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Using Email and the Internet in Science TeachingMike Robinson

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To cite this article: Mike Robinson (1994): Using Email and the Internet in Science Teaching, Journal of Information Techology

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Journa l o f Informat ion Techno logy for Tea cher Educa t ion, Vol. 3, N o. 2, 1994

Using Em ail and the Internetin Science Teaching

M I K E R O B I N S O N

University of Nevada, USA

ABSTRACT The US federal Government has supplied monies to support two

key areas in K-12science education: firs t, pre-service and in-service training for

the teachers of science and mathematics; and, second, the development of

better curriculum materials and instructional strategies to teach science and

mathematics. This paper will address the instructional part of the second key

area. It will deal with how the Internet can be used to improve secondary

science instruction. Specifically it will discuss learning strategies on the

Internet, and whypre-service teachers should learn to use the Internet, in four

pre-service teacher training classes in a US university.

I n t r o d u c t i o n

For over a decade a variety of federal reports, task forces, the media,

bus i ne ss and even parents have cont inued to criticize US educat ion,

specifically the prepa ra t i on of s t uden t s for a changing work force (In the

National Interest , 1991). In this technological age, science, technology,

engineer ing and mathematics (STEM) are usually singled out as the mos t

press ing educat ional a reas . This is apparently related to t ra ining hi tech

worke rs to help maintain the diminishing US technological advantage in the

world economy (Science and Technology, 1992). The federal government has

se t goals for improving the level of STEM educat ion in the belief that the US

economic well being and s tandard of living can only be protected by

mainta ining world s tandards in science and math educat ion. The increasing

cost to business to t ra in workers to t ake the 'new' j obs has also put pressure

on the gove rnment to take act ion. As a result , federal monies have been

suppl ied to s u p p o r t two key areas in K-12 science education: first, pre-service

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and in-service training for the teachers of science and mathematics; and,second, the development of better curriculum materials and instructional

strategies to teach science and mathematics.Various government agencies such as the National Science Foundation(NFS), the Department of Education (DoE) and the Department of Energy(DOE) are providing funding for projects that hold promise for improvementsin the above two areas. To support the second key area the federalgovernment has made networking and infrastructure development a priority.Specifically, the federal government has stressed the need for universityfaculty to learn more about how to develop new teaching techniques thathelp students navigate the network (Directorate for Education and HumanResources, 1992). The creation of the National Education Network (NEN), aninformation 'super highway' to provide access to all colleges and universitiesas well as elementary and secondary schools, was also cited in the report of

the Directorate for Education and Human Resources. Another report,Ame r i c a 2000 (US Department of Education, 1991), directed the Secretary ofEducation, in consultation with the President's science advisor and theDirector of the NSF to determine how electronic networks might provideAmerican schools with ready access to the best information, research,instructional materials and educational expertise.

This paper will address the instructional part of the second key areacited above. In general, it will deal with how the Internet can be used toimprove secondary science instruction. Specifically it will discuss learningstrategies on the Internet, and why pre-service teachers should learn to usethe Internet, in four pre-service teacher training classes in a US university.

Rationale

First, some justification for teaching Internet instructional strategies inpre-service teacher training courses is in orde r. This justification supp orts theuse of the Internet when science teachers use the Science TechnologySociety (STS) teaching approach and adhere to the Constructivist LearningModel (CLM). To begin, a few words of explanation about the STS teachingphilosophy are offered since there are still prominent science educators whostill do not agree with what STS teaching is. In this paper, the STS teachingmethod is a science teaching method and philosophy that believes scienceshould be taught within the context of human experience and that science isa necessary part of education for every citizen (NSTA, 1993). Moreover, the

STS teaching method is supported by the CLM (The High Stakes of HighSchool Science, 1991). From a constructivist point of perspective, knowledgeis a mental representation of the natural world. STS science teaching focuseson real-world problems which have science and technology components. Itdoes so from the students perspective instead of starting with science

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concepts and principles with which students may have had no priorknowledge and experience (NSTA, 1993).

The remainder of this section will address the question of how theInternet can be used to make science teaching more relevant and interestingto students, especially when they are taught by teachers who adhere to theSTS teach ing m ethodology and th e CLM. The following four a reas will bestressed within the context of the Internet (1) how to integrate science withother subjects; (2) how to promote more cooperative learning in sciencelearning; (3) how to encourage the transfer of science process skills toeveryday life; and (4) how to improve stu den t attitud es toward science.

A major complaint of secondary science students is that the scienceconcepts they learn in class are just to pass a test and that they forget themsoon afterwards (Yager and Roy, 1993). The Internet offers the prospect forhelping stu dents to see science as being a pa rt of their lives in the real world.

Science teachers are increasingly being asked to integrate science withmathematics, social studies and other subjects in the hope that whenstudents see these connections, they will find science to be more interestingand useful. When the Internet is available, students are able to access manymore out-of-classroom resources and exchange information with otherstudents in other schools, states and countries. Students may workindependently or in cooperative groups, but in either case, the real lifeexperience involved in collecting and sharing information on the Internetsupports the STS teaching approach as well as the CLM.

Some of the science related networks that students with Internet arecurrently using include Newton (where questions can be posed to workingscientists in the DOE), NASA (from which graphics and text information

concerning space probes, pulsars and black holes can be downloaded bystudents), and the environmental science network that addresses a number ofglobal environmental science problems such as air pollution.

A third area tha t the Inte rnet can supp ort is the learning and transferof science process skills. Yager (1990) states that there is little evidence toshow that students in traditional classrooms use science processes outsidethe science classroom. Learning how to use the Internet to sendunderstandable data, seek and use information from its many data bases andapply that information to situations in and out of the classroom would seemto be a good way to insure the transfer of process skills. Specific processskills that the Internet can facilitate the learning of include data gathering,presenting data in an understandable form (graphical data can be down

loaded), and applying data to defend conclusions. In a more general sense,Bloom's higher order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluationcan be practised as students seek out information, combine it with othersources, and determine its usefulness.

A fourth area that the Internet can facilitate is the development ofpositive attitudes toward science and technology. Work by Yager and Penick

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(1989) indicates that student attitudes toward science become more negativeas students progress to the higher grades in school. As a result, by gradetwelve, fewer than 25 percent of US students elect to take science. The manyresources available on the Internet offer the possibility for students tochange their attitudes about the relevance of science to their daily lives andfuture. A change in perception of what science is may help motivate morestudents to continue studying science in the upper grades and college.

Science Teacher Education and the Internet

A num ber of user free electronic mail (Email) networks (National Geographic,Kidsnet, CompuServe, Dow Jones and The Source) have been available tothose schools that could afford them since the mid to late 80s (Newman,1990). Email has been used by university faculty and lately K-12 teachers tosend m essages to colleagues for a num ber of years (Scott, 19 91; and W asson,1990). Email is now being tried in some colleges of education pre-serviceclasses to see if it improves communication between students and faculty(Bishop-Clark and Huston, 1993). Only recently, has the US governmentsupported the Internet to the extent that universities can make it available tolocal schools without charge. This service by many universities has openedup to schools an extensive number of Internet databases that may proveuseful to science teaching. Unfortunately teachers may not use the Internetto its full instructional potential without training. Therefore, it is proposedthat instructors of science methods classes should know what applications ofthe Internet might be useful for improving science teaching, especially thoseapplications that can be taught in the short amount of time available foreducational technology in the traditional three credit science teaching

methods class.

A number of articles have been written concerning Internet tools andmany of these ideas can be used in secondary science teacher trainingprograms. T h e Co m p u ti n g T e a c h e r has had a column for over a year called'Mining the Internet'. The column gives good instructions on how to makeeffective use of the Internet Examples include file transfer procedures (FTP);how to use 'Archie' to locate text, graphics or software in the literallymillions of files in the Internet (Harris, 1993); and how to use Gopher andVeronica as well as other applications. Some colleges of education are nowteaching some of the Internet tools in their curriculum and instructionclasses. Four examples of how the Internet and Email are being used in theteacher training program in a Western US University will now be presented.

Internet in the Prelim inary Education C lasses

Approximately 120 elementary teacher training students per year take theintroductory special education class. The students have an option of writing a

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term paper or doing a number of activities regarding Internet tools. As moreEmail terminals become available, all students will be required to do the

Internet activities. Currently those activities include a) learning how to sendand receive Email messages including the use of a word processor anddownloading and uploading from a disc, b) learning how to use Gopher andVeronica, c) learning how to use file transfer protocol with Archie, and d)sending and receiving messages to the professor and colleagues in otheruniversities who are taking an equivalent class (CD. Maddux in a personalcommunication, 1993).

In the computer literacy classes, use of the Internet began two yearsa g o . Before the Internet line was installed, students began with a simulationbut no actual log on. Soon after, Prod i g y donated one Email account butwith over one hundred and eighty students a year, not everyone was able touse it With the establishment of 14 Internet terminals all students in the

introductory course now send and receive Email messages, down load and upload, and learn how to use Gopher, Archie and Veronica. Students in theSpring '94 semester will have to receive and turn in assignments by Email.Upper level students are also required to download their final exam from themainframe and send it back after completion. Furthermore, a file server forall state teachers and college of education students is now in place to reducethe load on the mainframe (D.L. Johnson in a personal communication,1993).

Internet in the Science Methods Courses

The problem with teaching about the Internet in the three credit science

methods courses is time. As pre-service teachers begin to get a generalbackground in the use of the Internet in their computer literacy course andother introductory courses, instructors of the special methods classes (e.g.science, mathematics, social studies, and English) can then concentrate onareas that are specific to their subjects. Still, some attempt is being made toteach Internet skills due to the need for science teacher awareness of thepotential for improving science instruction through the various Internettools.

The required pre-student-teaching science methods classes are brokeninto two parts: 1) elementary science methods, required of all elementaryscience teachers (N-110-130 per year); and 2) secondary science methods,required of all science and health majors and minors (N=25-30 per year).

In the elementary science methods classes (pre-service teachers forkindergarten to grade six), students began by learning how to log on and offthe Internet They were then assigned electronic mentors who could beanywhere in the US from Alaska to New York to Florida. The mentors wereassigned by the professor to the National Science Foundation sponsoredProject to Improve Methods Courses in Elementary Science (PIMCES) and

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the TERC Kidsphere located in Pittsburgh. The mentors were elementaryscience teachers on the listserve of PIMCES and Kidsphere. During thesemester each student made four contacts with his/her mentor and designeda science lesson using the Learning Cycle. The Learning Cycle used wasRodger Bybee's 'five E' model of engagement, exploration, explanation,elaboration and evaluation. The students were coached to think of theirelectronic mentors the way they would think of a veteran teacher next doorto them and to whom they would go to for advice on materials, safety, andother germane considerations for designing science activities. The rationalefor using the mentors was to give the students an experienced scienceresource teacher who could help them apply the Learning Cycle whendeveloping science lessons and practise using email to communicate withpractising elementary teachers. The students did not learn how to use theInternet tools such as Gopher, Veronica, and Archie due to lack of time.

Formal and informal student comments about the experience are asfollows. (Keep in mind that these were student perceptions.) Informally thosestudents who had computers and a modem at home seemed to be morepositive to Email, apparently because they had better access to the Internetdue to the limited lab hours and the number of working Internet terminalson the university campus. One Internet terminal was installed in the sciencelab but with 120 students each semester (two classes of 60 each), it was onlya small help. Another problem was the fact that many of the students had notyet taken the computer literacy class and it took them much longer tobecome 'friendly' to computer use. Better sequencing of the educationcourses will alleviate this problem in the future.

At the end of the semester a formal evaluation to measure teacher

confidence or self-efficacy in using com puters and Email was also given. Theinstrument, called MUTEBI, was developed by Enochs et al. (1993) tomeasure the self-efficacy beliefs of teachers re lated to u tilizingmicrocomputers in science instruction. The instrument was originallydesigned for practising teachers. The general results were as follows.Students with home computers did not significantly improve in self-efficacyin using computers or Email. Even those students who had never used Emailon their home computers did not raise their self-efficacy. The professor feltthese students were already convinced of the value of computers ininstruction and adding Email to the uses did not change their originalperceptions of the value of computer use in the classroom. On the otherhand, students who did not have home computers did significantly improve

in self-efficacy and outcome expectancy. In oth er words, the ir preconceivednotions of the value of Email in elementary school instruction were fulfilledby using Email as part of the science teaching methods class. Furthermore,those students w ho had the class during the day (approximately one-half) andaccess to the com puter lab ha d higher self-efficacy than tho se who took th eclass in the evening when the computer lab was closed. This evidence leads

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one to believe that all students must have convenient access to computers.Two more points are worth mentioning. Students who had home computers

wanted many more assignments by Email such as the mid-term examination,take home science activities and even class discussions by Email. Those whoneeded to go to the lab to do their work were reluctant to have moreassignments with Email even whe n th eir self-efficacy was high . Lastly, all b uta couple of students thought Email was an important part of the class thatshould be a regular part of the course (J. Cannon in a personalcommunication, 1994).

In the secondary science teaching m ethods class, the use of the Internetis part of a larger unit on instructional uses of educational technology inscience. In the first week of the semester, students get a brief history of theInternet and learn how to log on and off. They are required to send at leastone message to the instructor and one to a colleague in the class. Since the

class is small (12 students this past Fall), in addition to the computer lab,they are able to use the in-class dedicated phone line. On that line they learnhow to use Gopher to access networks that supply useful information inscience teaching. The Weather Information, Earthquake Information, TheLibrary System, NASA, Newton, the Environmental Science Network andERIC are the main ones that are learned in class without having to go to thecomputer lab. Students are required to find one other database that is usefulto their teaching area (i.e. earth science, biology, health, chemistry, orphysics).

When formally questioned, all students in the class recognized thepotential of the Internet as an almost unlimited source of in-class science,technology and social science information. Those students who were from

rural areas and/or planned to become science teachers in rural schools wereespecially impressed with the prospect of accessing a 'world' of informationin an isolated school and classroom. Research indicates that one way ofmaking education more equitable in rural and inner city schools where upperdivision course offerings in math and science are often limited (Monk andHaller, 1993) is by making telecommunications available to them.Furthermore, all students recognized the potential for using scienceprocesses to collect and share science data and other information betweenschools in any part of the world. A recently developed global science projectcalled Sc i e n c e Ac r o s s t h e W or l d (Holman, 1993) is using facsimile and Emailto share data on acid rain, water pollution, alternative energy and otherglobal environmental problems between students in many countries aroundthe world.

One major problem expressed by two students was access to theInternet All students in the class had full time occupations and a majorityhad families. As a result they often did not have time to go to the computerlab during its operating hours. Those who had home computers requestedthat more in class assignments be given on email. In the future, for those

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who cannot buy computers and modems, it is hoped that such equipmentcan be loaned. At the University of Nebraska, students in secondary sciencemethods classes and during student teaching are already loaned computersand modems with good success. This was made possible through a grantfrom IBM and Mutual of Omaha (Bonnstetter, 1993). Support for loaningcomputers in Nevada comes from the Department of Energy. The DOE hasgiven a number of used computers to the College of Education. Within thefederal government's educational goals is the mandate that governmentagencies should donate excess hardware to universities and schools toexpedite the use of educational technology in instruction.

Summary and Conclusions

It seems more and more apparent that the world belongs to those who can

quickly access and retrieve useful information. The problem of technologywidening the gap between the educated and non educated is alreadybecoming apparent (Dertouzos, 1991). As teachers, are we not obligated tohelp our students use the most current means available to learn? The newhi-tech jobs are requiring employees to learn on the job as they seek 'just intime' information to carry out many tasks. Learning to use Email and theInternet is just another step in acquiring the skills that may be needed bymany future job holders to gather, send and receive information.Furthermore, the examples in this paper indicated that students who havehome computers may prefer learning mote from a computer screen evenwhen the same information is available in other ways.

In school settings, the Internet can support the STS teaching

methodology and the CLM by providing opportunities for integratinglearning, making learning more cooperative, providing transfer of processskills and improving attitudes toward science and technology. Classroomswith Internet capability are able to share teaching activities (especially thosethat involve global environmental issues) and compare data using Email inschools through out the world.

An emerging use of the Internet involves downloading graphics.Science teaching often requires explanations for which there is no goodvocabulary that the students understand. As more graphics become availableon the Internet, and the ease of downloading becomes friendlier, anothersource of visuals will be available for helping students understand conceptsfor which they do not have the vocabulary and experiences. The super

computer at Livermore National Lab., NASA and some regional weatherservices already have this service available to schools with the right hardw areand software. This use of graphics may be the next big jump in using realworld examples to improve science teaching in the classroom.

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Last, but perhaps most important, the Internet allows us to learn moreabout the cultures of other countries in a world that appears to desperatelyneed more bi-cultural understanding.

Correspondence

Mike Robinson, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University ofNevada, Reno, Nevada 89557, USA. Email: [email protected]

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