{"id":833,"date":"2007-03-01T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-01T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/cite\/2016\/02\/09\/the-sites-teachers-choose-a-gauge-of-classroom-web-use\/"},"modified":"2016-06-04T01:41:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T01:41:43","slug":"the-sites-teachers-choose-a-gauge-of-classroom-web-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-7\/issue-2-07\/general\/the-sites-teachers-choose-a-gauge-of-classroom-web-use","title":{"rendered":"The Sites Teachers Choose: A Gauge of Classroom Web Use"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Sites Teachers Choose: A Gauge of Classroom Web Use<\/p>\n
Throughout the late 1990s, much of the argument concerning technology integration in the classroom revolved around the issue of access. Now, with the inclusion of the Internet in 99% of current classrooms (Kleiner & Lewis, 2004), almost all teachers have access to this dynamic tool and are presumably using it for the benefit of their own knowledge, as well as that of their students. But how are teachers actually using the Web? The hope is that the Internet can assist teachers in the way they approach content in their classrooms, including introducing a variety of dynamic and interactive tools designed to improve and enhance instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine how a group of teachers in K-12 classrooms view the Web as it relates to education, as well as to see what they view as effective uses. The specific research questions were as follows:<\/p>\n
\n
Given the opportunity, what Web sites will teachers identify as useful for education?<\/li>\n
What is the nature of the identified sites? What types of information and\/or services do they provide?<\/li>\n
What does the nature of these sites indicate about how teachers perceive the Internet’s role for education and use it in their classrooms?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Relevant Literature<\/p>\n
Internet access has become widespread in modern day society, and schools reflect this trend. Although only 35% of schools had Internet access in 1994, by 2002, 99% of classrooms were connected. Since 1999, there has been no discernable difference of Internet access based on individual school characteristics (Kleiner & Lewis, 2004). Computers have gone from a relatively rare sight in the 1980s to quite commonplace in today’s classrooms. The average school in the United States had one computer per every five students as of 2002, with 8% of schools having laptops available for student loan and 23% of schools having some type of wireless Internet connection (Kleiner & Lewis, 2004). Many school districts, and some states, are moving toward laptop initiatives in which students each have their own computer that can connect wirelessly to the Internet.<\/p>\n
Although this increasing access clearly allows greater use of technology in the classroom, what remains to be seen is how it will be utilized to benefit student learning. Schofield and Davidson (2002) asserted that the advantage of using the Internet in the classroom clearly depends on the extent to which teachers are using it as an instructional tool and their purposes in doing so. Given the proliferation of Internet access in today’s schools, the hope is that access to such a dynamic tool would be used to support student-centered, inquiry-based lessons in order to improve instruction. Unfortunately, this in large part remains unseen or unmeasured in modern day classrooms.<\/p>\n
Despite pervasive access to this technology, the way in which it is used has a significant impact on the possible benefits to students. Historically, the focus has been on granting schools Internet access, instead of on how it is being used in the classroom. Bull and Bull (2003) reported, “As a consequence, we are not realizing the full instructional benefits of the technological infrastructure that has been constructed” (p. 28).<\/p>\n
According to a recent Pew report (Levin & Arafeh, 2002), The Digital Disconnect: The Widening Gap Between Internet-Savvy Students and Their Schools<\/em>, three out of five students under the age of 18 go online, along with more than 78% of students between the ages of 12 and 17. These students reported that there was a wide gap between how they use the Internet in preparation for school and how the Internet is used throughout their classes during the school day. The majority of students relied heavily on the Internet to complete their assignments, and they did so outside of the school day and building, without the help, guidance, or instruction of their teachers. When students did use the Internet as part of an in-class activity, students reported that the quality of their Internet-based assignments was poor and uninspiring. They expressed that they wanted to be assigned not only additional Internet activities, but ones that were more engaging and relevant to their lives (Levin & Arafeh, 2002).<\/p>\n
The Pew study clearly identified that teachers manage students’ use of the Internet. Teachers decide whether to forbid Internet use, to allow use of the Internet as a supplement to other sources and tools, or to assign activities that require Internet use (Levin & Arafeh, 2002). As Cuban (2001) found, the majority of teachers thought that their teaching had changed positively as a result of the use of information technology; however, this change was in regard to specific professional areas\u2014planning, communicating with fellow teachers and parents, and gathering materials for teaching from the Internet.<\/p>\n
Research has suggested that the Internet can be a tool for providing more in-depth, rich, active learning (Jonassen, 2000). According to Becker (1999), “Along with word processing, the Internet may be the most valuable of the many computer technologies available to teachers and students” (p. 32). However, this potential value is dependent on how educators view their role in the classroom and their beliefs about how instruction should take place. As Coulter, Feldman, and Konold (2000) found, online resources will most likely be used productively in classrooms when inquiry methods are well established. Jonassen (2000) defined meaningful uses of technology as “mindtools,” which he described as generalizable tools meant to engage and facilitate cognitive processing and meaningful learning. Meaningful learning is characterized as active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative (Jonassen, <\/em>Peck, & Wilson, 1999). Following Jonassen’s model, ideal use of the Web would adhere to the following criteria:<\/p>\n
\n
Allow for active manipulation in which students can interact and observe the effects of their input in order to conclude their own interpretations about the topic.<\/li>\n
Provide for students to create a new understanding based on their prior knowledge.<\/li>\n
Allow students to describe their own learning goals and strategies and answers they have found.<\/li>\n
Involve a meaningful, real-world context that is either simulated, case-based, or problem based.<\/li>\n
Encourage social engagement, in which learners are able to work in groups to form a common understanding of the task.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These criteria describe the ideal active use of the Web to engage students in meaningful learning. \nAlthough active use of the Internet holds the most promise for delivering beneficial outcomes, such as increased student understanding and achievement, there appears to be a discrepancy among teachers between using the Internet with students and doing so in an active, engaging manner. Tapscott (1998) described this distinction as the difference between “broadcast learning” and “interactive learning.” He described this spectrum in his book, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation<\/em> (see Table 1).<\/p>\n
Table 1<\/strong> \nThe Shift From Broadcast Learning to Interactive Learning (Tapscott, 1998) <\/em><\/p>\n
Teacher as facilitator<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
A study conducted by N2H2, a Seattle-based maker of filtering software used in nearly 2,000 schools to track Web sites, found that 100 Web sites represented half of the traffic created by 350,000 students across 43 major cities (Thomas, 2000). The content of these Web sites included primarily commercial, entertainment, and search-related elements\u2014hardly what would be considered active uses of the Web.<\/p>\n
According to Schofield and Davidson (2002):<\/p>\n
The questions of how Internet use is likely to influence classroom structure and functioning and how it will ultimately affect students and teachers are still largely to be answered. Because of the substantial cost of providing Internet access in classrooms, understanding its impact on classrooms, educators, and students seems essential. (p. 4)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The current study confirms that, although Internet access is an important element when it comes to using the Web in the classroom, simply providing the infrastructure is not enough to guarantee improvement in the overall quality of teaching. Through the careful examination of the Web sites that a group of teachers reported as excellent, we draw conclusions regarding what their responses indicate about teaching with technology in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
Methods<\/p>\n
According to Glesne (1999), “qualitative researchers tend to select each of their cases purposefully<\/em>” (p. 29). One of the strategies of purposeful selection of informants is homogenous sampling, in which a group of similar cases are examined in order to describe a particular subgroup in depth (Patton, 1990). Utilizing this strategy, we selected as participants for this study 104 K-12 teachers within a school district located in a southwestern U.S. metropolitan city. These teachers were enrolled in an entry-level, technology-related graduate course, Internet for Educators, in four different sections over the course of three semesters.<\/em> The course focuses on the potential of Internet-basd technologies to influence K-adult education, with students actively exploring\u00a0(a) a wide variety of online informational, curricular, and interpersonal resources, (b) ways to successfully integrate online resources in teaching and learning,\u00a0and (c) current issues, policies, and trends pertaining to global electronic networking.<\/p>\n
Data for this study took the form of teachers’ required online discussion board responses in four separate sessions of the course over three semesters. The course instructor, working in collaboration with the primary researcher, asked the teachers to\u00a0post an Internet site and description on the discussion board within a Web-based course delivery tool as follows:<\/p>\n
Weekly, one student will post an educational Web site of the Week (WOW). This posting will include a URL and a brief description. All other students are encouraged to comment on this site. During our face-to-face meeting, I described the WOW posting as, “An important site you feel that your colleagues need to know about.” The WOW is an opportunity to share resources such that at the end of the course you will have a list of outstanding sites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The primary researcher compiled these data and assigned pseudonyms to each of the teachers to protect their identity. During the preliminary analysis of the data, two initial types of sites emerged: (a) Web sites geared toward use with students, and (b) sites intended for teachers’ own professional purposes. Preliminary analysis revealed more categories of teacher-oriented Web sites, which then became a major focus of the study.<\/p>\n
It became evident that in order to analyze the similarities and differences among a large quantity (127) of Web sites identified by the subjects as excellent, a coding strategy would need to be developed to organize the data. A framework developed as a result of this analysis. According to Glesne (1999), “Coding is a progressive process of sorting and defining and defining and sorting those scraps of collected data….By putting like-minded pieces together into data clumps, you create an organizational framework” (p. 135). After looking at randomized groups of Web sites and comparing 10 to 20 at a time, certain patterns began to emerge. This resulted in what Spradley (1980) called a taxonomy, which shows the relationships between defined terms.<\/p>\n
After dividing the sites between those for teacher and those for student use, commonalities became evident. Once these categories were determined and characteristics of each began to emerge, a template analysis strategy adapted from Crabtree and Miller (1992) was used to code and interpret the data. This technique, as mentioned in Marshall and Rossman (1999), emphasizes developing a set of codes to apply to the gathered data where these codes can be revised as the analysis progresses. One of the advantages of using this particular strategy is that the template was more specific, allowing researchers to more efficiently identify where in the taxonomy the remaining sites fell.<\/p>\n
When necessary, the template was adjusted until it encompassed all of the identified sites. The researchers examined the Web sites separately and met several times in order to collaborate on the emerging criteria, as well as to negotiate differing responses regarding the specific elements of each site. Once the characteristics were decided, a template was developed, and the Web sites were classified in a dichotomous fashion as either demonstrating each characteristic or not.<\/p>\n
Results<\/p>\n
Of the 127 Web sites reported by 104 teachers as being “excellent” or “exemplary” uses of the Internet in education, 108 were geared more for teachers, 19 were specifically for student use, and 35 overlapped between teacher and student. Based upon their characteristics, teacher-oriented sites were categorized into one or more of the following areas: teaching content reference, general\/supplemental reference, lesson planning, classroom management\/parent communication, professional development, and professional learning community (Table 2).<\/p>\n
Table 2<\/strong> \nTeacher Web Site Classification<\/em><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\n
\n
Characteristic<\/strong><\/td>\n
Descriptive Question<\/strong><\/td>\n
Focus<\/strong><\/td>\n
Example<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
Teaching Content Reference<\/td>\n
Is the site used for teacher’s own knowledge in order to gain background information about a particular topic?<\/td>\n
Emphasis is on gaining background content information in preparation to teach a particular lesson.<\/td>\n
![](\"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/v7i2general1_1.gif\")
Figure 1<\/strong>. Percentage of classified teacher Web sites.<\/em><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/v7i2general1_2.gif\")
Figure 2<\/strong>. Percentage of classified student Web sites.<\/em><\/p>\n