The Value of Internet Resources for Education

The value of Internet resources for education continues to increase like gold on a daily basis to me. You can’t do anything without checking the Internet. The trick as an educator, is to grasp how to use those to the best advantage for the students, and effectively. And get past educator fear – Wikipedia is not a bad site, but it should only be a starting off point for research and evaluation, because it can be contributed to by anyone, so all info may not be accurate. It is my job as an educator to teach students how to evaluate websites by looking at their links and creators, and deciding what is best for their use in a project or paper. There has to be a balance between having a controlled environment and allowing the students access to learn how to appropriately use the sites. YouTube is great; however, the availability of inappropriate content means that I need to block it in the computer room because I can’t control 28 students and be everywhere at once. So I leave it unblocked in the classrooms for teacher or individual use, because they have more control over the one computer. However, denying them access also means they get more creative, and it is up to me to channel that creativity positively.

And figuring out which search engine to use – the differences between them – is also an important understanding for an educator. http://www.monash.com/spidap.html is a great site to help get started, as is http://www.cln.org/searching_faqs.html. A couple more: http://websearch.about.com/od/dailywebsearchtips/qt/search-engine.htm and http://www.netstrider.com/search/.

Utilizing the Internet can start conversations, and propose those pesky real-world scenarios that have no answers but can create in-depth passionate deliberations that hold more meaning than just reading a textbook. They can also apply what they learn in a classroom, say about copyright laws, to decide a real-world case. The Associated Press accused artist Shepard Fairey of copyright infringement. He used a photo taken by one of their photographers to create the famous “Hope” poster. Looking at the article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/04/ap-accuses-shepard-fairey_n_164045.html?page=7&show_comment_id=20487102#comment_20487102, and a copy of the copyright laws http://www.copyrightkids.org/cbasicsframes.htm, students in eighth grade were asked to play judge/jury and come to a verdict for the case; whether “fair use” was a fair argument for Shepard Fairey to use or not.

I address the usefulness of the Internet in curriculum content in the next blog.