Among the similarities of the four instructional models, all teach students and instructors the basic navigational skills for accessing and publishing online. They also involve gathering content knowledge and research skills to access, organize and
present information. They all are interactive and exciting methods to improve and enhance our teaching. Internet project and Internet Inquiry are much more centered around developing collaborative skills... between students, between teachers and students and between classrooms, both locally and globally. Also, they serve to increase the feedback skills between information published. Not only can students learn and post information but they can also get valuable insight from their more audiences to increase knowledge and understanding. Finally, projects like Internet Inquiry allow a student to take greater control of the project than simply accessing an outline of an existing project. Being able to synthesize what information is already published with new and original ideas, a student can truly "own" a project and develop a better understanding of the material.
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I love your description of the Inquiry as more student-directed than the other three. It's definitely true that Inquiries make students do some higher-level thinking instead of just following directions by hopping from prescribed site to prescribed site.
ReplyDeleteI think that you really pinpointed the important aspects of the instructional models: the importance of navigation and having the skills to navigate. I grew up with the very basic version of AIM and when I used it, parents were not so concerned with the safety of it. Now, kids are blogging, using podcast, and even though there is a big focus on cyber bullying and how dangerous social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace are, the internet can really provide a lot of educational social networking help as well. Richardson talks about social learning and the importance of it, and I think that if we teach kids how to effectively navigate through the internet, educational social networking will help with that social learning that teachers are trying to use (Richardson, 2010, p. 7).
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