathematics Through Applications Projects MMAP , developed at the Institute for Research on Learning, innovative software tools are used for exploring concepts in algebra through such problems as designing insulation for arctic dwellings Goldman and Moschkovich,.

In the Little Planet Literacy Series, computer software helps to move students through the phases of becoming better writers Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, a, b. For example, in the Little Planet Literacy Series, engaging video-based adventures encourage kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students to write books to solve challenges posed at the end of the adventures.

In one of the challenges, students need to write a book in order to save the creatures on the Little Planet from falling prey to the wiles of an evil character named Wongo.

Is the internet replacing teachers?

The challenge for education is to design technologies for learning that draw both from knowledge about human cognition and from practical applications of how technology can facilitate complex tasks in the workplace. These designs use technologies to scaffold thinking and activity, much as training wheels allow young bike riders to practice cycling when they would fall without support.

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Like training wheels, computer scaffolding enables learners to do more advanced activities and to engage in more advanced thinking and problem solving than they could without such help. Cognitive technologies were first used to help students learn mathematics Pea, and writing Pea and Kurland, ; a decade later, a multitude of projects use cognitive scaffolds to promote complex thinking, design, and learning in the sciences, mathematics, and writing.

effective-teaching-with-internet-technologies-pedagogy-and-practice

The Belvedere system, for example, is designed to teach science-related public policy issues to high school students who lack deep knowledge of many science domains, have difficulty zeroing in on the key issues in a complex scientific debate, and have trouble recognizing abstract relationships that are implicit in scientific theories and arguments Suthers et al.

As students use boxes and links within Belvedere to represent their understanding of an issue, an online adviser gives hints to help them improve the coverage, consistency, and evidence for their arguments Paolucci et al. Scaffolded experiences can be structured in different ways. Some research educators advocate an apprenticeship model, whereby an expert practitioner first models the activity while the learner observes, then scaffolds the learner with advice and examples , then guides the learner in practice, and gradually tapers off support and guidance until the apprentice can do it alone Collins et al.

Others argue that the goal of enabling a solo approach is unrealistic and overrestrictive since adults often need to use tools or other people to accomplish their work Pea, b; Resnick, Some even contend that well-designed technological tools that support complex activities create a truly human-machine symbiosis and may reorganize components of human activity into different structures than they had in pretechnological designs Pea, Although there are varying views on.

In many fields, experts are using new technologies to represent data in new ways—for example, as three-dimensional virtual models of the surface of Venus or of a molecular structure, either of which can be electronically created and viewed from any angle. Geographical information systems, to take another example, use color scales to visually represent such variables as temperature or rainfall on a map.

With these tools, scientists can discern patterns more quickly and detect relationships not previously noticed e. Some scholars assert that simulations and computer-based models are the most powerful resources for the advancement and application of mathematics and science since the origins of mathematical modeling during the Renaissance Glass and Mackey, ; Haken, The move from a static model in an inert medium, like a drawing, to dynamic models in interactive media that provide visualization and analytic tools is profoundly changing the nature of inquiry in mathematics and science.

Students can visualize alternative interpretations as they build models that can be rotated in ways that introduce different perspectives on the problems. These changes affect the kinds of phenomena that can be considered and the nature of argumentation and acceptable evidence Bachelard, ; Holland, The same kinds of computer-based visualization and analysis tools that scientists use to detect patterns and understand data are now being adapted for student use.

With probes attached to microcomputers, for example, students can do real-time graphing of such variables as acceleration, light, and sound Friedler et al. The ability of the human mind to quickly process and remember visual information suggests that concrete graphics and other visual representations of information can help people learn Gordin and Pea, , as well as help scientists in their work Miller, A variety of scientific visualization environments for precollege students and teachers have been developed by the CoVis Project Pea, a; Pea et al.

Or they can investigate the global greenhouse effect Gordin et al. As described above, students with new technological tools can communicate across a network, work with datasets, develop scientific models, and conduct collaborative investigations into meaningful science issues. Since the late s, cognitive scientists, educators, and technologists have suggested that learners might develop a deeper understanding of phenomena in the physical and social worlds if they could build and manipulate. These speculations are now being tested in classrooms with technology-based modeling tools.

For example, the STELLA modeling environment, which grew out of research on systems dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Forrester, , has been widely used for instruction at both the undergraduate and precollege level, in fields as diverse as population ecology and history Clauset et al.

The educational software and exploration and discovery activities developed for the GenScope Project use simulations to teach core topics in genetics as part of precollege biology. The simulations move students through a hierarchy of six key genetic concepts: DNA, cell, chromosome, organism, pedigree, and population Neumann and Horwitz, GenScope also uses an innovative hypermodel that allows students to retrieve real-world data to build models of the underlying physical process.

Evaluations of the program among high school students in urban Boston found that students not only were enthusiastic about learning this complex subject, but had also made significant conceptual developments. Students are using interactive computer microworlds to study force and motion in the Newtonian world of mechanics Hestenes, ; White, Through the medium of interactive computer microworlds, learners acquire hands-on and minds-on experience and, thus, a deeper understanding of science. Sixth graders who use computer-based learning tools develop a better conceptual understanding of acceleration and velocity than many 12th-grade physics students White, ; see Box 9.

In another project, middle school students employ easy-to-use computer-based tools Model-It to build qualitative models of systems, such as the water quality and algae levels in a local stream. Students can insert data they have collected into the model, observe outcomes, and generate what if scenarios to get a better understanding of the interrelationships among key variables Jackson et al.

In general, technology-based tools can enhance student performance when they are integrated into the curriculum and used in accordance with knowledge about learning e. But the mere existence of these tools in the classroom provides no guarantee that student learning will improve; they have to be part of a coherent education approach. Technology can make it easier for teachers to give students feedback about their thinking and for students to revise their work.

Initially, teachers working with the Jasper Woodbury playground adventure described above had trouble finding time to give students feedback about their playground. The ThinkerTools Inquiry Curriculum uses an innovative software tool that allows experimenters to perform physics experiments under a variety of conditions and compare the results with experiments performed with actual objects.

Experiments conducted with typical seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade students in urban, public middle schools revealed that the software modeling tools made the difficult subject of physics understandable as well as interesting to a wide range of students. Students not only learned about physics, but also about processes of inquiry. We found that, regardless of their lower grade levels 7—9 and their lower pretest scores, students who had participated in ThinkerTools outperformed high school physics students grades 11—12 on qualitative problems in which they were asked to apply the basic principles of Newtonian mechanics to real-world situations.

In general, this inquiry-oriented, model-based, constructivist approach to science education appears to make science interesting and accessible to a wider range of students than is possible with traditional approaches White and Fredericksen, An interactive Jasper Adventuremaker software program allows students to suggest solutions to a Jasper adventure, then see simulations of the effects of their solutions.

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The simulations had a clear impact on the quality of the solutions that students generated subsequently Crews et al. Opportunities to interact with working scientists, as discussed above, also provide rich experiences for learning from feedback and revision White and Fredericksen, When its formative assessment resources are added to these curricula, students achieve at higher levels than without them e. Teachers incorporate information from the diagnoser to guide how they teach.

Hunt and Minstrell Another way of using technology to support formative assessment is described in Box 9. Classroom communication technologies, such as Classtalk, can promote more active learning in large lecture classes and, if used appropriately, highlight the reasoning processes that students use to solve problems see Chapter 7. This technology allows an instructor to prepare and display problems that the class works on collaboratively. Students enter answers individually or as a group via palm-held input devices, and the technology collects, stores, and displays histograms bar graphs of how many students preferred each problem solution of the class responses.

This kind of tool can provide useful feedback to students and the teacher on how well the students understand the concepts being covered and whether they can apply them in novel contexts Mestre et al. Like other technologies, however, Classtalk does not guarantee effective learning. The visual histograms are intended to promote two-way communication in large lecture classes: But the technology could be used in ways that have nothing to do with this goal. With such a use, the opportunity to expose students to varying perspectives on problem solving and the various arguments for different problem solutions would be lost.

Thus, effective use of technology involves many teacher decisions and direct forms of teacher involvement. Peers can serve as excellent sources of feedback. Over the last decade, there have been some very successful and influential demonstrations of how computer networks can support groups of students actively engaged in learning and reflection. Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments CSILE provide opportunities for students to collaborate on learning activities by working through a communal database that has text and graphics capabilities Scardamalia et al.

These notes are labeled by categories, such as question or new learning, that other students can search and comment on; see Box 9. With support from the instructor, these processes engage students in dialogues that integrate information and contributions from various sources to produce knowledge. CSILE also includes guidelines for formulating and testing conjectures and prototheories. The internet and its possibilities for e-mail, chat and messaging have opened up many possibilities for long distance rapid communication, which can be used to good educational advantage.

When we consider the view of learning that suggests that learning is an interactive, collaborative process, depending upon communication and feedback, it is easy to recognise the advantages offered by interactive computer applications, computer mediated communication and the collaboration and discussion that can be engendered by well planned computerrelated tasks.

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Pedagogy and by Alan Pritchard.