WWW "HOT"SPOTS
CAN LEAD TO REALLY "COOL" SCIENCE TEACHING & LEARNING
Dr.
Thomas O'Brien
Binghamton University, School of Education & Human Development
PO Box 6000 Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 607-777-4877 (tobrien@binghamton.edu)
The ever-increasing
interconnectivity of electronic databases via the World Wide
Web coupled with the enhanced speed and memory capabilities
of personnel computers has made it possible for science teachers
and their students to readily access a universe of scientific
and instructional resources that is truly mind-boggling.
Even without a direct internet connection available immediately
in their own classrooms, teachers can bring in selected portions
of specific web sites as files to be transferred to their
classroom computer by using software such as WebWhacker.
Mindful that simply accessing and downloading visual and
auditory information from one computer to another or engaging
students in crude "cutting, pasting and re-publishing" of
such multimedia does not result in real understanding, the
internet CAN (AND SHOULD) BE a powerful tool for constructivist
teaching and learning.
Both the
process of doing "research" via electronic surfing
with web browsers and the products that are found from targeted "trips" with
various search engines can result in meaningful learning
IF the users engage in pre-trip planning, on-line reflective
processing and subsequent off-line "minds-on" action.
The key as with all learning is the extent to which individual
learners are actively engaged with each other and the instructional
material in order to assimilate and accomodate the new information
into their pre-existing mental frameworks. Transformation
and reconstruction of both external information and personal
internal mental schemas is essential to real learning (vs
memorization and information "cataloging and warehousing").
Without this internal processing and external feedback, hypermedia
learning tools merely "expose" (a radiation analogy
is appropriate here) students to a greater density of what
Alfred North Whitehead (in The Aims of Education, 1916) referred
to as "inert ideas - that is to say, ideas that are
merely received into the mind without being utilised, or
tested, or thrown into fresh combinations... Education with
inert ideas is not only useless: it is above all things harmful." Education
may profitably include, but must go beyond the mere entertainment
offered by the slick multimedia of video arcade games and
many web sites. Understanding implies the ability to process,
organize, transfer and creatively apply knowledge in new
contexts and it requires time to do so. It cannot be simply "downloaded" at
electronic speed from CPUs to the biochemical neuro-networks
of the human brain.
The internet
is not a substitute for clearly articulated curriculum, instruction
and assessment. Free, undirected student exploration of cyberspace
is (optimally, assuming they don't go down the electronic
equivalent of Dr. Seuss's "not-so-good street")
the equivalent of plopping them down in the center of the
Library of Congress -- few students, whether on a live or "virtual" field
trip, would independently "rediscover" the central
themes, concepts and habits of mind of science (as identified
by AAAS and the NAS) in any finite amount of time. Without
appropriate guidance, student ACCESS to MORE IMFORMATION
may result in LESS UNDERSTANDING. Or as John Dewey (in Experience & Education,
1938) put it: "No experience is educative that does
not tend both to knowledge of more facts and entertaining
of more ideas and to a better, a more orderly, arrangement
of them." Obviously, the degree of necessary teacher
guidance and selection of project parameters varies with
the particular instructional goals and prior experience of
the students as electronic researchers/learners (and this
of course, can be discerned by the teacher and not by the
present generation of "search engines"). Advances
in hardware and software have made it easier for students
to not only be "consumers," but also "producers" of
information as they gather and share the results of their
library, laboratory, and field research (e.g., numerical
data, text, graphics, animations, movies, and www links)
with other students (and scientists) around the country and
the globe.
One additional
caveat must be kept in mind about the world wide web. That
is, it is the nature of the www for sites to occasionally
move (most often they leave a "forwarding address" for
a period of about six months) or "close up shop" all
together. On the other hand, most sites associated with professional
organizations, universities, and well-established commercial
entities tend to be stable. A list of some 300 science and
science education "hotspots" categortized as:
has been
assembled by the author. While nearly all www sites, include
links to other sites, many on this list are "meta-sites" that
contain a large number of potentially useful links. This
list of URLs should serve as a useful point of departure
and guideposts to ensure that teacher and student trips on
the information superhighway do not become "dead-end
runs".
