DOs and DON'Ts for Using the Internet in Your Class
Suggestions from Deborah Healey, Tom Robb, and Ron Corio
DOs
- Try it yourself first.
- Teach netiquette.
- Set specific tasks that students should accomplish while online.
- Encourage collaboration within your class.
- Set up inter-class projects, where feasible.
- Teach students about copyright.
- Download Web sites you want to preserve intact.
- Get permission from authors to use their material offline.
- Encourage attention to form as well as content in email.
- Do have the students turn away from their monitors or turn them down
before you address them. Students in front of computers are functionally
deaf!
- Pay attention to safety:
- Tell students never to give out information such as their full name and address in a public Chat room, MUD, or MOO--it's not safe, especially for women and children.
- Think twice before posting pictures online with students' full names, especially if you work with children.
DON'Ts
- Don't expect things to work exactly as you planned.
- Don't count on students to write and respond to email on schedule.
- Don't read students' personal email without permission -- make
sure you've clarified the ground rules about what you will and won't
read when you have your students work with keypals.
- Don't just tell students to "go look for something interesting."
- Don't allow students to download copyrighted material and post it
on a class site.
- Don't have more than 15 stations trying to log into the same site
on the Web simultaneously--start students in groups, then have them log
in individually to avoid an Internet traffic jam.
- Don't have students post a question to a newsgroup without first
reading other postings and the FAQs.
- Don't rely on your students understanding everything you tell
them orally; provide clear step-by-step handouts with clear examples and
screenshots.
- Don't be afraid of the Internet--there's a wealth of good, and
only a handful of ill to be gained online.
Compiled by Deborah Healey,
Deborah.Healey@orst.edu