One of the biggest challenges teacher face integrating the use of Internet resources in their classroom is getting students to the selected resources and ensuring they use them in a meaningful way. You can post links on your class web page, but you soon end up with a long list of links, students clicking and scrolling rather than really digging deep, and little assurance that learning is actually occurring in all those young minds. Some teachers create worksheets that ask students to answer questions using the website content, but then you have papers to grade and they are often skimming for a quick answer rather than reading for meaning.
Years ago I taught teachers to create webquests, an online problem-based learning activity. These are wonderful and definitely worth the time it takes to develop and implement them. However, you also need a tool for those everyday kinds of experiences where they need to learn something and demonstrate their understanding.
Say for example, that you want students to
- watch a video you created (perhaps as part of your flipped classroom),
- then use an online interactive or manipulative to explore the concept,
- read an article about how it relates to the real world, and
- write a reflection explaining what they learned.
You can do this using sidevibe.com. Using this free website, you can create a pathway of online learning, check their understanding along the way, collect their thinking through discussions or private reflections, and respond to them in a timely manner. Watch the video on their website, create a free account and get started designing web-based learning experiences where students are in the driver’s seat, navigating their learning and sharing their thinking with each other and you!