Preface Acknowledgements Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 URLs References
ABOUT OUR FORMAT *
THE INTERNET — A BRIEF HISTORY *
THE WEB — A VERY BRIEF HISTORY *
THE ROLE OF COMPUTERS *
IMPACTS OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES *
Graphing Calculators *
Spreadsheets *
CURRICULA *
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE *
WHY TEACHERS USE THE WEB *
GOALS OF THIS BOOK *
THE MEDIUM FOR THE MESSAGE *
THE BOOK'S CONTENT *
Too Soon To Tell *
THE TEACHER/STUDENT SERVER/CLIENT METAPHOR *
GLOSSARY *
REFERENCES *
URLs *
CHAPTER 1
You probably are a teacher either thinking about using the Web in your teaching, or a Web teacher looking for new ideas. This book is first about teaching, and then about the Web. Since you already know something about teaching, we thought we'd begin our journey with some information about the Web.
This book was developed as a Web document, and then converted for print. As described in Chapter 6, hypertext permits a user to go directly to different text (or other media) located elsewhere in the same document, or in an entirely different document, perhaps one located on a different server — with servers located around the world. In the Web version, underlining indicates hypertext. The Web version makes use of five types of hypertext links. Glossary links are bold faced. References appear in square brackets, e.g. [reference]; clicking the hypertext link displays the reference. Chapters sometimes are linked, and it is possible to move from one chapter of Web-Teaching to another. Finally, there are hypertext links to materials that are not a part of this book. These appear as underlined, and are followed by curly braces containing the letter U, a chapter number, and another number (example: {U00.00}). Clicking these links will bring up information about the link, the URL, and a date on which we tested the link. If you are reading the print version, you will have to use this URL information to visit the resource cited. Access dates are noted because, unlike a traditional print library, the Web is a dynamic resource with materials continually being added and deleted.
We're sure you've heard about the Web. You may not know much about its origins, however, so here is a brief history.
In 1957, the Soviet Union surprised the world with the launch of the first ever space satellite, Sputnik. With the Soviet Union's atomic capabilities, the launch was seen as a military threat. The Soviets were perceived as a world superpower capable of substantial technological, scientific, and military feats, with an apparent lead in technology. In response, President Eisenhower of the USA created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, a military research agency to improve the US's ability to develop research results quickly and efficiently.
In 1966, Robert Taylor (the man in charge of ARPA's computing operations) grew tired of having to switch computers and passwords to connect to multiple sites, and envisioned a network of interlinked computers. He went to his boss, Charles Herzfeld, and requested funds to create a dynamic communications system. After a brief explanation of a vision of networking all ARPA's computers, with no formal proposal, Herzfeld granted the project a $1,000,000 budget.
Two persons often are identified as "the father of the Internet." The first actual Internet-like "connections" were made in Leonard Kleinrock's {U01.01} laboratory at UCLA, and the process made use of a strategy developed in his doctoral dissertation. J. C. R. Licklider {U01.02} of MIT may really have been the Internet's prime mover. His insights shaped the environment that led to much of the networked computing we use today.
Over the next 20 years, first under the auspices of ARPA and later under the National Science Foundation (NSF), a network of computers grew. Intended at first for military purposes, the ARPAnet (now known as the Internet) gained additional nodes at educational institutions nationwide. In return for the use of their locations, the universities were allowed to use the network for research and educational purposes. In its early years, the Internet handled text-only communications (ftp, telnet, and e-mail).
In the early 1970s, universities began to provide electronic "bulletin board" on their time-sharing systems. These bulletin boards provided for an exchange of information campus wide. With the inexpensive availability of bulletin board software, the use of bulletin boards spread into the community. Some private bulletin boards began to charge a nominal fee for their services.
Around 1972, a new application called USENET was developed to exchange information on a group-to-group basis, rather than a person-to-person basis. USENET was the first "newsgroup" application. USENET provided a way to interconnect "bulletin boards" on a store-and-forward system. USENET was a somewhat inefficient method for exchanging information between a large number of sites since, at each stage, each message had to be passed from computer to computer with no central routing. Today USENET is Internet-based.
Federal dollars supported the early years of the Internet. In 1979, CompuServe began offering e-mail services directly to personal computer owners. E-mail became available to almost anyone. Commercial interests grew rapidly. By 1995, the Internet was supported almost entirely by non-Federal sources.
In 1989, the CERN High Energy Physics Lab proposed developing a system that would permit ready access to many kinds of computer information and link information together. The result was the World Wide Web (WWW, or Web) proposal. A key web feature was hyperlinks, clickable connections between information sources. Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research, originally the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire), developed a system of addressing messages called the uniform resource locator, or URL. Discussed in more detail later, the URL has several parts: a process, how the transfer will be made; an Internet address, unique for each node or computer on the Internet; a "path" to a file; a file name; and a MIME extension, something that indicates the format of the data in the file. Also developed were the hypertext transfer protocol (http), the hypertext markup language (HTML), and early versions of server and browser software.
Interest in and expansion of the Web awaited the development of suitable software. Working at the University of Illinois, Mark Andreessen was a prime mover in the creation of Mosaic, a browser program that transformed the vision of the Web into a practical application. Andreessen together with venture capitalist James H. Clark (founder of Silicon Graphics) founded the Netscape Corporation. Netscape's Navigator, the second evolution of browser software, was made available to many users without charge! While Mosaic provided an insight into the capability of the Web, the real potential of the Web emerged with the first release of Netscape Navigator software. In only about a year and a half, Netscape had some 65 million users. The transformation of the "look and feel" of international communications had begun.
An interesting description of the Web is that it is a new way of publishing, an alternative to books and journals. As such, it will have a drastic impact on teaching around the world. It is clear that the Web is much more than just a publishing alternative. When the first edition of this book was written, the Web was still in its infancy. At this writing, it has reached toddlerhood, but is still growing and expanding exponentially.
The Web is changing both what we teach
and how we teach it.
Today it is clear that essentially everyone in the United States, and billions throughout the world, will use computers in their personal and professional lives. Computers will be our connections to the world of commerce. They will provide access to sources of information. Computers will provide the communications lifeline to family, friends, and business associates. Try to imagine professional circumstances that do not make use of computers. This is clear in 2000, even before a promised transfer of entertainment from television and cables to computers has made a substantial foothold.
Figure 1.01. Web commerce extends into traditional arenas. An example is ordering groceries over the Internet. Home delivery is just a click or two away in many regions of the United States.
Digital tools change the nature of tasks in a very fundamental way. Norman [1991] devised the term cognitive artifacts— creations that change the nature of the task and, therefore, the core skills required for success. Those who learned mathematics before the advent of the handheld calculator can appreciate the increasing complexity of equations which are easily solved by the use of button based functions now available. Teachers and textbook authors no longer need to concern themselves with designing problems which minimize the need to calculate such things as square roots. With the simple push of a button, students can get multidigit accuracy. Hand calculations and books of function tables no longer are needed.
To illustrate the point, consider graphing calculators that make the creation, display, and analysis of graphs straightforward. The kinds of questions one can ask, as well as the understandings arrived at using graphs, are deeper than those from the pencil and paper solutions or digital calculators of the recent past.
The potential for the deeper understandings has been appreciated for a long, long time. Although either pencil and paper or a calculator can be used to calculate points to be graphed, it can be very tedious to create and interpret even a single graph. Graphing was very time consuming. The graphing calculator tool changed the graphing task. This change brought about a reevaluation of graphing relative to its difficulty. Good graphing calculators cost less than $100. The result is the importance of graphing to practical problem solving has increased. (Figure 1.02).
Figure 1.02. With both ordinary and graphing calculators, calculations of square roots are easy and straightforward. Although possible with an ordinary calculator, a graphing calculator makes analysis of graphical functions much easier. Knowledge of graphing becomes more powerful, and graphical analysis is more likely to be applied in practical situations, such as chemistry "titration" curves.
Consider the function f(x) = cx(1-x), and the situation that arises when the result from one calculation is cycled back into the succeeding calculation.
When performed by hand, the calculations are exceedingly tedious, even with a calculator. When a spreadsheet is applied to the task, results appear nearly instantaneously. Depending on the value of c and the initial value of x, the result after many iterations may be a constant, or become bistable, or even become chaotic. The calculations are simple. Without a spreadsheet, the tedium of the arithmetic would be enormous. Virtually no one born before 1960 either studied this body of mathematics as students, or was aware of the often remarkable results. Demonstration of the phenomenon using a spreadsheet takes seconds — and permits vastly different approaches to the solution of certain real-world problems. Now that the spreadsheet tool is available, something rarely touched on 15 years ago becomes routine — because the tool simplified the task (Figure 1.03).
Figure 1.03. Spreadsheet for the function cx(1-x). The result of one calculation is used as the value of x in the next calculation. The value of the constant c is found in Row 1. Columns B through F are for values of c = 0.8, 1.5, 3.1, 3.5, and 3.9, respectively. The initial value of x is set to 0.1000 (Row 2). Note that the outcomes vary, with stable results for B and C, a bistable result for D, a tetrastable result for E, and a chaotic result for F. The 63 iterations of each formula are performed almost instantaneously using a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel). Changes in the values of x and c can be made very quickly.
Graphing calculators can include what amount to small spreadsheets. Chemists often use spreadsheets to calculate "titration" curves, and compare the calculated curves with experimental results. Graphing calculators, together with calculator-based laboratories (CBLs), can display experimental data together with calculated curves. Figure 1.04 shows a calculated titration curve obtained with a TI-83 graphing calculator. Remarkable advances like this have become commonplace over the last 30 years. This sort of technology is leading to strong collaborations between science and mathematics teachers at the secondary level, something rare just a few years ago.
Figure 1.04. Theoretical curve for "titration" of weak acid using strong base; graphed using a TI-83 calculator. Graphing calculators are becoming commonplace in classrooms.
Curriculum reform should attend to the impact of a seemingly endless stream of cognitive artifacts. Polarizing terms such as good/bad or fundamental/applied often cloud curriculum development issues. For task after task in this era, the carbon cognition of the human brain is being supplanted by the silicon cognition of a desktop computer. Curriculum development is an immense struggle during times of rapid change.
As tools emerge, and tasks change, curriculum reform follows. For example, there has been substantial discussion of the "role of technology" in algebra teaching [Waits and Demana, 1992; Dugdale et al., 1995]. Evidence about tool use has emerged in the teaching of mathematics. Graphing calculators and symbolic algebra programs have come to be studied first. Both of these exemplify the kinds of digital tools scientists have available today. While fears about the loss of core skills linger, objective studies support the notion that, when students use these tools extensively and nearly exclusively (as opposed to mixed calculator and conventional pencil and paper, for example), there are substantial learning gains [Pressley and McCormick, 1995, p. 434]. Students using graphing calculators have deeper and more extensive understandings of the concept of a function than those using pencil and paper. Other studies support the same kinds of gains for symbolic mathematics programs [Cooley, 1995; Park, 1993; Porzio, 1994].
The research results on graphing calculators and symbolic mathematics programs are not surprising. To use the new tools successfully one must understand the concepts in a deep way. You can't just bluff your way through or get by as the result of demonstrating simple calculating skills. Earlier generations were asked to perform on examinations involving demonstrations of skills such as differentiating a function or solving a differential equation. Most of the skill aspect of those tasks has been subsumed by computers or calculators. Planning solutions to problems is most of what remains for the professional who uses these new tools. For both the professional and the student, more and more challenging problems can be worked in the same time. As a result, the kinds of experiences a student can have today are much broader than was possible in any previous generation. The learning loads are meaningfully increased, too [Runge et al., 1999]. Thirty years ago, asking students to solve many deep and complex problems at the levels typically expected in current courses would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment-because the amount of attendant busywork was massive.
When multimedia technologies become the means of instruction, substantial learning gains may result! These gains are, however, by no means automatic. Lecturers using multimedia tools may feel much better about their classes, and their students may rate those classes more highly than conventional classes, but large learning gains are not inevitable [Cassanova, 1996]. Gains seem to appear mostly when the students themselves use the tools actively and extensively [Cooley, 1995; Park, 1993; Porzio, 1994].
While the attention of teachers certainly has focused on these issues — comparing current and previous learning outcomes in the context of previous learning goals and objectives, this really is not the principal issue. Computer tools, which Norman would describe as cognitive artifacts, have supplanted their predecessors. This no longer is debatable; it is an everyday reality. Because students must develop serious expertise as computer users in order to participate effectively and functionally in their personal and professional worlds, schools at all levels need to be teaching expert use of those devices. It's not really a matter of teacher choice; it's a matter of ethical responsibility.
The Web components in your teaching help to prepare your students for their world of work. The Internet, especially as used in the context known as the Web, has begun a remarkable communications revolution. Your students are almost certain to use the Web.
In addition, the Web affords you with three very important instructional opportunities:
Early results suggest that the Web supports student conversations and exchanges at least as well as does the traditional small-group classroom. Very surprisingly, rather than engendering a feeling of disenfranchisement by the circumstances of distance, most effective Web-based learning situations seem to lead to increased senses of camaraderie and inter-student support.
This book is for those who teach. Web-Teaching is the first book to consult when you are thinking about redesigning your instruction for computer delivery. Web-Teaching has two principal goals:
The first goal is quite concrete. For example, modest use of the Web will permit you to "can" your lectures for delivery during a modified classroom session, and to provide readily student support materials that once were difficult to deliver. It is important for you to have some idea of what is possible. This is a dynamic target; it is unlikely that the technology available at the moment this book goes to press will be the same as that available when it sells in printed form just weeks later. The half-life of the information provided for much of the book’s contents is better measured in months than years. Most of the chemistry content in a 1958 college general chemistry book still remains correct and up-to-date. Essentially none of the computer-related material presented in this book existed in 1958. In fact, much of it is less than 2 years old!
Our second goal is to make recommendations for instructional strategies based upon research. Research in education always seems shakier than research in fields like chemistry or biology. Education is a field notorious for seemingly whimsical innovation, usually not sustained very long [Ellis and Fouts, 1993]. The notion of having students actively engaged while learning (as opposed to passively listening or reading) is emerging with substantial research support [Ellis and Fouts, 1993]. Your authors believe, however, that some approaches to teaching, student learning, and instructional design make a great deal more sense than others. This is a book written by teachers for teachers. We hope our readers will come to favor some instructional strategies over others.
Web-Teaching is not a book for techies. This book will not provide you with all of the technical tools needed to create instructional materials. Many other books deal with the specifics of harnessing appropriate technologies. This is the teacher's first book — the one to read and reread as you plan Web-based instruction.
If you are asking yourself, "Why write a book instead of using the Web?" then you are an excellent candidate for Web-Teaching. The first edition was written using a word processor. This second edition was written first as a Web product, and then converted to paper. Books are not likely to disappear anytime soon, however. Book production and sales were much higher after the introduction of television than before. Paper use increased after the development of computers. Portions of this book are available online at
http://dwb.unl.edu/Book/Contents.html.
One of the early discoveries about the Web is that students tend to print material for later reading — and they lose access to much information as a result.
Each chapter in this book has specific purposes. Some chapters might be easily predicted, others not. For example, as Web-teaching spreads, the success of the experience for various audiences will be discovered. So far, it seems that learners who are good self-regulators fare better with Web instruction than do those who are not good self-regulators. For this reason, we devote Chapter 9 to self-regulation, and we try to emphasize the teaching of self-regulatory skills.
Many traditional courses involve discussion and exchange of ideas between students. As a teacher contemplates switching from synchronous instruction (sit them all down in front of you at the same time, and get them talking to one another by any of dozens of strategies) to asynchronous instruction (at different sites and different times), then the mechanics and strategies for initiating conversations change. In Chapter 5, we point readers toward a variety of Web-based discussion strategies.
Some of the chapters are very brief. The Web supports active learning strategies, and we discuss several. In Web-Teaching we argue in support of active learning
Finally, we've made a fairly big deal in this chapter about computers, their impact, and the overarching reason that all teachers should use computers as they teach. As we note in Chapter 4, there is a metacognition of computer use. We have offered numerous suggestions as to how teachers might incorporate teaching about this area within the context of their various disciplines.
How effective is Web teaching? Well, a lot depends on what you mean by teaching, and what you mean by effective. Doomsayers seem to have been incorrect. At the same time, no courses or systems have yet emerged that would support wholesale migration from traditional teaching to Web teaching. Early returns offer unambiguous support that Web teaching serves some populations very well. There are only a few solid studies related to Web-based learning outcomes.
This rather remarkable, dynamic system we call the Web often is spoken of in terms of two functions, clients and servers. Clients are the end users, the ones that make use of browser software. Servers are the sources of information, the repositories. Server software is what makes it possible for an Internet node to send files to clients. In principal, any node or "end" of the Internet can, at one and the same time, be both a client and a server.
In Web-Teaching, we think of teachers as controlling the servers. The teachers decide what will be made available to serve, and which returned information will be recorded, if any. In Web-teaching, the students run the browser software and sit at the "served" computers, the so-called client terminals.
This is not meant to be taken that we adhere to the "sage on the stage" instructional model rather than that of the "guide at the side." When push comes to shove, however, the teachers decide who will earn the credit — and the client/server model best describes the respective roles.
Figure 1.05. The Teacher/Student Server/Client Metaphor of Web-Teaching.
asynchronous: used as an adjective in Web-teaching jargon to describe situations where learners and teachers are separated in time and usually in space.
browser: software that makes use of URLs and the Internet to obtain information (files) from a server. Most have graphical user interfaces (GUI). Examples are Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
bulletin board: a scheme for accessing posted messages. One computer would be designated as a host. Access was by telephone through modems.
clicking, click: to depress a mouse button; depression of button on a mouse.
client: in Web jargon, this is a receiver of information, a connection to the Web where browser software is used to view materials served from somewhere else on the Web. The "opposite" term is server.
cognitive artifact: according to Donald Norman, a device created to assist with a task that changes in a fundamental way the skills needed to succeed with the task.
e-mail: electronic mail delivered and received over a digital network such as the Internet. Software creates, transmits, and interprets the data streams.
hyperlinks: attributed to Ted Nelson {U01.03}, hyperlinks allow one to access documents in parallel, to jump from one to another on the basis of both content and relatedness. For example, if the name Ted Nelson in this description were hyperlinked, placing the cursor on the name and "clicking" would bring up information somehow related to Ted Nelson.
hypertext: text linked so that the user can jump from one idea to another, usually by clicking on text.
HTML, HTML tag: hypertext markup language. The Web involves sending files around the network in extremely simple formats so as to make them machine and platform independent. Inside these text files are "tags" read as text but demarked in such a way as to provide information to the software (browser) about how to display the text. This is not an exact method; the files may appear rather differently on different browsers.
interface: as used here, name given to the computer screen or screens that enable a user to interact with a computer program.
Internet: a dynamic electronic network that permits computers connected anywhere on that network to exchange information. The Internet is essentially a worldwide network.
IP address: computers on the Internet are identified by a unique number called an IP address. These consist of four numbers between 0 and 255 separated by three periods (dots). IP addresses are provided Internet Service Providers (Chapter 4).
multimedia: forms of media, such as video, audio, text, and images.
News Group: originally, a bulletin board organized by topic. News Groups have evolved to offer systematic access through e-mail or Internet.
node: a computer which serves as a point of exchange in a an inter linked group of computers, receiving, routing, and retransmitting information. Node is also used to indicate any computer on the Internet.
self-regulator (self-regulation): a learner who actively controls his or her learning by use of good strategies for cognition and motivation.
server: computer connected to the Web that transmits files. Most computers can be made into servers given suitable software. WebSTAR can make nearly any Macintosh into a server. The "opposite" term is client.
spreadsheet: software to handle systematic arithmetic and logic operations. Originally created to help with bookkeeping operations. (Spreadsheets vaulted personal computers to the desktops of everyday business managers.)
Sputnik: a space satellite launched by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a political entity that included Russia. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a world wide political activity known as the "Cold War."
synchronous: used as an adjective in Web-teaching jargon to describe situations where learners and teachers work at one common time and usually in one common place.
URL, uniform resource locator: a five-part information string that conveys a type of operation (e.g., http, ftp, mailto), the IP address of a machine where the desired file is located, the path on that machine to the file, the name of the file, and, through 2 to Barrie, J. M., & Presti, D. E. (1996). The World Wide Web as an instructional tool. Science, 274, 371—372.
4 letters appended to the file name in what is called an extension, information about the nature of the data in the file.
Web-teaching: instruction or training conducted using the Web.
World Wide Web, Web, WWW: a scheme for using the Internet to exchange information in hypermedia formats.
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U01.01. Leonard Kleinrock, http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/ (accessed 3/30/00)
U01.02. J. C. R. Licklider, http://memex.org/licklider.html (accessed 3/30/00)
U01.03. Ted Nelson, http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/ (accessed 3/30/00)