Learning With the Internet

Course Description

Everyone knows the Internet is a worldwide computer "network of networks" that sends and receives data. But what does the Internet have to do with learning? This course will answer that question and help you use the Internet to support learning in K-12 schools, especially learning enabled by collaboration, information-seeking, student research, and publishing.(1)

Reflection

The three most important things about learning on the internet are access, participation, and experimentation. These three things are what enable the internet to be a platform of meaningful learning. The first, access, is refers to how the internet enables access to information on a level humanity has never seen before. The second, participation, refers to how the Web 2.0 revolution moved the internet from a primarily read-only platform to a read-write-collaborate platform. The final, experimentation, refers to the technologies the internet has enabled with respect to simulation, surveys, and other, which allows for the creation and analysis of data for students to consume and analyze. Individually, each of these three things is powerful, but only when all three are utilized is the complete potential of the Internet recognized.

The Internet enables access to information on a level humanity has never been seen before. Every subject that is taught in a classroom can be enriched by this access. No longer are teachers solely dependent on expensive textbooks, which may be years out of date, as an information medium. Greater access to information means provides possibilities for meaningful learning across multiple strands. Constructive learning can occur when students take this new information and then reflect on it to create new understanding. Intentional learning occurs when students access information with a specific purpose in mind. For example, doing a Google search to discover what the current deficit of the United States government is. This information would be out of date if it was in a textbook, but by using the immediacy of the internet, information that may only be minutes old can be discovered and used. Finally greater access to information enables more authentic learning. To continue the previous example, if an economics class was working with hypothetical scenarios relating to the public deficit, they could use the real numbers in their class instead of arbitrary numbers.

While the internet originally was mainly a way to disperse information, the Web 2.0 revolution was transformative in that it fostered web applications that enabled greater participation and collaboration among internet users. The obvious implication for meaningful learning is along the cooperative strand of meaningful learning. Students have access to applications such as Google Documents, Wikis, blogs, for greater communication among themselves. It doesn't stop there, however, because now students can learn collaboratively with people outside of the classroom. Greater collaboration also allows for more efficient goal oriented actions, so I see it as influencing the Intentional Strand as well.

Finally, the Internet enables greater experimentation. The properties of the internet encourages jumping into things instead of focusing on theory first. This creates both Active and Authentic Learning. For example, users don't need to have complete knowledge of technologies like http, html, and JavaScript in order to start building a web page. They can just use Wordpress, or Google page creator, and they are in business right away, sharing, building, and collaborating. Students are also able to use the internet as a medium for experimentation. They can conduct physics experiments inside simulations in a web browser, or put a survey up on Survey Monkey (or a similar tool) to create data for them to analyze and learn from. So we see that the Collaborative, Constructive, and Intentional strands of meaningful learning are present as well. When a student reaches the level of what I'm calling experimentation, we see they are fully utilizing the internet's potential.

Artifacts

Footnotes
  1. From the SISLT Course List