Classwebs: Cultivating the Internet for Learning By David Warlick |
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Problems | What is the
Internet's place in K-12 education? This
question is often asked and answered by school administrators, teachers, parents, and
government officials. The question comes
from the needs to finance the infrastructure that pipes the Internet into our learning
environments; the cost of maintaining that infrastructure; and the need to help educators
learn to use and utilize the technology. In answering this question, we must
take into account the condition of our classrooms. At
any one time our teachers are managing learning for 20 to 30 (and sometime more) students,
each with unique experiences, intellectual strengths and weaknesses, and styles of
learning. Teachers are charged with assuring
that each student exits the classroom at the end of the year with specific skills and
knowledge, capable of applying those skills and knowledge in real world situations. Increasingly, teachers are also being asked to
prepare students for high stakes exams, which determine their schools' ranking, teacher
pay bonuses, or whether the state takes over the school. With this much being asked of our
teachers, the puzzle that makes up their classrooms leaves little room for broad nebulous
technologies, no matter how impressive and global they are.
This is especially true when that technology also presents the teacher with
a new set of problems and challenges to address, including:
In order to positively and
productively integrate Internet technology into our busy and over stressed classrooms, we
must mold it to fit. Teachers must be able to
package the Internet to meet the needs of students, the demands of the curriculum, and the
instructional style of the teacher. They must
be able to craft learning experiences for their students and plant them as web pages on to
the Internet. When the Internet becomes a shapeable media for teachers, then it becomes a
mortar that can bind those puzzle pieces together, making a seamless learning environment. A tall order, admittedly. It is almost rare to find a school
district or even school without a web site. Classroom
web sites have been fewer in comparison, especially those designed for student use. The reasons are many!
Baring any major backlashes against
the current spending on instructional technologies in our schools and assuming the
continued growth of the Internet in our homes, the last issue will be solved -- the
Digital Divide will be bridged. The remaining four issues are complex and require buy-in, collaboration, and time. There remains a gap between teachers' technical skills and the requirements for building and maintaining webs. But this gap is rapidly narrowing, not a result of staff development, but because of the efforts of a variety of web services that are making it easier to create online environments, bypassing the need for learning code and even the need for server space. (More about this later) Many teachers are still confounded by what exactly their students should be doing at their Internet-connected classroom and lab computers. They know and use the World Wide Web and e-mail, but the idea of students lose and unguided on the information highway searching for information is scary.
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ClassWeb | A ClassWeb is...
ClassWebs can be extremely flexible in design and construction, but they should:
ClassWebs are virtual learning spaces for
students that provide access to |
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An Example | A seventh grade social
studies teacher is bringing closure to a unit on China. He has introduced Confucius on
several occasions during the unit. As a final activity, he assigns students to scan
some of the Analects of Confucius, a document of sayings either directly attributed to him
or to others who taught Confucian philosophy after his death. Each student is asked to
select one or more of the Analects and then write a short essay (one or two paragraphs) that describe how the idea relates to todays society. As a ClassWeb, the assignment would take the form of a web page with information about the assignment, access to Net-based information resources (in this case, the Analects of Confucius, and the context for what they are being asked to do the why. Finally, workspace is provided, a tool for processing their learning. In this case, students are asked to use a message board. They are each assigned to post at least one original article describing how their Analect applies to contemporary society. Finally, students are asked to respond to at least two articles posted by classmates, expanding on their ideas by describing how that Analect has applied to their lives. On the next page is an image of how such a ClassWeb might look.
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How was this ClassWeb made? |
Using HTML code or
even a WYSIWYG editor like Microsoft FrontPage to construct and install this web page could take hours, assuming that your district has message board software that you could purpose for your ClassWebs. In truth, this page was constructed and available on the Net in 45 minutes, and that includes the online research to find the Analects. The Confucius In Our Times ClassWeb was created using
bigchalk When you are finished, all of the content and
interactive tools reside on the Here are some other services that offer community tools for teachers:
It is important to note, that most of these services operate under a traditional (but valuable) model for web publishing aiming their products for school and classroom web pages institutional web pages. What is needed, is a web service that is explicitly designed to help teachers create online learning tools for students. One such tool is TrackStar (http://trackstar.scrtec.org/), from SCR*TEC. This is a series of tools designed for teachers to help them create web tours and online worksheets. However, more progress needs to be made to produce tools that integrate the context building, Net-based resources, and interactive/collaborative tools together into a single product.
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Conclusion | ClassWebs
are about solving problems. They overcome the challenges of the Internet, allowing
teachers to shape the technology to their specific needs. ClassWebs are not intended to replace anything, except inefficient and ineffective use of Internet technology in education. If the work can be done with a paper worksheet, chalkboard, overhead projector, or textbook, then those are the appropriate technologies to be used. ClassWebs do provide easy access to the information-rich World Wide Web, then enable us to wrap around those links the reasons why our students are accessing that information and what they are to do with the information, and provide interactive/collaborative workspaces where students contribute and construct their own knowledge by reflecting, composing, and crafting their work. To learn more about ClassWebs, visit the ClassWeb support site at:
and join the ClassWeb mailing list by
sending an empty e-mail message |
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Author's Bio | David
Warlick, is an instructional technology consultant from Raleigh, North Carolina. He is an
internationally recognized conference speaker and workshop facilitator, and the creator of
Landmarks for Schools (http://landmark-project.com), one of the Internet's earliest
educational Web sites. Warlick is also the author of Raw Materials for the Mind, a book
about the unique educational opportunities available through the Internet. He can be reached by e-mail at: |