by

Janice L. Flake
Professor, Florida State University
115 Stone Building
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4065
jflake@garnet.acns.fsu.edu

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 During the past year I worked with our local school district to work with a study group charged to develop learning outcomes targeted for the fifth graders for using the Internet. Internet skills for fifth graders in Leon County, Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.A., includes skills in the four key areas:

• Navigating (moving around in the web, including finding specific locations and taking advantage of many of the features of a web browser)
• Information Gathering (involving students effectively making use of search engines to find and retrieve information, as well as being able to use key words and refining searches)
• Communicating (making use of various communications capabilities, including being able to send and receive emails, using chat rooms, making use of listServ and News Groups)
• Publishing (including, among other things, being able to develop and post a Home Page, and finding a way to post the Home Page on a server so that others can access it, as well as maintaining the Home Page so those ideas, links, etc. are kept up-to-date)

How many of us came through such expected fifth-grade outcomes?

While these skills were identified that does not mean that they are intended to be minimal skills. They are skills that are to help provide guidance to teachers for directions to help students develop in these areas. A number of our local schools do have or are getting Internet capabilities at this point. Navigating and gathering information are particularly important for these students. In many cases, students want to develop Home Pages, in which case I feel that they should have the opportunity. < /P>

Brauch, Gerhold, & Patt (1996) conducted a survey about how students were using the WWW. Responses from about 26 states in the United States, mainly from teachers, indicated that the ways that students used the WWW were, in the following order (starting with the most frequently used): student research, free time, reward, Home Pages, collaboration, and other. This study identified uses consistent with the ways that our local school district, Leon County, has defined Internet skills. The fact students are using their free time on the WWW and find it rewarding is very positive. The ultimate goal for educators is to help build intrinsically motivating environments with which students will choose to spend time rather than many of the less constr uctive ways they could be spending their time. The students will learn through their own interests and activities.

Whether students learn and use HTML, HyperStudio, or some other tool, each of these tools should provide a vehicle for students to share their thoughts with the world. Such vehicles, or "sites" on the WWW, may include the students' own creative work that they have constructed which might be text, graphics, photos, videos, audios, programs-or links to their favorite sites.

As students build links, their activity should move beyond a random collection of sites to more focused research on a specific topic where students will pursue a particular topic and search for related sites to develop that topic. I encourage students to include point and click versions of their email addresses, so that viewers can communicate with them if they want. (I also encourage students to not include their personal home addresses or telephone numbers for safety purposes.)

I try to keep the focus on communication about ideas. Students can think of their Home Pages as their own personal broadcast stations where they can share whatever ideas they want. The broadcast station concept could provide a motivation to encourage students to do quality work in each of these areas. The broadcast station also becomes a vehicle for students to be active participants in a global learning environment.

Construction of a Home Page can be a recursive process, involving revisions and updating, rather than a linear process where ideas are developed and published once and for all right or wrong. Through a recursive process, the student makes improvements, revisions, additions and so on. Students can learn that making revisions may be more important than a first time right or wrong.

Traditional school settings have often been very left hemisphere and linearly oriented, with the teacher at the forefront of control. As students grow up in the Nintendo era with having much access to home computers, the WWW, and many other capabilities, many organizations are making major recommendations to move to a very different model for instruction.

Also included in major paradigm shifts is the shift from teaching to learning. One extreme teaching/learning model is for the teacher to maintain total control. All students do exactly what the teacher decides. The problem with this model is how do the students ever learn to take charge of their own education.

The other extreme is allowing students more control of their education. There are pros and cons for allowing students to have more control over their education. Some of the pros include the ability that students acquire to pursue areas that are more meaningful to them at a given time, which develops skills for lifelong learning. There are also some cons. Some people, for example, are skeptical because we may not be sure that they are learning the basics, or even that we will be able to agree on what "the basics" are, or whether they are changing.

Another paradigm shift occurring is the shift away from an emphasis on testing to portfolio assessment. One could think of the WWW as a means for providing each person a forum for expressing views, sharing ideas, and connecting with others with similar interests. When the students have to pull ideas together and express their views coherently, they develop communication skills. Current constructivist views suggest that learning should evolve out of the learner as opposed to being poured into the learne r. The Home Page can provide such a forum for the learner to share what he or she is pursuing. I mentioned earlier that I encourage students to include a point and click email address so that viewers can send messages in order to provide an interactive forum. Such messages may support, expand, or refute ideas expressed on the Home Page.

Another paradigm shift to consider is the concept of classrooms without walls. Students no longer need to be sitting in their rows and columns facing the teacher who is dispersing information. Students may be working on a variety of projects, and using the Web to gather plenty of information from the world. They may not even be at school.

 For several years now there has been a movement towards Home Schooling. I have viewed this movement with some skepticism, not because I disagree with home schooling so much as have concerns about the things that I believe schools provide. I belie ve that the school serves the function of taking the responsibility of the students, where there are adults accountable for the students. I also believe that the school serves as a social institution, with students exchanging ideas with both adults and peers. Because of the WWW, Home Schooling is more possible because it is feasible to have access to a large set of resources, and it is feasible to build a community for social constructions online. The issue of having an adult accountable is still the ho me responsibility for those who are willing to take it on. At any rate, school no longer needs to be limited to the four walls of a classroom.

 As we look at the whole communications revolution, we might think about the WWW as similar to television, moving from simply showing movies and sitcoms (involving transmitting information out) to increased interest in talk shows and town meetings (involving a more interactive forum). Another analogy is the instant dissemination of information. For example, when a major disaster happens, people no longer need to wait for the next day's newspaper to disseminate the information news services interrupt television programs. Email can be sent. News services on the WWW are immediately updated.

Another major paradigm shift is the way that we educate teachers. I have proposed (in review) a program for building an emphasis on the WWW into an Elementary Education program.

This Virtual Learning Center has the following sections: Sample Learning Environments, School Improvement, Power Learning, Vision, Collaboration, Curriculum, Technology Education, Resources, and Construction Shop.

• Sample Learning Environments suggests a number of online sites, including museums, institutions, news services for current events, various sites particularly for children, and samples of thematic units.
• School Improvement contains links to sources related to suggestions for school improvement such as: Pathways to School Improvement and Reinventing Schools (listed in the references), as well as a number of related topics.
• Power Learning is the centerpiece of this center and includes a number of links connecting sites related to such areas as: problem solving, imagery, reflective thinking, and critical thinking.
• Vision suggests that as students take charge of their own learning they should build a vision of what they want to do or be and includes some links to sites of some young people who had/have visions of where they wanted to go and are achieving their goals; belief systems role in achieving or inhibiting one's visions; and links to beliefs or goals of major organizations (such as the governments).
• Collaboration involves connecting between school systems and their communities in several example settings.
• Curriculum is a start to identifying links to a number of sources in various content areas.
• Technology Education extends concepts of technology education and includes evolving topics such as virtual reality, MUDs (Multi-user Domain), MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), WOOs (Web-oriented MOO), & MUSHs (Multi-user Shared Hallucination), and virtual communities.
• Resources include many, many resources of a variety of types.
• Finally, the Construction Shop provides links to my students' attempt to tell about themselves and to bring together their concepts of what they value from the WWW through their own home pages, and includes many links to help sites/sources for HTML and HyperStudio.

I have plans for adding a Play Room and a Chat Room to the Construction Shop that will provide a place where students can come in and "play" and share ideas. For example, I find that it is a problem to get adults to feel free to experiment and explore. I would like to build a number of experiences where they experiment and explore. In such a Play Room, users can play with variables where they try different values for variables and get different effects. They can gather data and build projects from the data. They can transform shapes from one state to another.

This article discusses a number of issues related to using the World Wide Web as an instructional tool. Discussions include: developing Internet skills and major paradigm shifts being facilitated by Internet capabilities. The article also considers a sample virtual learning center.

Flake, J. L. (In Review). Teacher education and the World Wide Web. Submitted to Journal of Technology and Teacher Education.