The Quest for Truth

Several months ago I read an article that addressed the safety of our children. Ironically, the article claimed that our kids today were actually more in danger of reckless behavior because of being overprotected. The author claimed that kids learn safety skills by falling and scraping their knees. Hence, parents who insist that kids not do things like climb trees or ride bikes on gravel are, in the end, doing them more harm by not allowing their brains to develop these skills. I guess it's the ol' try and fail method of behavior learning.

I think this same lesson can be applied to our theme this week in class. There seems to be a common thread in this week's discussion and focus, and that is the search for what is truthful on the Internet and how we can make the Internet safe or relevant for our students . Much ado is being made about the fact that the Internet contains so much junk - that it has become overrun with wasted pages. No one can deny that this is true. I think this is the advantage of having a free Internet. Do we really want the alternative, allowing some governing body to decide what is and is not relevant and of value? It's true that the Internet is riddled with meaningless garbage, but if you visit any of these sites, you're bound to see at least one hit. So, if we are going to support the free speech platform that the Internet is, we as educators have to be willing to accept the challenge to find the best and quickest, most efficient ways to cipher through all the junk and discover the sites that will be most useful to our students. For our younger students, I think this is very important. They need to be able to take baby steps when developing their surfing techniques. We certainly don't want 8, 9, 10 year olds exposed to the kinds of malicious, dangerous, and inappropriate material that exists on the Net.

But when it comes to our older students, filtering what we consider irrelevant or uneducational is simply not giving our students the skills they need to function on the Web. I personally think we do our older students a disservice if we insist on "watering down" the Internet to make things easier for the students. How can we adequately prepare them and instill critical thinking skills if we don't allow them to fall and scrape their knees on their own? This doesn't mean we have to expose them to all the trash, but we should at least provide them with both the good and the bad and allow them to evaluate the nature of each. Eliminating sites such as Wikipedia because we don't see the value doesn't mean there isn't any. We need to be more open-minded and willing to climb beyond our comfort level and take the chance that we may fall and bump our heads.

Internet Learning Resources-Teaching Made Easier!

Like any teacher out there who loves using the Internet, I have been amazed at how much stuff there is that can be used in my classroom. This past week has been a great example of this.

For my 6th Grade computer class, we always end with a unit on Excel. Now, I never use Excel. Yah, yah, I get why it's great and useful, etc. but for my line of work I have not needed it. I tend to equate it with scrapbooking: it's a great thing to do, but who in the world has time for it? Anyway, so when it comes to teaching my 6th graders how to use Excel, I'm always very rusty, and since I don't take the time to dig deeply into it, I end up feeling very uneasy leading the class in creating spreadsheets. So as I got to thinking about our topic this week, I thought I would start surfing for tutorials. My challenge was finding one that was suitable for my young audience. Many of the tutorials I have discovered for Excel tend to lend themselves to those in the business world and thus are very technical and, worse, boring.

So, what Learning Resource tool did I find? As I have done for other topics, I'm finding that lately my best friend in Internet Learning Resources is Youtube. It seems if it's video I need for just about anything in my classroom, I can find it there. So I went to Youtube and searched, and by golly, I found an excellent 5 part series on the basics of Excel. The best part is that my school district is still stuck with MS Office 2000, and the series is conducted on 2000. Great! In addition, the narrator is a Brit, and as one of my students commented, has a "rather soothing voice." He's wonderful, and instead of listening to my droning jibberish, they are tuning in to his sessions and learning a ton. Hell, I'm learning a ton. And since he gives a wonderful example - a video rental spreadsheet - I am able to instruct my students on how to set it up and repeat his calculations. My students are, therefore, getting a double-dose of instruction; first, his up-close step-by-step process, followed by my reinforcement and extension. What a great combo! And now with the inclusion of RealPlayer download, I can download these wonderful videos and keep them in the folders for students to view year after year, not having to worry if the video will disappear.

I don't know what I would do if the Internet blew up tomorrow. Perhaps I depend too much on it, but the resources out there play a vital role in my keeping students up-to-date on the latest information. I would feel completely disconnected without it, and I really have no idea how teachers without access do it. In fact, I know several teachers who don't utilize the Internet very often, and I tend to feel that their students are not getting the full education they need to become savvy, problem-solving citizens. I spend a lot of time with my students teaching them how to surf and the dangers and benefits of doing so. I think we do our students a disservice if we don't carry this same message throughout the curriculum.

Preaching over...