Article 12 - Internet and Social Studies

Zukas, Alex. (2000). Active Learning, World History, and the Internet: Creating Knowledge in the Classroom. The International Journal of Social Education vol. 15 (1).

Summary: This article deals with how best we can incorporate the Internat to not only help meet our curriculum standards and goals in world history classes, but also to help foster knowledge and intelligence in our students. Alex Zukas suggests that in order to be able to correctly use the Internet for projects and assignments, teachers must first be able to instruct students on how best to use the Internet. Knowing what online sources are “reliable and trustworthy,” for example, is a skill that not only will help students in school, but in life, and is something that must be taught in order for students to effectively use the Internet to complete assignments. Zukas gives a few examples of how best to go about teaching students these skills, such as WebQuests for younger students, and guided exercises for older students.
Zukas also explains that the Internet is not only a tool to use for projects, virtual fieldtrips, and as a resource finder, but also allows for students to publish their own work to the world. He expands on this, saying that the Internet is a powerful tool for global networking among students, and that websites such as ePALS Classroom Exchange can be used to foster ideas of global diversity and civic duty. Putting this into perspective, Zukas gives a sample assignment on China, and shows how it is easy for American students to leave out ideas of perspective, even when using a global tool such as the Internet, and that being able to directly communicate with other people in order to find such perspectives can be greatly beneficial. The author concludes, however, that instructional technologies do have biases, and may leave a few behind.

Response: Zukas gives very interesting examples of how the Internet can be used to increase student learning, and lays out a variety of websites for teachers to inspect and use in their classrooms/computer labs. The author not only cautions educators on how the Internet can be misused by both teachers and students, but also shows how to alleviate some of these cautions through education. He also brought up some negative ways that the Internet could impact education, especially with the ability to plagiarize so easily, though he does give ways in which educators can stop it (higher level thinking assignments that ask for students to draw conclusions, for example, may be more difficult to plagiarize). I appreciated the author’s final warning on Internet use, citing the biases that it has, and the fact that not everyone has access to it, though the warning does date the article, as the gap between those who have access to computers and internet use has slimmed since 2000 (see my article review 10, for example).