by Dan McDowell

Rarely a week goes by where I don’t get excited about a new resource or technology tool. I’m constantly reading blogs and wandering around the Internet looking for a new idea to use with my students or share with other teachers. Never, in its short history, has the Internet offered so much potential for the classroom teacher. The digitization and sharing of our collective knowledge began years ago, but it continues to grow at an amazing rate — while also expanding the available resources from just text and pictures to video and audio. In addition, the ability for users to create content, collaborate, and communicate is unprecedented.

With billions of Web sites and dozens of new potential tools being developed each year, all of this can be pretty overwhelming. In the many technology integration workshops I’ve taught over the years, I’ve emphasized the need to take small steps. Please don’t try to transform your classroom into a digital wonderland in a single year. Prioritize and closely examine what others are doing, and then select a couple projects or ideas to implement.

If you are looking for a place to start, let me make a couple recommendations. First, one of the most critical skills our students are going to need in the coming years involves digital information literacy. Second, teachers must have tools that will allow them to easily bring Internet resources into the classroom. To address this issue, I recommend the use of WebQuests.

Information Literacy Basics
As professional educators, we are suffering from information overload. Where does that leave our students? Students need to be taught the skills to navigate this massive network of content and be able to analyze it, evaluate it, and do something with it. While this has always been part of the educational model, the scale has increased exponentially. At the same time, with the democratization of the Web, just about anyone has the ability to publish his or her take on any topic or issue. This is certainly a whole new ball game.

At the start of the school year, I shared Wikipedia, the community developed encyclopedia, with my students. I asked how many used Wikipedia to do research. About half raised their hands. When I asked those students if they knew who wrote the articles, only one hand went up. When I hit the edit button and showed them that ANYONE can edit Wikipedia, their mouths literally dropped open.

I think the starting point is teaching students to critically examine each online source for point of view. What is the background of the author? Under what conditions was the text written? What did the author hope to accomplish? By looking at these questions, students can place the information in context and hopefully recognize any biases represented.

One of the best ways to illustrate this idea is to present students with two extreme views on a single event. Current events provide a wealth of resources. The war in Iraq, the genocide in Darfur, or even Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria last month all have bloggers writing from both ends of the political spectrum, giving their spin on the events. Here are some possible sources for divergent opinions on some of these issues:

• Current American Politics: Democratic/Left — Daily Kos
• Current American Politics: Republican/Right — Little Green Footballs
• Iraq Reconstruction — Blogs from all perspectives

Finding Reliable Resources
In addition to teaching students to recognize point of view, we also must have resources that we can trust. In this vast sea of information, numerous news organizations, educational institutions, museums, and educators have created islands of reliable information. Like textbooks, some Web sites are universally accepted and can be used without the intense scrutiny that blogs and wikis demand. These more mainstream Web sites initially made the Internet a viable resource and will continue to provide high quality content.

Within my classroom, I consistently draw from a number of Web sites for various topics in my history classes. The Library of Congress is a must for any American history teacher. The BBC site includes a massive section devoted to world and British history. My Holocaust/Genocide unit would be much less compelling without the rich visuals from the large collection of photographs and videos at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).

For every documentary produced by Frontline: “The Triumph of Evil,” China from the Inside, and the recent Supreme Court special. Plus, most of these sites add an educator link that provides lesson plans, suggested uses, and outlines of the provided content.

What Now?
Even given the high quality of the lesson plans developed by PBS, the USHMM, and the Library of Congress, teachers often must adapt the materials to fit specific learners and address specific learning objectives that fit within the larger context of their curricula. I almost never use a provided lesson plan exactly as it is written. I always need to tweak it to some degree!

Since about 1995, WebQuests have been one of the most popular ways for teachers to integrate the Internet into their classrooms. Initially created by Bernie Dodge and Tom March at San Diego State University (SDSU), WebQuests are centered on an engaging, authentic, and doable task that generally challenges the student to create a product, defend a position, etc. Step-by-step instructions and pre-selected resources are included in a section called the Process. Rubrics for evaluation are also included. WebQuests grant teaches the power to customize their lessons, put the learning into the students’ hands, and draw from multiple online sources.

While I have created a dozen or so WebQuests, I have two WebQuests that I want to share here. The first, Civil Rights and the Supreme Court, has students look at the evolution of civil rights in the context of four landmark Supreme Court decisions. As part of the Civil Rights Movement unit in my United States History course, I want students to discover the importance of the Supreme Court in shaping American policy. The tasks in this WebQuest involve student groups researching the cases, determining their impact on American history, ranking their relative importance, and discussing the power of the Supreme Court. The provided resources include a number of Web sites, including two different PBS programs (The Supreme Court and Africans in America), Tolerance.org, Landmark Cases.org, and Wikipedia. Students are expected to review all of the Web sites during their research. This WebQuest requires only one day in a computer lab and two additional days for the group discussions and final reflections. I can then go on and focus in on the key events of the Civil Rights Movement for the duration of the three-week unit.

In contrast, the Holocaust Wiki WebQuest defines my Holocaust/Genocide unit in my World History course, requiring almost two weeks of computer time. The central task involves students writing a branching simulation about a fictionalized family during the Holocaust. They do extensive research on the various stages of the Holocaust and how they differed from one country to the next. I provide anywhere from five to twenty links for each topic from a variety of sources, including the USHMM, the Jewish Virtual Library, and the Museum of Tolerance. Students must be careful to accurately represent the history, be thoughtful as they consider the decisions faced by Holocaust victims, and be delicate while discussing the fates of their families. At the conclusion, students gain a greater understanding of the Holocaust, and in their final reflections they have expressed a newfound understanding of everyday decision-making. I presented this project at the 2006 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) last summer in San Diego.

A few years ago, I made a video about my Children of the Holocaust WebQuest that has since been replaced by the Holocaust Wiki WebQuest. It is interesting to hear the students’ take on using the Internet.

Up until recently, in order to create a WebQuest, you not only had to have the project idea, but you also had to have the technological know-how to write and publish a Web page. That has finally changed. In the spirit of blogs and wikis comes QuestGarden. This comprehensive online tool built exclusively for educators utilizes online forms and walks teachers through the process of creating a WebQuest. Built from the bottom up by SDSU Educational Technology Professor Bernie Dodge, it removes the technological barriers so long faced by teachers. For a minimal fee ($20 for two years), educators can create, store, and host WebQuests at the QuestGarden Web site. The Civil Rights and the Supreme Court WebQuest I shared above was created in QuestGarden.

The Internet has been a central part of my entire teaching career. I cannot imagine being without this amazing resource. And it just keeps getting better. I challenge every teacher who reads this to try to integrate at least one new technology idea into his or her classroom next year. Your students will love it!

Please share your thoughts, questions, concerns…I’d love to know what you’re doing in your classroom.

Dan