Internet Research in History Classes

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Internet Research In History Classes

Development of Internet Research

Internet research has changed the way history is studied over the past ten to fifteen years. Classroom teachers must acknowledge and use the Internet to get the most out of their history classes. Today there is more information available then we could have imagined even a few years earlier. While the Internet has opened us up to a world of information it is also important to understand that there are also significant negatives to this new world of information. This paper will discuss some of the pros and cons of Internet research along with some of its uses and effectiveness.

Classroom Application

According to the web site Pros and Cons of Internet Research the possible advantages of using the Internet are as diverse as the Internet itself. The number one reason for use in the classroom would be the wide amount of information that the Internet makes available to students that they would not have access to in the regular classroom environment. It can also allow students to develop high order thinking skills due to the variety of information that is available to them. Use of primary documents is an excellent example of using the Internet in the classroom. Very few school libraries contain primary documents so generally students do not get the opportunity to use or understand them. Numerous letters and diaries can be found on the net to use as primary documents. A good example of this is the Dakota State University site that contains a number of Civil War Letters. This gives students an excellent chance to get information from the people who actually experienced the event. The Library of Congress is also a good site for primary documents and photographs from different events in US History. A second good classroom application of the Internet is through the use of interactive sites. These sites often allow the students to play a part in history. The National Geographic site The Underground Railroad http://www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad/ allows students to be a slave on the Underground Railroad and make the same choices a runaway slave had to make. Another site similar to this is the [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/ PBS Transcontinental Railroad] This site allows you to take an interactive trip along the transcontinental railroad. Along the way you may click on different sites that give a brief narrative and photos of the railroad being built. A third good reason for use of the Internet in class is it allows students to learn in new and different ways. All students do not learn or react in the same way to classroom lecture. The Internet may allow students to become more interested in history then just through the regular classroom by allowing them to gather information on a topic of their interest. A final reason is students have to assume a greater level of responsibility when doing Internet research. According to the Pros and Cons of Internet Research students must learn to decide what information is relevant to what they are doing. It also can greatly help teach organizational skills when compiling that information.

Using the Internet

One of the big issues for teachers is how and when to use the Internet. The National Teachers Training Institute lists the following guidelines when deciding if the Internet will enhance your classroom material. Why Use Internet in the Classroom? As an experienced teacher, you already have lessons that work well for the age you teach and the topics you cover. To evaluate whether using the Internet will enhance your classroom practice, consider these questions: 1. Would digital images help students understand a concept or topic? For example, could they use the Web to see images of black holes in space, historic photographs, artwork, or to look at satellite imaging or MRI scans? (On some sites, "objects" can be manipulated or rotated, so students can see them from different angles. Would this help students with a difficult concept?) 2. Does the lesson require collecting and analyzing data and building databases? 3. Does the lesson refer to time-related data, such as the changing stock market, the annual rainfall of a region, or the migration of whales? 4. Can the impact of the lesson be enhanced through students communicating via email with peers in other cities, or other cultures, or through contact with "experts" in a field? 5. Will students be asked to create and conduct surveys, make presentations, conduct in-depth research, or work in teams?

Answering yes to these questions means that the lesson would benefit from the use of the Internet.

Criticisms of Internet Research

When dealing with Internet research there are a number of problems and criticisms that one must be aware of. First is the understanding that anyone can post on the web so students need to have an understanding of how to evaluate web sites for accuracy and reliability of information. Two good sites for this are http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm Virtual Salt and The Good The Bad The Ugly of Evaluation Both of these sites offer good basic information on how to evaluate web sites. Without the ability to evaluate sites properly students may get information that is not accurate. One of the new sources available to students on the web is the Wikepedia. This source gives information on a wide variety of topics. It can be a good source of general information on a wide variety of subjects. One of the negatives though is that anyone can post information to these sites. If these sites are not properly monitored this can lead to problems such as when a college professor was recently accused on Wikepedia as being a part of the Kennedy assassination. Another good example of inaccurate information is some of the sites that deny the holocaust. Another key issue is that the Internet houses material you may not want your students or children to have access to. Public school filtering programs can deal with this issue in a school setting. A third issue is the ability of students to copy material such as research papers off the Internet. This has become such a big problem that there are now services available that will search for papers to see if they were taken off the Internet. The final criticism is that the Internet is ruining student’s ability to retrieve information from books and other traditional means. According to the site Pros and Cons of Internet Research this should not be seen as a problem as the computer today should be seen as another form of the printed word.

Considerations for Internet Research

Several considerations should be made when doing Internet research. First make sure all of your students have access to the Internet if you are doing outside of school assignments. In low-income schools many students may have trouble using the Internet outside of school hours. Second do not assume that all students know how to properly search and use the Internet. Going over site evaluation and acceptable sites should be done before starting any Internet research project.

Personal Experiences

It has been my experience that using the Internet can greatly increase the interest students have in history along with giving them access to information that would not be available to them in my regular classroom. I especially like having the students go to some of the interactive web pages offered by National Geographic and PBS. One of the major negatives I have found is that students are not real good at Internet research. They have a hard time dealing with the huge amounts of information available on the web. I usually try to spend at least a part of a class period explaining how to search and how to evaluate web sites to know if the site is ok to use or not. Craig Johnson

The internet has created an almost infinite number of possibilities for teachers, not only history but other subjects as well. Lesson plans, online encyclopedias and interactive games are a few of the myriad opportunities. Caution must be used however and like anything else, teachers must research sites for accuracy and validity. The internet has also created an avenue for teaching class. There are many online courses and the university level and even a few for high school credit (the Florida Virtual School is an online high school [1].) My high school has an online component to AP Calculus. The internet will only get bigger and opportunities only more vast.

List of References

Pros and Cons of Internet Research

http://www.eszter.com/edu/sides.html

Virtual Salt http://www.eszter.com/edu/sides.html

Using the World Wide Web http://www.mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCII2/Warn.PDF

Digital History in the Classroom http://historycooperative.press.uiuc.edu/journals/ht/35.4/lee.html

National Teacher Training Institute http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/ntti/resources/internet1.html

Concept to Classroom http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/classroominternet/index_sub2.html

Underground Railroad http://www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad/

Transcontinental Railroad http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/

The American Civil War http://www.homepages.dsu.edu/jankej/civilwar/diaries.htm