Promises and Pitfalls of Internet Research
Putting Internet Research into Perspective
Tips & Suggestions for Students
Enabling students to transform information into knowledge requires sound instruction and guidance from a teacher. Hunt Lyman, a teacher at Notre Dame Academy in Virginia, argues that sending students to the web to find information without teacher guidance is like telling someone to go to the library and find a book (60). Anstendig and Meyers also caution that students should not "just be let loose" on the Internet (8). Annette Lamb, Nancy Smith, and Larry Johnson, from the University of Southern Indiana, found that the most productive learning environments were ones in which teachers "acted as a facilitator, paying careful attention to students and guiding them through critical stages of their projects" in order to "to teach search strategies, critical evaluation, decision making, problem solving, and communication skills" (7).
