The Internet

Summary:

We read the article "The Internet" and followed it up with a class discussion. The article starts off by talking about how available the web makes resources to help with problem solving. It points out that because of how easy it is to find answers on the web students are coming to an incorrect assumption that finding the answer is what matters, not knowing how you got to that solution. The author wants to make teachers and students aware of the benefits and harms of the vast amount of information that the web contains. The author goes on to make a distinction between a problem and an exercise: "one commonly made distinction is that a problem has no immediate solution and/ or obvious strategy, while an exercise is an application of a known algorithm, formula, or method.... But a new level of complexity arises when a problem is unexpectedly turned into an exercise by the use of the Internet" (page 403). The author describes a situation where he gave his class a problem to work on and while some of them worked through the problem like he had anticipated, a few of them looked it up on the Internet and found a formula to plug the numbers into. The majority of the students were doing a problem, but these few students were only doing an exercise. Although this is an example of poor use of the Internet, using the Internet to help solve problems is not always bad. The author gives another example about how students used Factoris to help simplify their problems. The author then describes a few things that teachers can do to counteract the use of the Internet in problem solving. He recommends searching for the problem online before giving it to the class, and if he is able to find the answer to the problem he can just edit the wording of the problem so that students can't type it in word for word and find the answer. Another solution is to use problems with symbols in them because symbols are hard to type into the computer. The author concludes by telling the readers that teachers need to be aware of the problems the Internet can cause, teachers need to teach students when and how to correctly use the Internet, and we must realize that the Internet can be a helpful tool.

Our class discussion began a lot like the article did by talking about the different web sites that are available to do math, like WolframAlpha, Yahoo questions, and Cramster.com. After disucssing the different uses of these websites our teacher pointed out that we learn as much as we take the oportunity to learn, meaning that if we choose to get our answers off the interent, then we are choosing not to learn. We then talked about how useful the Internet can be. Someone mentioned that the idea is not to get people to not use the Internet, but to help people to understand how it can best be used. Because we live in a world full of technology it is unrealistic to stay away from the Internet, so we need to know how to use it because we will need it in the future. If we learn how to use it to help us understand, as opposed to just getting answers, that will also help us in the future. After that our conversation turned to a comparison of the Internet to tutoring. Parents hire tutors to help students learn and understand, while students want tutors to help them get through the work and do well. The same is true for the Internet. Teachers see how it can be helpful in gaining understanding, and students see how it can get them the answers. There probably isn't a way to make the Internet only a useful tool, bu things would probably improve if teachers changed their focus from getting the work done, to the quality of the work being done. Then, like in the article, we listed ways that teachers can prevent the use of the Internet on homework: have students explain thinking, change names in problems, use symbols, search the problem first, give the class a policy about how they use the Internet, generalize problems to make it harder for students to find on the Internet.

The discussion ended by talking more about what we can do about the Internet, than what the article mentioned. We talked about setting up ground rules for the class about the Internet, keeping up to date on the latest technology, being aware of how students are using technology, and we decided that technology should not be used as a crutch.

Critique:

The part of the article that I don't completely agree with, and it was brought up in the class discussion as well, is that this article seems to imply that teachers don't know about the Internet and how students are using it. As I mentioned when critiquing the Virtual Manipulatives article, I don't like it when articles don't even mention the other side of the story. They act like theirs is the only side. In this case I would have liked for the author to mention something about how newer teachers are more up to date on the Internet, and on technology, but that doesn't mean that they can get complacent about learning about new technology.

In the class discussion we mentioned different ways to combat students' use of the Internet, but I don't think it's realistic to think we'll be able to do even one of those things every time at we have a problem. Someone did mention that in class, but what we didn't mention is that these techniques are good to use when you are giving the students a problem. But often the problems that students are doing will be from their textbook. We can't go through every text book and change things, so how do we prevent Internet use then?

Connections:

What does this mean for me as a teacher? Well, it means that I need to keep up to date on technology. That is probably the most important lesson that I can learn from this because I do not like to learn about new technology, but if I don't learn about it, my students will anyway and they will know how to circumvent what I am trying to teach.