Helping Students Make the Best Use of the Internet in the Classroom
Bob Coulter
Manager of Curriculum Development
Missouri Botanical Garden
St. Louis, Missouri bob.coulter@mobot.org
For the past several years, schools have had a major focus on “getting online.”
Because of this work, the vast majority of schools in the United States enjoy Internet access, including many with connections directly in the classroom. Now that the hurdle of going on line has for the most part been crossed, it is fair to ask: “So what?”
Increasingly, educators are raising the difficult question of just what the investment in
Internet connectivity is providing in terms of real educational benefits. The hard answer is, “Not much.” Despite the rhetoric, simply gaining Internet access in and of itself offers very little educational benefit to a school.
For the investment made in network infrastructure to reap rewards, the focus needs to move away from hardware and toward developing skills in productive use of the
Internet. Only then will you start to see the Internet having a significant impact on your school’s learning environment. As Hargreaves and Fullan (1998) note, “In the absence of well prepared, critical and caring teachers, computer technology can result in an information glut where much of the information students get is superficial and indiscriminately arranged”(p. 76). By developing appropriate information filters, your staff and students will be in a position to maximize the potential the Internet has to offer.
If the Internet is thought of as a vast repository of information, the fundamental issue to address is “Information for what purpose?” In order to avoid the excesses of both sides of the timeworn process vs. content debate, we need to acknowledge that students need to know how to think , but that they also need a base of knowledge in order to think about something . Higher-order thinking skills cannot develop in the absence of substantive issues to think about, and an endless pursuit of facts warehoused for some unknown future purpose serves only to diminish education to a game of trivia. Information is a vital part of learning, but it cannot serve as an end in itself.

To make better use of the Internet as a source for that information in schools, I propose here a three part agenda for action:
1.
Students need a clear purpose for their search.
2.
Search strategies need to be refined.
3.
Issues of bias and point of view need thoughtful consideration.
Defining a Purpose
When students have a real purpose for their investigation, they are in a better position to make effective use of the Internet. This purpose may be just a general interest in a field or it may be a need for very specific data, but the purpose provides the rudder that will make the difference between mindless surfing and a thoughtful, effective search for information. To paraphrase Alice in Wonderland
, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, any information will do. It is all too easy to become distracted with tangential links that do not address the student’s central purpose. While it is quite possible that a search will lead to new perspectives—and therefore require a revision in the overall focus for the inquiry—this should be a carefully chosen act and not a haphazard event.
To promote the development of this strong sense of purpose, students need to have an appropriate degree of ownership over their work. Simply finding facts to include on a worksheet or to memorize for a test promotes disengagement from learning and a “guess what the teacher is thinking” mindset. A quick test of a curriculum is to look at the questions students are pursuing. As Bob Strachota (1996) remarked, “I’ve come to define a real question as one which engages the teacher and the learner in exploring the mysteries of the universe, rather than one which engages the learner in exploring the mysteries of what the teacher wants her to say or know or do” (p. 8). A student hot on the trail of a “real question” will have a much better chance of staying on course that one engaged in a haphazard pursuit of fill-in-the-blank answers.
Fortunately, student ownership over their learning can occur as a natural outgrowth of other initiatives your school is probably undertaking, including moves toward more

authentic inquiry and higher academic standards
1
. When students are engaged in a sustained pursuit of issues they care about, they will be much more discriminating consumers of information, and will be in a better position to respond to teachers’ guidance as they grow toward being critical consumers of information.
Improving Search Strategies
Once students have a strong purpose defined, they will need to use well-developed search procedures to ensure that their efforts are productive. We all have the experience of going to a search engine, typing in a search term with hopes of finding just the right link, and getting thousands or even millions of “hits” returned. Two types of search engines may be productive in improving students’ search strategies: subject-oriented sites such as Yahoo ( www.yahooligans.com
) or Google( directory.google.com
and follow the link to “Kids and Teens”), or sites such as Ask Jeeves For Kids ( www.ajkids.com
),
2 where you pose a question and Jeeves (an “electronic butler”) tries to match your question to one for which it has prepared answers. Either of these strategies offers a more productive alternative to simply typing in a search term and wading through thousands of potentially useful sites.
To try this out, go to the main page for Google ( www.google.com
) and try to search for information about “plants.” As of this writing, that search term offered 6,150,000 sites for your review. In addition to plant information of the green, leafy type, be prepared for information about industrial plants and the placement of spy equipment. Instead, use the subject index for Google ( directory.google.com
), and navigate through the subject headings (Kids and Teens > School Time > Science > Biology > Plants and Trees) until you narrow your search to the appropriate type of information. Searches conducted in this manner also offer the benefit of promoting awareness of the structures of knowledge we too often take for granted. In this case, after students have placed themselves in the Kids
1 In this context, I refer to the higher academic and cognitive standards called for in documents such as the
National Science Standards, the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. In many states, unfortunately, “higher standards” is simply a euphamism for punitive efforts to control what is taught in class.
2 Equivalent sites for older students and adults can be found at www.yahoo.com, directory.google.com. and ask.com.

and Teens section (thereby avoiding professional level botanical sites), they have considered that their field is a science; from there a branch of science called “biology;” and from there a particular branch of biology wrapped under the label “Plants and Trees.”
Next, try a similar search process with a question-oriented search engine. Your initial query (e.g. “Where can I learn about plants?”) returns a series of more specific questions the site is prepared to answer. Simply choose the best question to meet your needs, and receive a list of potentially useful sites that have been tailored by the Ask Jeeves staff to be responsive to that question.

While neither of these approaches is foolproof, either will make more productive use of time spent online, saving more time for thinking with the material retrieved. The most educational thinking will occur as students analyze the merits of the information collected and synthesize it into their growing understanding of the world. Mere collection of information is only the beginning.
Validating Sources
With increased use of the Internet at school and at home, parents and teachers are paying a great deal of attention to issues of student access to inappropriate materials including pornography and hate literature. A more subtle concern is the question of intentional or unwitting bias in the point of view.
A major benefit (and limitation) of the Internet is that virtually anyone can publish a web site. On the one hand, this opens many possibilities for the expression of alternative points of view. On the other hand, this ease of publishing bypasses the usual editorial process whereby an author needs to frame coherent arguments and support their assertions with facts. An unsophisticated consumer of information (at any age) tends to bypass this check. Too often, students cite as proof “I read it in a book.” This uncritical use of information is dangerous enough in the edited world of traditional publishing; in an era where an ordinary person can easily publish virtually anything, it poses real intellectual dangers for students. Web sites denying the existence of the holocaust or presenting an ethnically biased version of historical events can be mis-educational to say the least.
Many educators rightfully point out that despite efforts at multiculturalism, textbooks tend to present a limited, one-sided view of the world. Properly engaged, the variety of voices available through the Internet can provide the necessary counterbalance. For this to happen, however, teachers need to lead their students in discussing issues of the point of view or potential bias. The biased point of view in a site on civil rights assembled by a white supremacist organization would be relatively obvious; students also need to be aware of the potential for bias in the many corporate mergers that have taken place in recent years. Can a news organization be trusted to “break” a story that is critical of its

parent organization? Conversely, would another news organization have a potential bias against the organization that owned a competitor? In order to make effective use of the mass of information available to schools, issues of point of view, ideological bias, and conflict of interest need to move “front and center.”
Looking to the Future
Starry-eyed visions of students using the Internet to become thoughtful, welleducated citizens remain just that: visions. For your students to continue in their growth toward that goal, they need to become effective searchers and critical consumers of information, guided by the larger purposes of a meaningful investigation.
While your students are growing, look for the Internet to continue to evolve as well.
Better search techniques and even full-fledged “digital libraries” are under development that are designed to provide guided access to information in a field. As these searching tools come online, one of the three pillars of effective use of the Internet described here will become easier to use. The remaining two—purposes for learning and awareness of the points of view represented—are squarely in our hands as educators: Learning remains largely a process of defining goals, pursuing meaning, and being critical consumers of the information and experiences we encounter along the way. Technology can be helpful, but it is only through the mentorship of a well-prepared teacher that your students will develop these skills.
References
Hargreaves, A. and Fullan, M. (1998) What’s Worth Fighting For Out There? New York:
Teachers’ College Press.
Strachota, B. (1996). On Their Side: Helping Children Take Advantage of Their
Learning.