The web has also had a major impact on schooling. Courses and entire degree programs are now offered online. Teachers create hybrid versions of courses that supplement face-to-face instruction with online resources. They engage students in producing digital media productions, chat on class bulletin boards, share their work online, and have them reflect on their work through e-portfolios.

One five-year study of the impact of Internet use on relationships between teachers and students (Schofield & Davidson, 2003) found that use of the Internet increased student autonomy given increased access to external resources in ways that served to reverse the usual knowledge disparity between teachers and students. Teachers also frequently discovered their students' use of Internet skills that served to enhance relationships. It also created warmer and less adversarial teacher-student relations through the use of small group work which served to personalize student-teacher relations and enhance motivation. One problem for teachers was the students' experience of technical difficulties arising when students all tried to do the exact same thing on the Internet.

In this course, the web will be used for teaching media studies methods through a "media lab" approach. In that approach, you and/or students share samples of media texts for discussion and analysis, just as you would analyze a specimen in a science lab. For example, students may share magazine ads and discuss their analysis of the ads in class and/or online. Using a media lab approach gives students a role in having to collect examples and prepare analyses of media texts.

All of this raises the question, how can you employ a media lab approach using the Internet, particularly if you are sharing media texts online? And, how can students engage in online discussions about media texts?

There are a considerable number of web-based tools you can use to create an on-line media lab classroom. In this module, we will discuss these different tools, as well as show you some examples of how to use these tools.

In using the web, you are also teaching students about the uses of the Internet as a learning tool - how to find material on the web, engage in chat, create web pages, etc.

Learning to Use Various Technology Tools

There are a lot of tutorial sites on the web to help you learn to use different technology tools.

One of the more useful ones is the actden site.

There are also useful sites for learning how to create web pages:

National Writing Project
Teachers.Net Website Handbook
TeacherWeb.com

There also is an entire on-line book, Web Design for the Mass Media, that describes the uses of the web related to teaching mass media.

Module 2: Word document

Five Principles of New Media Production

Acquiring Literacies through the Use of New Media

Literacies Associated with Digital Media

One Example: Video Games as a New Media

Studying and Using the Web

Using the Web as a “Media Lab”: Working with Media Using the Internet

Building Learner-Centered Environments through Technology Integration

Creating a Webquest

What is a Webquest?

What are the Different Parts of a Webquest?

The Webquest Design Process

A Sample Webquest using Filamentality

Final Task: Creating Your Own Webquest

Web-based Resources for Teaching Media Literacy

Using Tappedin.org and Nicenet.org

Tappedin.org

Nicenet.org

References