ABSTRACT NUMBER 1

CITATION:

Barker, Bruce O.; Bills, Lynn. (October 1999). Engaged Learning Using the Internet: SURWEB as a Student-Focused Learning Tool. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the National Rural Education Association, 8p.

SUMMARY:

The engaged learning model centers on information and communications technologies as tools to assist teachers in helping students take responsibility for their own learning, become knowledge explorers, and collaborate with others to find information and to seek answers to problems. This paper defines engaged learning, and outlines the following eight characteristics of engaged learning, along with their associated descriptors: Grouping; Teacher Roles; and Student Roles. The focus shifts to applying the engaged learning model to integrate technology into the classroom. The SURWEB (State of Utah Resource Web) student-focused multimedia tool and its applications makes it easy for teachers and students to work with video of hypermedia learning projects. The tool enable students and teachers to create and produce multimedia presentations for interchange with other students or for delivery in their home schools. A sampling of addresses is provided from the several thousand-student/teacher media shows. Media shows are continually being added the areas as business; career guidance; foreign language; health science; information technology; marketing; mathematics; science; social studies; theater; and visual arts. While some skeptics may criticize the computer as a form of depersonalized learning, Internet – connected computers actually do more to provide learners with creative tools and put them in contact with other learners than any other telecommunications medium.

PERSONAL REACTION:

I really liked this article. At first I was wondering what and when was it going to talk about what the abstract said it would about technology. When the article started to discuss what Iowa did on the Internet I really thought that was cool and fascinating. I checked out the site and explored and that the site was even better than I was expecting. The conclusion stated something that I thoroughly thought was worth saying in my opinion since that is how I feel for the most part: “As educators move into the year 2000 and beyond, our nations’ students need to develop skills and expertise in accessing, exchanging, and analyzing digital information resources if they hope to be successful in the world and work place of the future. Without doubt, they need exposure to today’s telecommunications tools in order to master the knowledge and the technology that will make them prosper. …computer and the Internet that will revolutionize learning in the 21^st century.” (Barker 1999).