Course Description:
Explores the potential of the Internet to support inquiry-based learning through collaborative activities, research, and authoring/publishing. Investigates goals and strategies of online learning. Examines learning theories and models of teaching/learning in relation to selected Internet activities for K-12 students.
Reflection
During the coursework of Learning with the Internet, I learned a great deal about internet applications that foster active collaborative learning, and I experienced, for myself, how effective collaborative work can for learning. We revisited the characteristics of learning, and applied those characteristics to a unique project that we created and applied to our classrooms.
One of my biggest “take-aways” from this course involves Google Applications. The discussion board for this class was buzzing about the different features that Google Apps offers the classroom teacher. Different teachers were sharing their classroom experiences and projects, and I was eager to take what I learned and use it with my students.
One of the projects for this course was completed with a team. We chose Google Applications as our topic, and each took a specific application, which we added to a Google Site. In the end, I ended up learning, first-hand, that the collaborative features of Google make collaborative work in the classroom an effective way to have students actively learning. I experienced this first hand, as my students worked together to create a Google Form on which international students responded. Using Google Docs in my classroom has made feedback for student work more efficient and, because the feedback can be immediate, more effective.