It is not always easy to strike the right balance between allowing students freedom on the web and providing structure. Students need to be able to make mistakes. "Feeling the frustration of continued failed searchers and then finding success can be very empowering for students" (November, 2001, p.65). So a teacher has to know the correct place to step in. If a teacher steps in too soon then the student looses out on the chance to feel the empowerment but waiting too long can cause the student to give up. So the teacher needs to pay attention to figure out the right point for each student. Schools do also use filtering to restrict students freedom on the web. Currently this is required in schools by federal law. The following link has details on school filtering on the internet: http://www.fcps.edu/DIT/InternetFiltering/publicfaq.htm#What%20is?
When dealing with primary source material the "role of the teacher is to provide structure and direction to a student's ability to make meaning" (November, 2001, p.64). The teacher should provide perspective, help with searching skills and assist with visual literacy. When using primary source material, it can be useful to consider the perspective of the organization providing the information. That can drive how the information is labeled. Also, students need to be coached in the words used when searching on the web. Some words seem very similar (i.e. airplane and aircraft) but find very different web sites (November, 2001).
Podcasting and other mutimedia tools such as screencasting can be used for collaborative learning in the classroom. Podcasts are fairly easy to create and are an easy way to share ideas about a subject. Once the Podcast is created it can be used as a source to refer back to as a refresher or for students who missed class to catch up on some issues. Students can create podcasts too. This could be used as the final product of a project to record the learning. It could also be a topic of the student's choosing.
This link is to Dan's Math website where he posts regular podcasts all about Math and education:
He posts these to share with anyone who sis interested.
Video and screencasts can be used in similar manner. Video of course has the advantage over podcast that there is the visual content but it is also a bit more complicated to create. Screencasts are good for showing a process on your computer to share a skill with others (voice explanation goes along with screencasts too) (Richardson, 2010).
No comments:
Post a Comment