1. Searching for Topical Information and Creating Hotlists

Using the Internet to find information on your current topic, using search engines, is a logical place to begin using the Internet in your existing curriculum.

Students need to learn to use the HELP buttons available on all search engines to learn new searching tricks and syntax. Consider having your students compete when searching for specific information to see who can find the fewest overall resources, and the highest number of valuable resources, in the least amount of time, using the best searching strategies. Have them share their searching tricks with other students. This can make searching a game, draw attention to those who are really thinking when they search, and will create student experts to help the others. 

Once students know how to use search engines well, they will know where to go to gain expertise that will translate to social attention. Students love to show off their own knowledge. Most teachers have had students who like to show off for the other students that they can find reams of resources on any topic, and perhaps also claim they can learn anything they want, at any time, via Internet. While this is true to a degree, teachers add important context and perspective to this raw information and can direct students toward new avenues of inquiry. As a busy teacher with limited time, you'll be a better facilitator of student-directed learning if you encourage your students to learn to teach themselves, and each other, than if you make them dependent on you to learn. The Internet makes all this possible!

A class activity of creating a resources web page, with links to the best Internet resources on the topic you're currently studying, is recommended. Have students add annotations as to which part of a given site has the best resources. Have them critique and compare various resource sites, and perhaps develop a class rubric to guide future collections. This type of resource "hotlist" can serve as a resource schoolwide, districtwide, or worldwide!  Work with students to devise a strategy for finding existing hotlists on your curricular topics, instead of simply gathering individual sites.

For the one computer classroom, have your students work in small groups, perhaps assigning roles as 1. keyboardist, 2. scribe, to take notes and 3. search commands master, to revise the search commands strategy, so each student has participatory role and the resulting search strategies and results truly represent a team effort.

2. Creating A "Multimedia Gallery" or Multimedia Files Collection

Collecting images, sound files, Quicktime videos, etc,. as a multimedia "gallery" on your current topic of study is another strategy. Encourage students to write about these resources as they post their image, sound, and video files on their "collection" web page. Have your students create a multimedia, shareable, homework assignment that can continue to serve as a resource on your topic of study. Encourage students to be creative, and to add their own ideas, original digital photos, digital art work, sound files, and videos, to these showcase multimedia galleries! Students should be encouraged to be producers of multimedia works wherever possible and specifically to create instructional opportunities for others, to be assessed by peers for quality and creativity.

Use this type of activity as an opportunity to teach them about copyrights and educational fair-use policies. Help them determine when they "own" the intellectual property rights for their original work, when they are using public domain resources, and when they need to ask permission for use of these resources.

Tutorials for learning how to work with these increasingly common file types are included in the handbook for the prerequisite course "Making the Best Use of Internet for K-12 Instruction." If you don't know how to save these types of files, and how to post them on your own web pages, you can either ask your students, or your local technical support personnel for help. Eight successive multimedia web page authoring levels, (images, sound, video, etc.,) along with tutorials on each, are listed at http://lone-eagles.com/media.htm. Its very easy, once you know how! Note that search terms are given for each media file type, which provide a long listing of additional tutorials. Use search terms in this way as a teaching aid, routinely asking students for their suggestions.

Having students create different, but related, topical web pages, to be linked together to create a rich topical web site, would be a logical next step.

Students need to know how to save images from the Internet, and to insert them in documents along with hyperlinks. Its important to know that most word processors can save documents as web pages and allow easy insertion of images, sound and video files. This new multimedia web page format will soon be a standard format for any document, allowing routine homework assignments to be multimedia web pages.

3. Online scavenger hunts is a fun format for a guided searching activity. A scavenger hunt can take many forms, but is essentially a guided, timed, searching activity for obscure bits of information designed to be a fun way to build searching skills.

5.  Project-based Learning Units:

The next level beyond finding or displaying topical information related to your existing curriculum is to engage students in project-based learning collaborative activities. Review

Guidelines for Educational Uses of Networks
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/Guidelines/guidelines.html

Judi’s Great "Mining the Internet" Articles:
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/Mining

The required textbook for this course is Dr. Judi's newest creation, a superb guide to creating telecollaborative K-12 activities: Virtual Architecture: Designing and Directing Curriculum-Based Telecomputing  http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/index.html    ORDERS: 800-336-5191 Since only parts of the book are online you'll definitely need to order a printed copy! http://amazon.com offers 40% discounts and two-day delivery. You'll love this method of buying books, try it!

       The required textbook for this course is "Virtual Architecture" which is only partially online    
       offering listings of articles related to each chapter at
         http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/

       It is required that you purchase this wonderful resource. There are three sources...

       http://amazon.com, or by calling the publisher http://www.iste.org at   800-336-5191

The course text is available in the SPU bookstore for around $30 (last time I checked). You can order the text over the phone, by mail or by fax. Their number is (800)778-3401. Fax number is (206)281-2688. Address is SPU Bookstore, 310 West Bertona Street, Suite 220, Seattle, WA 98119-1950

Project-based learning (PBL) activities are becoming an important component in K-12 instruction and many different models and sources for such ready-to-go activities exist as covered extensively in the previous course. Creating your own original project-based activities will come naturally as you experience these various models, and become comfortable with creating web pages yourself, and with your students.

NOTE: Tom March created Filamentality and has gone on to create his own subscription service which you definitely should review at http://www.web-and-flow.com  

Project-Based Learning Resources; A Web Tour

Go to http://lone-eagles.com/pbl.htm and explore the resources on project-based learning. Spend the most time on the Edutopia site and view at least one of their online videos on PBL.

Then, conduct a search for "project-based learning" (include the quotes) to identify the volume of resources available. Use the AND command with your preferred topic area        to find even more specific resources.

         Example: "project-based learning" AND math

For more on models for PBL and Webquest activities read and explore http://lone-eagles.com/capacity.htm   In this web tour you'll see the popular Webquest models, which can be short term (1-3 class periods) or long term 3-4 weeks. Webquests create a structure for students to develop online social and organization skills, as are needed for the workplace in the next millennium. Extensive numbers of teacher-created, classroom-ready webquests are already available on the Internet along with quality tutorials and templates. Templates are available for both students and teachers. Have your students design Webquest activities for other students.

Go to the "Projects Registry," http://www.globalschoolhouse.org/GSH/pr/ and review projects posted by teachers. Note you can post your own projects and/or find other educators with which to partner for multi-classroom projects!

While there are a great many free online projects available, there is a rapidly growing market for fee-based  "plug-and-play" Quest-type curricular units. Typically costing around $70 for a 6-8 week activity complete with workbooks, videos, and real online scientists and mentors. Here's a listing of both free and fee-based Project-Based Learning, (PBL) directories: http://lone-eagles.com/projects_tour.htm

5. Online Courses

The final step integrating the Internet into your curriculum might be the creation of an online interaction component to your existing instruction involving one or more of the ten collaborative tools of the Internet. This would require home-based, library-based, or alternative Internet access for your students.

We'll cover online courses in the coming lessons, but at the Ecollege site http://www.ecollege.com  they provide everything you need at their web site to create online courses. Explore this link to see a course demo: http://umtonline.net/Demo/index.real

Alternatively, you might like to make your course available to teachers and students who will not have the privilege and opportunity to spend time in your classroom. Perhaps you might consider an early retirement, or a change in lifestyle, by becoming an online teacher. Many online web tools exist that allow the creation of online courses, and/or online collaborative activities, with little or no technical background. Additional course authoring resources are listed at http://lone-eagles.com/self.htm  

For this lesson you're asked to explore the Curriculum Authoring Web Tour at http://lone-eagles.com/currtour.htm, noting particularly reference to the master listing at http://lone-eagles.com/webdev.htm . Have fun with it!