CHAPTER 11

ROLES OF THE INTERNET AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB IN EDUCATION

Chapter 11 deals with the different roles Internet play in Education. The Internet has changed education significantly especially
on how the teachers, students and parents communicate with each other, how to find good resources to be used in the classroom and
how to use the Internet to create and develop learning materials and activities. In this chapter, the role of the Internet as a tool for
communication, as a tool for inquiry and as a tool for construction will be discussed.

Intended Learning Outcome

At the end of this chapter, you are expected to:
 Establish the role of Internet and the World Wide Web in Education

TOOLS FOR COMMUNICATION

The internet has introduced a lot of developments especially on how teachers and students communicate and connect with each
other. Almost all the students and their teachers as well have at least a smart phone to be able to give announcements, reminders, ask
questions or simply to send a message. Aside from this, communication using the internet is enhanced between students because they
can share information as well as discuss particular topic or subject.
Since there are many tools that we can use to communicate, we need to take into consideration the proper behavior when
communicating in the internet. This will help both personally and professionally to gain respect and courtesy. In the online
environment, we use the term netiquette to imply the generally accepted code of behavior in using the internet.

Netiquette for Teachers

 Be honest and polite when online.
 Think carefully about what you write.
 Show respect for other people’s personalities, lifestyle, countries and race.
 Be careful with humor and sarcasm.
 Use proper capitalization and correct grammar and spelling when sending messages.
 Don’t type in all CAPS.
 Limit the use of emoticons. Though it is acceptable to use these shortcuts to convey emotions and commonly used phrases when
communicating over the Internet, it is best to encourage the students to covey their thoughts in writing.
 Only forward someone else’s e-mail when permission is sought from the original sender.
 If you need to keep a copy of an e-mail then cc (carbon copy) or bcc (blind carbon copy) it to your own e-mail address.
 Make your mesages brief and concise.
 Give your message a meaningful subject heading that reflects the content of the message.
 Include a signature line at the end of your message (especially in e-mails) that contains your title, address, and phone number so
people have other ways to contact you if it becomes necessary.
 Install good virus protection software and scan attachments before opening them.
 Boring responses like “yes”, “I agree”, “O.K.” are discouraged because they add up to the traffic and the people in the mailing
list are busy people who cannot afford to waste their time over such no-substance replies. However, a “thank you” is welcome.
 If your message concerns only a specific person and if you think the whole group cannot benefit from it, please send it to the
intended person only.
 Avoid chain mails.
 Give credit where it’s due. Though most of the work that we find in the Internet is free, if we use it, then we need to give credit to
the writer.
 Stay on topic. Don’t post irrelevant links, comments, thoughts or pictures especially in a forum.
 Before asking a question, check the FAQs or search the Internet if the information or the answer is explicitly written or is easy to
find.
 Check the most recent comments before you reply to an older comment.
 Read the whole article or message before giving comments. Do not rely on the title alone.
In the following paragraphs, we are going to identify the different tools and methods of exchanging information and
communicating with others. The tools can be used anytime as long as it is well suited to the activities of the lesson.
Communication can either be asynchronous and synchronous communication. Asynchronous communication is a type of
communication where the person communicates anywhere and anytime. The person should not be online to receive the message.
Synchronous communication is a type of communication where the people communicate in “real time”.

Examples of Asynchronous Communication are the

following: Examples of Synchronous communication are the
 E-mail following:
 Discussion boards/forums  Chat
 Blogs  Instant Messaging
 Wikis  Text Messaging
 Mailing Lists  Videoconferencing
 Tweets

Let’s look into the details of the different communication tools

E-mail
It is the oldest and most common communication tool that is easy to use and very reliable. Through email, messages are typed,
sent, stored, and retrieved. Messages can be sent to multiple addresses and can be forwarded to other recipients.
Application of E-mail in Education
 Allows communication among students, teachers and parents.
 Teachers can provide feedback to the students.
 School documents like assignments can be sent through email.
Discussion Board/Forum
Discussion board/forum creates social interaction for students and allows all students to have a ‘voice’. You can set up forums for
questions about a concept, thoughts on today’s lecture, or peer help/review.
 Application of Discussion Board/Forum in Education
 Allows students to voice out their opinion.
 Students can participate in the discussion board/forum.
 Students who cannot recite in a face-to-face discussion can use this to join the discussion.
Rules in Starting a Discussion Board/Forum
 Determine the topic of discussion.
 Teachers post a topic or thread of discussions.
 Encourage students also to respond to the discussion as well as to other student’s postings.
 Summarize keypoints that need to be made.
 Do not be a lurker. (A lurker is a visitor to a forum/discussion who only reads other people’s posts, but never posts his or her own
comments, thus remaining anonymous.)
 Never engage in a heated exchange of discussions or a flame war. Respect others’ ideas and opinions. In case you disagree,
maintain respect.
Blog
Blog or a “web log” is an online journal that is publicly accessible.
Application of Blog in Education
 Blogs can be a source of information. It can be a knowledge sharing website that contains different topics or content areas.
 It can serve as a project site where students can post their opinions, make feedbacks, and can serve as an online portfolio.
Wikis
It is a web-based communication tool that allows the teacher and students to work together, share resources (lessons/notes), and
collaborate.
Application of Wikis in Education
 Students and teachers can write together or co-create knowledge and information.
 Provide students the opportunity to decide whether the information they are getting is relevant and accurate.
Rules in Starting a Wiki
 Do not post personal information or the information of someone else.
 Write information that are reliable and from credible sources.
 Do not delete the work of others deliberately.
Mailing List or Listserv
These are programs that store and maintain mailing lists. It is a virtual email group of people gathered together through
subscribing to one email address.
Application of Mailing List in Education
 Send an email message to everyone on the list to share common interests or who belong to an organization.
Tweets
Tweets are text-based posts that can be up to 140 characters that are posted within a person’s profile page. Twitter uses a hashtag,
which means a top with the # symbol such as “#edtech”. These topics are used for spreading, organizing, and searching for
information on twitter.
Application of Tweets in Education
 With the use of hashtags, students and teachers can collaborate among and between each other and also do networking with
students around the world with ease.
 Teachers can create classroom hashtags to be used for discussing specific topics.
 Students can also search hashtags for research.
Virtual Meetings/Webinar
A webinar, short for web-based seminar, is a presentation, lecture, demonstration, workshop or seminar that is done over the Web.
In this kind of virtual meetings, you can show presentation slides, share audio and other applications, give, receive, and discuss
information in real time. You can record the whole webinar so that it can still be played all over again.
To start using a webinar, you need to go to a certain website that offers a facility for web seminar. Some of these webinar
websites are:
 Anymeeting (www.anymeeting.com)
 GotoMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com)
 Skype (www.skype.com) or you may use your app on your mobile devices
 Google Hangouts (https://hangouts.google.com)
 Blackboard Collaborate
Application of Webinar in Education
 Flexibility. Students may join the seminar anywhere or may access the material anywhere and anytime.
 Invite Resource Person. Resourse persons may be invited to give a lecture without the need to travel.
 Course Materials. Recorded webinars could be uploaded as supplemental teaching and course materials to be accessed by
students’ own time and pace.
 Cost-effective. Teachers and students can maximize the time and space for learning.
 Interactivity. Teachers are more approachable online and students are more comfortable communicating with teachers through
chats and newsgroup discussions as opposed to face-to-face interactions.
 Targets Children with Special Needs. It can be custom made to target specific students who have specific needs.
Creating a Webpage
Many schools and teachers themselves have their webpage so that other people will know more about the school or you in
particular. There are many websites that offer webpage creation.
Publishing on the Web
When students publish their work (make it online), they can share with other people the information, projects, works that they
have created online.
Chat
Chat is widely used communication tool. It is easy to use by both the teachers and the students.
Application of Chat in Education
 You can provide immediate feedback to one or more students at a time.
Chatiquette
There is always a need to put guidelines in order to achieve the purpose of chatting.
 Always introduce yourself.
 Be considerate of differing opinions.
 Don’t type in ALL CAPITALS.
 Type the person’s name before you answer, example: Louise, I agree with your comment but....
 If you have to leave the chat for a short time, tell others that you will be away or set your chat session to ‘away’.
 Don’t use sarcasm in your messages. It may be misinterpreted.. Remember that people cannot see your facial expressions in an
online environment.
 Make a positive contribution to the chat.
 Don’t reply to personal requests on the main chat screen.
 Say goodbye.
Instant Messaging
Instant Messaging or IM is a service that allows users to use private chatrooms in which members alert each other when they
wish to chat. With IM, a user maintains a list of people with whom she wants to communicate. With IM, a user can send files, video,
images, and links to websites.
Text Messaging
Text messaging allows for instantaneous communication between people that is done with the use of cellphones.
Video Conference
This means conducting a conference between two or more participants st different sites by using computer networks to transmit
audio and video data. Video conference allow its participants to see each other online live using a web-camera and communicate to
each other through it and through chat messages.
Social Networking
Social networking allows users to communicate virtually by keeping in touch with each other, updating and sharing about life,
interests, and creating events to be shared with others. This is one of the most common and useful tools nowadays among students
because they can share files and exchange information and communicate through chatting.
Applications of Social Networking in Education
 Increase a sense of belonging
 Build bonds between classmates
 Increase bond between students and instructors
TOOLS FOR INQUIRY
This is another role of Internet which refers to the method of solving information problems. It is important that students and
teachers know how to efficiently solve inquiry using the different ways in locating and finding information. This will give better
results and accurate information.
There are two general techniques in locating information.
1. Browsing is based on a hierarchical directory of heading and subheadings. To locate information, select from these headings until
you get to a listing of links appropriate to your interests.
2. Searching involves the use of an online database. A user submits a query and then examines web sites that match the terms
provided in the query.
When doing a search, we use different search services such as a search engine, an index search engine and meta-index.
a. Search Engines
Search engines are programs that look for documents in the World Wide Web using specified keywords and returns a
list of the documents where the keywords were found. Search engines use crawlers or robots whose main work is to collect
information from different websites. If it finds the websites, its reads contents and follows the hyperlinks from different
websites again. Examples of these are Google, Bing, Excite, Ask Jeeves and a lot more.
b. Index Search Engines
An index search engine relies on a computer-generated index of the content of web sites. A computer program explores
the web and generates a database users can search. Example: HOtbot
c. Meta-index or Metacrawler
A meta-index or metacrawler accesses and returns the results from several search engines. Meta-index offers a single
source to search the web, images, audio, video, news from Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and many more search engine. Examples
are Dogpile, Vroosh and Infospace.
Techniques in Searching
Search engines show users the different websites that the users will find useful based from the given keywords. To improve
search productivity, there are different searching techniques that you can use:
1. Use phrase search. Using quotation marks around a phrase will return only those exact words in that order.
“horse riding”
“three blind mice”
2. Use negative search. Using negative search means that you need to exclude other words commonly associated with that search
word.
Examples: Red Horse - beer
Apple - MAC
3. Order of Search. Changing the order of words in the search box will return different results.
Examples: Baked ziti recipe
Recipe baked ziti
4. Use OR. It broadens the search to allow any search item.
Example: Educational Technology OR Technology in Education
5. Use AND or +. It narrows the search to require all search terms.
Example: Forum AND Discussion Board
6. Use DOMAIN names. Use this to refine your search so that the entries listed only come from the specified domain name.
Example: Mythology site:edu

7. Use definitions.
Example: Define: Catholicism
8. Use file types. Use this to refine your search so that the entries listed will display only the file types specified.
Example: netiquettes filetype:doc
9. Use nouns as query keywords. Never use articles (“a”, “the”), pronouns (“he”, “it”), conjuctions (“and”, “or”) or prepositions (“to”,
“from”) in your queries.
 Example: Solar System
10. Use 6 to 8 keywords per query.
11. Spell carefully and consider alternate spellings.
12. Use good keywords
Examples: abc product reviews, abc revies, abc ratings, abc user views, abc user, reviews, abc sucks, abc rocks
13. Use truncations or wildcards. Truncation is the process of using an asterisk mark (*) while searching. The purpose of truncation is
to broaden the search results especially when you are not sure of the exact keyword to search. Through truncations at the root of the
word, the search tool searches all word variations after the asterisk.
Example: Comp*
Wildcards can also be used in searching for information. It is used to represent one character or letter in a word. Wildcards are
especially useful when the user is not sure of the correct spelling of a word.
Example: comp???? (the result can be Computer, Computes or other words that has 4 letters after COMP)
14. Use Search Options. Use this to specifically find the kind of content you are looking for, whether these are images, videos, news,
blogs, updates, books and forums; and even sort them further by freshness.
15. Use tilde operator (~). Use this in front of a word to return results that include synonyms.
TOOLS FOR CONSTRUCTION
It refers to the Internet as a vehicle for presenting products created by students at the same time a way create lessons and
activities for the students.
Let us look into some of the tools that can be used for construction.
Webquests
Webquests are web-based activities designed to help teachers integrate the Internet into the curriculum. It follows steps with the
appropriate “live links” that are integral part of the Webquests. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State
University in February 1995 with early input from SDSU/Pacific Bell Fellow Tom March, the Educational Technology staff at San
Diego Unified School District. The model spread around the world because teachers find it very useful as students engage in work
through the use of the resources of the Internet.
An effective WebQuest...
 Engages the student’s higher-order thinking skills (decision making and critical thinking)
 Must have interesting and doable tasks
 Utilizes resources on the Internet
 Usually involves collaboration through group work
Creating a Webquest
Creating a WebQuest can be very simple. As long as you can create a document with hyperlinks, you can create a WebQuest. So,
Webquest can be created in Word, Powerpoint, and even in Excel. However, to officially call it as a Webquest, the basic parts and
attributes of it should be present. There are also many online authoring websites that are used to create Webquest, these are Zunal.com,
Filamentality.com, and zWebquest.
Basic parts of a Webbquest
There are five basic parts of a Webquest.
1. Introduction - the introduction provides the background of the Webquest.It catches the reader’s attention to continue on with the
webguest.
2. Task - the task indicates what the students are required to do.
3. Process - the process gives detail of the instructions on what the students are going to do. It includes the links to the different
resources in the web.
4. Evaluation - the evaluation presents the rubrics on how the students will be graded.
5. Conclusion - the conclusion summarizes the entire lesson. It gives room for reflections and for thoughts about the topic.
Web Page Creation
Teachers can create their webpages and websites for their class. Its advantages are:
1. Great way to communicate with your students
2. Keeps the students informed of any updates
3. Keeps parents in the loop
The following websites will help teachers create their own websites.
 Educatorpages.com  Weebly.com  Wordpress.com  Wix.com
A typical website for a class includes the following components:
1. Course Description - this includes the learning objectives, learning goals including the class schedule and class calendar.
2. Class Rules and Regulations - this includes all the things that the teacher requires for the class including the guidelines on how the
class will go about.
3. Announcements/Events - this is where you can communicate anything.
4. Links related to the subject matter. (Activities, Games, Tutorial, Related Readings)
5. Materials - this could be any materials that is related to the subject matter.
6. Contact Information - this can include ways on how the students or parents can contact the teacher.
7. Biography/Teacher’s Link - this link will give all the information about the teacher. It includes here the academic and professional
background, interests, accomplishments, etc.
8. Information for Parents - this part gives the needed information for the parents.
Online Activities/Games
Online Activities is a way of delivering fun and interesting activities to the students.
Benefits of Online Activities/Games
1. Grabs students attention. It is a good way to focus their attention and actively immerse in it.
2. Students learn different skills. Through online activities and games, students develop critical thinking skills, creativity, teamwork,
and good sportsmanship.
3. Develops new concepts. Students may be able to grasp new concept or idea, experiment with it, or take a different perspective on
the material.
4. Deepens learning. Students are provided with opportunities to apply concepts and practice them to achieve the needed skills.
Some websites that offer online activities and games are:
 https://getKahoot.com  Quizstar.4teachers.org  Quia.com  www.zondle.com