SOUTH AMERICA

Students Visit Computerland To See World
Doing Your Homework: The Library vs. The Internet

Note:  the following article was published Sunday, January 19, 1997 in the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post.  It refers to our Treasure Hunt.  In each unit, students are asked a series of questions.  They work in groups of four to find the answers using any of  the classroom resources.  Our resources include eight computers with high speed access to the Internet, two classroom sets of encyclopedias, maps, globes, our textbooks and a class set of texts donated by a Simon and Schuelster after producing a promotional video using our students.

I dropped in on Mike Dowling's sixth-grade geography class while he was giving an open universe quiz.

An open universe quiz - that's like an open book quiz except that you can roam the universe for answers as long as you don't leave the room. By accessing the Internet, that's easy as pi at Roosevelt Middle School for Math, Science and Technology in West Palm Beach.

Sample questions: Who is the president of Iran? Who was the last sultan in the Ottoman Empire? Who replaced Anwar Sadat after his assassination in 1981? What was the last shah of Iran's real name? Golda Meir lived in what American city before emigrating to Israel?

When Dowling said "Begin," students scrambled to the eight classroom computers where some - but not all - of the answers were to be found. The students also delved into maps and books.

Know-how key to success

"Aren't these pretty tough questions for sixth-graders?" I asked Dowling.

"Not when you know how to find the answers," Dowling, 35, beamed genially. They already know a lot about the Middle East, but just as important, they have learned how to find out what they don't know."

I watched the students work, and even did what Dowling called "shoulder surfing," peeking around heads at the computer monitors to watch the students pull information out of the on-line Encyclopedia Brittanica.

I saw students consulting, writing, poring over books, pulling information from the Internet and hopping up in the air with the exhilaration of discovery.

"Cooperative learning," Dowling said. "We are finding that students learn better from one another than from the teacher. The best assignments pull kids together to solve a problem."'

Not `all flash and sizzle'

A student, his brow furrowed, came up to Dowling with a word he had copied from a news story.

"That's the Knesset, the Israeli parliament," the teacher said.

Turning back to me, he said: "As a technical magnet school, we have the equipment, but it's not all flash and sizzle. We teach the students to write and express themselves in essays."

He showed me a homework sheet requiring analytical answers on Islamic fundamentalism, Lebanese history, Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat and the conflict between the Mullahs and the Shah of Iran.

"I can turn out these homework study sheets on the computer in minutes. Remember when teachers had to use the mimeograph machine?"

Clearly with technology, the balance of power has tipped in favor of the teachers, and yet the students seem to be winning.  

Copyright © Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., 1997

Ron Wiggins, Students Visit Computerland To See World., 01-19-1997, pp 1D.

Doing Your Homework: The Library vs. The Internet

     The Internet is the world's library and university.

     So it should be a great research tool for any kid who passed typing class, and better than that big building down the street with all those musty books.

     Right?

     Not so fast.

     The Net may be a virtual global library, but it's also a coffeehouse of chaos and kibitzing computer junkies. There are chat rooms, bulletin boards and Web sites on almost any subject, and most have nothing to do with serious research.

     The Web can be a wonderful place for distraction, and that's just one hazard of using it as a source for your term paper. It is a student' s dream and his nightmare.

     "I sometimes find the Internet obstructive," said Gerald Posner, a high-school science teacher at Benjamin School in North Palm Beach. "You have to get through their setup, whoever they are."

     The World Wide Web is a network of highly graphical computer "pages" containing hypertext - underlined words and pictures that, in turn, take you to other sites. From those sites, you can go to still more, and more.

     Get the picture?

     Along the way, temptation is at every turn. You could easily find something more interesting - at least to you - than, say, the locomotion of mammals, the great battles of the Civil War or the varying interpretations of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

     Associate Dean Robert Shockley of the Florida Atlantic University College of Education sees the Internet as a mixed bag. It has incredible potential for learning. But it also has Playboy magazine.

     "There's all kinds of stuff on it and part of the job is filtering through the crap," he said. "But that's part of research, and you do that at the library too."

     The Internet won't replace the library entirely, Shockley said, even though it has one huge advantage - timeliness. Bound encyclopedias are obsolete the day they are placed on shelves. Those on line are updated daily.

     "Part of the problem with existing textbooks is, you can walk into any school and pick up a book and it's outdated," Shockley said. " On the Internet, everything is current."

     The Internet also has a capability the traditional library doesn't have - electronic mail. With e-mail, children can converse with kids across the world for a pittance, compared to the use of phones. It can link schools with business and industry.

     Mike Dowling, a geography teacher at Roosevelt Middle School, the math and science magnet school, especially worries about Internet distractions that are pornographic or vulgar.

     He is introducing middle-school kids to the Internet. The students, their parents and the teachers at Roosevelt who use the Internet must all sign agreements to use it responsibly.

     "This is a very scary technology, and people are afraid to use it until someone blazes the trail," he said.

     Dowling is using a branch of the Yahoo search engine called Yahooligans. It is aimed at children, and Yahoo tries to keep out objectionable material.

     He lets students try out the Net under his supervision, giving them exercises to find facts that they could look up in an almanac. Most middle-school students aren't ready to do extensive searches on the Net, he said.

     Dowling won't allow unsupervised searches. "That's an invitation to trouble. You just can't let them roam around," he said.

     Lee Keller, Roosevelt's technology coordinator, has a two-second rule. If the student finds his way to an objectionable site by accident, he must click on the school's Web site within two seconds or he gets reprimanded.

     "One of things you teach is appropriateness," he said.

     Keller still advocates the library as the best tool for term papers until the Internet becomes more kid-friendly.

     "It's like The New York Times," he said. That paper "has a Web site, but what kid wants to do research on The New York Times?"

     Many Web sites are too complicated. At Roosevelt, students can access the Encyclopedia Britannica on line, which Dowling thinks is a good source for middle-school kids, whose term papers are usually about two pages long.

     "I went to the Smithsonian's Web site the other night. There wasn' t anything there I could use. National Geographic? It's nice but it' s not geared to this age group," he says.

     Several companies - such as Lycos, Alta Vista, InfoSeek - offer effective search engines, and each search engine can connect to millions of Web pages. On-line services such as America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy also have their own search engines.

     All of them do the same thing - cruise the Net with a purpose. With thousands of sites to choose from, search engines sort through them based on key words you type into a box. What emerges is a list of Internet locations that might have what you're looking for, but very often don't.

     Sometimes the search can drag, either because your modem transmits data too slowly, the Internet is swamped with users or your search is turning up dozens of sites.

     "The Internet's a beautiful thing," Posner said. "You can go in and get a map of Finland, a detailed map of the coast, in minutes. But you may wait a long time for an answer to pop up on your screen."

     How successful you are also may depend on how narrowly you define your search. If one word or group of words doesn't work, try something else. If "locomotion" doesn't work, try "movement," for example.

     "To get what you're looking for on ocean currents might be easy but the effect of ocean currents on sponges in shallow water isn't," Posner said.

     Posner says the Internet is a tool, but only a tool that can supplement the library.

     He still thinks the best search can be accomplished by finding the Dewey decimal number for a book on a particular topic and spending time in the library.

     "Video screens have a greater appeal for students than a book page. They work better at the (computer). They play video games," Posner said. "But school kids should be inundated with books. You have to read well and read comfortably to learn, and you do that with books."

     Staff Writer Stephen Pounds writes about technology for The Post. His      electronic-mail address is pounds@pbpost.com.
 
Copyright © Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., 1996  Stephen Pounds, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer, Doing Your Homework: The Library VS. The Internet., 08-18-1996, pp 1D.