A Teachers Guide to Using the Internet in the Classroom

The internet or World-Wide-Web is an interactive and constantly changing collection of information and ideas. It has the potential to be the most important classroom resource since the blackboard, and it will have an equal influence on future teaching styles! It is not a regulated environment.

The internet is more easily understood by categorising internet activities into recognisable groups;

• Bulletin boards and Newsgroups
• Chat Forums
• Communication Networks
• Entertainment
• Information
• Live links to places and people
• Multimedia Activities
• Multiuser on-line gaming
• Music Exchanges
• Political Forums
• Shopping
• Simulations
• Telephone Systems

These groupings can be added to as new ones are developed. You may even know of ones that could be added now.

Finding what you are looking for on the internet is the first big problem for the beginner. There are no end of search engines to help you, but it is useful to have a few tricks up your sleeve when you need information fast.

1) Addresses recommended by a friend are always a good place to start.

If you have no friends, the Times Educational Supplement always has good web-links in its articles, as do many local and national newspapers.

2) Collections of addresses for classroom use.

www.studyweb.com has over 115,000 educational links. This site is usually quick to load.

www.bbc.co.uk/education has its excellent quality activities, linked to TV programmes. This site is fastest when accessed in the morning. It can get very heavy traffic at examination times in the summer.

www.eduweb.co.uk is the default page for RM Connect networks. Lots of classroom links, but a subscription to Living Library is required to get the best out of it.

3) As a last resort click here to try a fully fledged search!

Students need to be familiar with the Internet, if they are to use it effectively in the classroom.

Most Internet content is text-based, and static. Interacting with text-based information is the first challenge to all students. Storyboards and interactive worksheets are examples of new tools that we can use to do this.

Interactive storyboards are a way of using pictures from the Internet. Pictures are copied from Internet pages and then put into sequence in a Word 97 document. Students can write a short description or story about the pictures. This method can be used in any subject area where sequencing is important. The first thing to do, is to identify the images which will be used, from the Internet. Pictures from a digital camera can be used in a similar way.

To create an interactive storyboard, follow these simple instructions;

• Open Word 97.
• Prepare your instructions, telling pupils how to use the pictures.
• Open your Internet browser (probably Internet explorer or Netscape Navigator),
• Open the Internet site containing the pictures.
• Right-click the mouse when the pointer is over a picture.
• From the menu which appears, choose COPY.
• Left-click on the Word tab in the TASK BAR at the bottom of the screen.
• Right-click the mouse in the Word document.
• From the menu which appears, choose PASTE.
• The picture will appear on the Word page.
• Repeat this sequence until all the pictures are on the page.
• Select and drag the pictures to the positions you want them in.
• Save the file in a suitable folder.
• Your interactive storyboard can be shared across a network.
• The file can be given to someone on disk or attached to an e-mail.

Interactive worksheets contain links to websites on the Internet, or links to other programs on your computer or network. By posing questions on the worksheet, you can get other students to interact with the information. Interactive worksheets can be created using the web-enhanced features of Word 97 - earlier versions do not allow this.

To create an interactive worksheet, follow these simple instructions;

• Open your Internet browser (probably Internet explorer or Netscape Navigator),
• Open the Internet site that you want to link to your worksheet. Minimise the browser.
• Open Word 97.
• Prepare your worksheet using the wordprocessor.
• In the document, highlight the words that you want to link to the opened Internet site.
• Go to the INSERT menu on the TOOLBAR of Word 97.
• Select insert HYPERLINK.
• Click on the tab for your browser on the TASK BAR at the bottom of the screen.
• Highlight the address of the site in the address bar.
• Click the right-hand mouse button when the pointer is over the address.
• From the menu, choose copy.
• Click on the tab for Word 97 on the TASK BAR at the bottom of the screen.
• The copied address will automatically appear in the "Link to file or URL" box.
• Click on OK, and you will now have an active link to the Internet on your page.
• Double-clicking on this HYPERLINK will open the web-site that you selected.
• Save the file in a suitable folder.
• Your interactive worksheet can be shared across a network.
• The file can be given to someone on disk or attached to an e-mail.

An Increasing number of schools are developing intranet systems, in which work is shared over a network. This is an exciting resource for students to use. Intranets allow students to share their ideas with others. Web-pages allow these files to be linked together so that students and teachers can access them quickly. It is easy to edit intranet files in Word 97.

Before you can edit an intranet page, you must have been given the correct access profile by your network administrator. To edit an intranet page, follow these simple instructions;

• Open Word 97.
• From the FILE menu, choose OPEN.
• In the "Files of type" list select "HTML document".
• Find the intranet file that you want to edit.
• Double-click on the name of the file to open it.
• Edit the file in the way you want to.
• From the FILE menu, choose SAVE.
• Your edited web-page will now be on the intranet.

Creating intranet pages can be done by preparing them as Word documents, and then saving them as HTML files (look in the file menu) - the conversion process can take a while, so be patient.

Producing minibooks can be a highly effective way of editing and presenting information found on the Internet. This involves making decisions, choosing the content, and editing the content for a specific audience.

Using a pre-prepared template can save a considerable amount of time in class. Students can focus on the task of editing for their audience, instead of trying to work out how to set up page sizes and margins.

To create an eight page minibook in A6 format, using content from Intenet pages, follow these simple instructions;

• Load up Microsoft Publisher 98.
• Open your Internet browser (probably Internet explorer or Netscape Navigator),
• Open the Internet site containing the pictures.
• Right-click the mouse when the pointer is over a picture that you want.
• From the menu which appears, choose COPY.
• Left-click on the Publisher tab in the TASK BAR at the bottom of the screen.
• Right-click the mouse in a picture frame in the Publisher document.
• From the menu which appears, choose PASTE.
• If you are asked if you want the picture to be sized to fit the frame, choose yes.
• The picture will appear in the picture frame.
• If you were not asked about resizing the picture, you will need to do it now.
• Resizing is done by grabbing one of the black highlights, and stretching to size.
• Repeat this with the four other picture frames in the book.
• To insert text from a web-site, you will first need to highlight the text on the web-page.
• Right-click the mouse when the pointer is over the blue highlighted text.
• From the menu which appears, choose COPY.
• Left-click on the Publisher tab in the TASK BAR at the bottom of the screen.
• Right-click the mouse in the text frame on page three of the Publisher document.
• From the menu which appears, choose PASTE.
• Your text will appear in the text frame, and may flow into the other taxt pages.
• The text needs to be edited for the intended audience.
• Save the file in a suitable folder.
• You will be able to print your minibook onto four sheets of paper.
• The book can be pasted or stapled together, and then trimmed to size with a guillotine.
• Your minibook can be shared across a network as a file.
• The file can be given to someone on disk or attached to an e-mail.

Many sites become very slow to access in the afternoon, when American users come on-line. This is especially true of the BBC site and other very busy sites, from which it can sometimes take ten minutes to download a page over a network.
To avoid this problem, visit the site early in the day, or save the site for viewing off-line. On a stand-alone computer connected to the Internet by a modem, this is easily done, as modern browsers automatically save the pages, and when you try to access a page you will be offered the option to Work Off-line. If you are working on a network, or are using an ISDN connection to the Internet, your network administrator should be able to show you how to work off-line, by a method called web-whacking.