When students are using technology as a tool or a support for communicating with others, they are in an active role rather than the passive role of recipient of information transmitted by a teacher, textbook, or broadcast. The student is actively making choices about how to generate, obtain, manipulate, or display information. Technology use allows many more students to be actively thinking about information, making choices, and executing skills than is typical in teacher-led lessons. Moreover, when technology is used as a tool to support students in performing authentic tasks, the students are in the position of defining their goals, making design decisions, and evaluating their progress.
Carol Mortensen on 23 Aug 11Why teach search? Google understands the importance of finding the right information at the right time. We create tools to let you find the information you need, of the kind you need, when you need it. In most cases, a simple search works really well. But for more specialized questions, a bit of instruction in how to search improves all searcher--from middle school students to trained professionals--and lets you discover and use more, higher quality sources than ever before.
