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 All information current as of 13:57:42 Pacific Time, Monday, 21 February 2005.

Learning Webs: Curriculum Journeys on the Internet

   by Michele Keating / Mary W. Piazza / Jon W. Wiles / Mary Wood-Piazza

  Paperback:
    Prentice Hall
    31 August, 2001

   US$22.00 

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Editorial description(s):

From the Back Cover
This book was written to help instructors build classroom lessons with the use of the Internet. By following easy-to-understand steps, users will soon be on their way to developing their own curriculum journeys on the Internet. The book provides an introduction to computer use, explores Internet resources, and shows how these resources can be "fit" to the existing school curriculum. Written "by teachers for teachers," users will appreciate the support and guidance evident in each chapter. For pre-service and practicing teachers, and other educators.

About the Author


The authors are practicing educators in northeast Florida.



Michele Keating is a fifth grade teacher at R. B. Hunt Elementary School in St. Augustine, Florida. She has won numerous awards for teaching in math, science, and special education and serves as the technical specialist in her school. Michele is a member of the prestigious Florida League of Teachers.



Jon Wiles is a professor of education at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. The author of twelve major texts in the area of teaching and educational leadership, Jon is currently focused on Internet-assisted curriculum.



Mary Wood Piazza is an English teacher at Palatka High School in Palatka, Florida and is the designer of the LearningWebs Internet site ().



The authors are co-directors of a nonprofit Florida corporation, LearningWebs, Inc., dedicated to assisting teachers entering the new technological age in schools.



Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface



Technology is rapidly changing our schools. New interactive learning technologies, particularly the Internet, are altering the 3500-year relationship between teachers and students. These technologies are providing teachers and students with vast and seemingly endless access to learning resources. At the same time, the technologies are a source of novel mediums that allow teachers and students to explore these learning resources together.



Because of these interactive technologies, a new kind of teacher is emerging. The task of teaching is shifting from one of delivering content to students to a new role of providing a context for learning and assisting students in constructing meaning in learning. Toddy's new interactive technologies are reshaping how and why we learn, and creating a curriculum with rough and porous edges. It is evident that teachers must adjust to these changes.



LearningWebs: Curriculum Journeys on the Internet invites all classroom teachers to join in this momentous evolution by becoming knowledgeable about the new technologies. Unfortunately, it has been estimated that fewer than one-half of all classroom teachers in America currently actively use interactive technologies with their students. Our book is for every teacher interested in entering this new era, but especially for the majority of classroom teachers who feel technologically inadequate or who lack confidence in their ability to use the new technologies to modify the present curriculum.



LearningWebs: Curriculum Journeys on the Internet was written by real teachers for other practicing teachers. It provides a concise and coherent introduction to the power of the Internet to enhance and improve classroom teaching and student learning. This book will show you in easy-to-learn steps how to develop Internet-assisted lessons in your classroom in order to improve student learning.



Thirty years ago, an Austrian named Ivan Illich wrote an important book, Deschooling Society (1970). In his book, Illich distinguished between learning that is controlled and constrictive and learning that is natural and expansive. He referred to these two forms of learning as "funnels" and "webs." This was one of the earliest uses of the term web, which today is part of everyone's vocabulary (as in World Wide Web, or www).



Illich advocated abandoning the restrictive "funnels" of organized schooling, including highly prescriptive curricula, testing, and preoccupation with credentialing. He sought to develop a new and rich learning environment "in which educational webs heighten the opportunity for each person to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring."



Illich envisioned "an educational network or web for the autonomous assembly of resources under the control of each learner." He called for an educational system with three purposes: "to provide for all who want access to available resources; to empower those who want to share what they know with those who want to learn from them; and to present an issue with an opportunity to make the (learning) challenge known." He concluded that such learning webs "could spread equal opportunity for learning."



Thirty years have passed, and through the Internet, Illich's ideas about learning webs and the freedom to learn have become feasible. In the past ten years, instant access to persons or resources anywhere on earth has become an operational reality People can learn, people can teach, people can share, and people can challenge ideas on the World Wide Web or Internet.



The world Internet community is growing exponentially, and 11 million of these regular users are children under age 15. Some children's learning occurs in schools, but much of it does not. Things are changing rapidly. Schools are not the only educational locations in 21st-century America.



The Internet, once the monopoly of the English-speaking world, is becoming global. At the writing of this book, the number of non-English-speaking users is exceeding the number who speak English. This linguistic and cultural trend will continue, and the nature of Internet learning will change daily for the foreseeable future.



Critical to the authors' interest in interactive and distributive learning technologies in schools is the impact these forces are having on curriculum. If a curriculum is a plan or design for learning, what effect will endless and seemingly random Internet sites have on such a plan? How will teachers in the classroom plan, direct, and evaluate learning when they no longer control resource acquisition and distribution? These are pressing questions that all teachers, schools, and districts must address.



As teachers ourselves, we see a bright side to this possible teaching-learning crisis in education. For years, classroom teachers have been subjected to increasing control of what they can and cannot do as the directors of learning. Publishing companies, legislators, and test makers have eroded the teacher's autonomy to make instructional decisions. In some cases today, teaching is a mechanical act. In the words of Illich, a massive "learning funnel" has been created in many of today's schools.



The new interactive technologies, however, provide an opportunity for novel roles and leadership responsibilities for teachers. As increasing numbers of computers with Internet connections reach the classrooms, schools and districts will increasingly depend on classroom teachers to serve as leaders in instructional decision making. Classroom teachers will define and guide learning in the new technological age. And, we believe, such instructional leadership and decision making will be in a highly professional and more artistic capacity, unlike the somewhat mechanical function now experienced by many classroom teachers.



LearningWebs: Curriculum Journeys on the Internet can serve as a possible point of entry for the majority of teachers who are still tentative about their role in using the Internet in the classroom. This text is intended to lead the reader through a basic understanding of computer use in schools, and show the reader some different ways that the Internet can "shape" the school curriculum.



After introducing the reader to the Internet, we identify eight of the most common curriculum designs found in schools and provide sample Internet lessons for each design. Regardless of what your school is doing with curriculum, you can use the Internet to enrich learning for your students.



Finally, we show you how to create a "curriculum journey" for your own classroom. Resource E focuses on 240 common school topics, K-12, and provides 1,200 safe sites that the authors have screened for your use. This screening is especially important today, given the lack of quality control agents on the Internet and the growing problem of pornography hidden behind innocuous-sounding titles.



Since ours is a text for the new technology, we direct you to the Companion Website for this book; see .



Using all of these tools, we set you free as one of the growing membership of teachers with the technical skills to be successful in the 21st-century classroom.

-- The Authors



Book Description
This book was written to help instructors build classroom lessons with the use of the Internet. By following easy-to-understand steps, users will soon be on their way to developing their own curriculum journeys on the Internet. The book provides an introduction to computer use, explores Internet resources, and shows how these resources can be "fit" to the existing school curriculum. Written "by teachers for teachers," users will appreciate the support and guidance evident in each chapter. For pre-service and practicing teachers, and other educators.




Reader review(s):

Out front, July 28, 2003
This little book is way out front in describing the future
of Internet-assisted lessons. We used it in our district with
great results. A must-have book for schools.

Packed with wonderful educational websites...., January 5, 2003
Although I had solely purchased this book for a college course, I can honestly say it is one book I will not be reselling. The amount of helpful sites located within the book have saved me countless hours on the Internet. Any educator would benefit from the 70+ pages of websites it offers. For the money, this was a [deal]!
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