How it was for us - Teachers using the Internet

Cherwell school, a state secondary school in Oxfordshire, has had networked Internet access since January 1996. Staff who have been working on Internet projects reflect on what they have learnt so far..........

• Myf Powell, Director of Studies
• Andrew Hubbard, Geography teacher
• Dr. John Shore, Network Manager

Myf Powell, Director of Studies

"The biggest challenges I faced were:

• convincing other staff that networked Internet access was worth the money. I am on the management team, and that definitely helped. I knew the person who held the purse strings!;
• getting networked access installed, though Research Machines did support us well;
• getting departments to find a place for it in the curriculum. People needed convincing that changing over to the new technology was worth the effort involved.

We have had to deal with several issues. We did get teething problems. At first it took a long time to log on, but we sorted this sort of thing out within a few weeks.

Students sign an agreement to use the Internet responsibly; I make clear what is appropriate for school use. Parents get a copy of this and sign a consent letter. Students then get an Internet users' card, which is withdrawn if they break the agreement. We haven't had any problems with students getting hold of hard core pornography or other damaging material. What we have had is groups of Year 9 boys clustering around the Pamela Anderson "Babe Watch" site.

In the most serious incident some boys downloaded inappropriate images and started manipulating them in photo-shop. We use auditor software, which allows us to monitor which sites each user visits. I simply confronted the boys involved with the log of their visits, took away their Internet User cards so they were effectively excluded from using the Internet, and denied all students access to the Internet for a limited time. We have had no trouble since.

We do not allow students their own e-mail addresses, though of course they can e-mail through Netscape. Part of the code they agree to is that they will not e-mail without their teacher's permission. It is a balancing act between access and control. The more interaction students get, the more valuable their experience is likely to be.

Staff training is vitally important, but to help motivate staff to seek training, we have encouraged student use. We publicised our new Internet facilities in assemblies, and we allow access at lunchtimes. Once students start asking their teachers if they can use the Internet for class work, staff interest picks up.

I see Internet access as part of my overall strategy for getting more IT into the curriculum. it is still possible for staff to fulfill their job descriptions, cover National Curriculum requirements and do virtually no IT work. I need to know more about what staff are trying to achieve, so that I can show them how IT can help them do what they need to do anyway.

We have Internet access in the staffroom, and that has proved popular. We have also been getting the help of Interns (trainee teachers) to develop our school site into a useful jumping off point. History Interns spent time collecting links that support special studies.

I do have some worries. I have to watch the phone bill. I have to be vigilant to deal with any students who deliberately make inappropriate use of the Internet.I worry about unexpected problems.

Of course, there are the pluses, too. The students' enthusiasm is infectious, especially years 12 and 13. Students are coming in in their free time and settling down to use the Internet constructively. We need to equip them to use the Internet effectively, for the future.

My tips so far are:

• get backing and a financial commitment from the top;
• have the confidence to go with it. The Internet is not going to go away, so be there at the forefront. The more involved you are at the start, the more you can shape it to your needs."

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Andrew Hubbard, Geography teacher

"I want to think back about our work on the Cyber Fair '96 project, in partnership with ODEC. (Year 11 students in General Studies lessons investigated special populations in their local community, and wrote up their work into WEB pages for schools in other countries)

We did extend students' thinking about other cultures, especially by inviting Mr. Ahmed, a Sudanese refugee living locally, in to work with students. We also got them to reflect on their own culture, as their work on racism in sport shows.

The most useful aspects of the work for me have been:

• accessing information that is only available electronically;
• students producing their own WEB pages. This was a concrete product that engaged other people's interest;
• using an issue based approach.By choosing to start with refugees, we picked a broad enough issue to allow for individual interests, but a defined enough issue to give the work a focus;
• the Cyber Fair event gave us a useful structure
• the ideas and support from ODEC were useful, introducing activities like the anti-racist Rafa-Rafa game, finding contacts and helping with training and administration;
• students who aren't usually interested in General Studies work got involved.

The problems were:

• e-mail not being successful, because of lack of response;
• we weren't creating a course, so you can't go on repeating what we did. The process was useful, but you would have to keep finding new content;
• the form filling and administration in the Cyber Fair event was too exhaustive and time consuming.

There have been several spin-offs. I can HTM myself, now, and teach the basics of the process. I am more confident to use the technology in Geography. I'm sure our initial work helped to provide the impetus for the school to get networked Internet access, and it was once we had this that work really took off. Lots of students are taking it up in their own time, and it has filtered through the school. There has been a big increase in Internet use."

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Dr. John Shore, Network Manager

"Challenges included:

• controlling access, both deciding which students should and shouldn't have access, and switching them on and off;
• filling in the form to request more IDs from Research Machines! (though they gave us support with this);
• keeping up to date with the software.

In the future we plan to extend access. A single ISDN line supports 20 stations. To change to double this costs double the line rental.The cost of installation and rental is a problem. We could put up an Intranet site, keeping all the HTM files we produce on a public area of the network. It would also be nice to give students personal e-mail addresses and to think more about using Usenet newsgroups, getting students to subscribe.

I would advise other network managers to run netscape.exe from a public directory, and to arrange access in more than one network room if possible. If anyone wants to ask me more about how we have done it, they are welcome to e-mail me.

I have learnt that the students are less daunted than we are, both about using the Internet and writing HTM. Students do find it useful, particularly Year 12, for their personal studies."

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• Want to know more about Cherwell's work on Cyber Fair '96?

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This site is under construction. We will update it regularly. GLO is written by Alison Norris from ODEC and Anne Strachan from Manchester DEP. Please send suggestions about the site to Alison.