Internet Surfing in an Elementary Classroom: Students and Teachers Negotiate the Waves

Maureen Carroll

“I’m not the expert on everything. We’re all learning from resources.” This bold and brave statement from a teacher trying to figure out how best to integrate technology into her curriculum captures the tensions inherent in a difficult struggle. Computers are becoming as ubiquitous as chalkboards in many classrooms, challenging teachers to find ways to incorporate technology in support of curricular and pedagogical goals. On one hand, the urge is strong to script the lesson, set the bookmarks, and guide the student. Yet one of the greatest benefits of using computers, and particularly the Internet, is that they afford freedom to explore. Teachers must be willing to allow students to exercise that freedom, to struggle, to be risk takers -- all the while keeping in mind students’ strengths and weaknesses and becoming learners along with them. It is only when teachers are willing to learn both with and from students that technology has the potential to inform the delicate balance of instructional decision making. As Leu (in press, online document) describes, The teacher’s role becomes even more important within the new literacies. Internet resources will increase, not decrease, the central role teachers play in orchestrating learning experiences for students. Teachers will be challenged to thoughtfully guide students’ learning within information environments that are richer and more complex than traditional print media, presenting richer and more complex learning opportunities for both them and their students.

Related Postings from the Archives Dancing on the Keyboard by Maureen Carroll Instructional Approaches Used to Integrate Literacy and Technology by Betsy Baker Taking Computers Out of the Corner by Melanie Kuhn Beyond Classroom Boundaries by Amelia El-Hindi

This article draws on data collected for an ethnographic study that focused on literacy learning and instruction using computers with students aged 7 to 9 years. The teacher in the combined second- and third-grade classroom gave students the freedom to explore the rich resources of the Internet. Two students are profiled here, and their discoveries and struggles as they negotiate the Web and related technology illuminate the tensions between guidance and freedom in the instructional process, and suggest some pathways for resolving them.

Theoretical Perspective

In order to explore more fully the role of classroom technology in the child’s meaning construction process, this discussion is situated within a social-constructivist perspective. Vygotsky (1962) describes how the transmission of culture and knowledge and the implicit sociocultural meaning given any event or activity shape the way we think and act. Our relationship with reality is heavily mediated by social relationships, tools, and artifacts. Meanings are established interpersonally before they become intrapersonal. The process consists of interactions and joint construction of meaning within a social context.

The children in the study described here made use of the tool of technology as they went about their classroom lives as language and literacy learners, engaged in the social construction of meaning. As Bakhtin (1981, 1986) suggests, learning to use language involves learning to interact with others in social situations and, at the same time, learning to exist and function within dominant beliefs about human relationships.

There are three critical areas to consider in understanding the role technology can play in literacy development from this social-constructivist perspective. The first is the way that technology gives children access to multiple symbolic perspectives in their meaning-construction process. Children construct meaning using the symbolic resources available to them. Harste (1994) describes how “humans are makers and shapers of symbols and hence of meaning.” To mediate our world, we have created multiple interrelated sign and symbol systems for communication, including, for example, art, music, dance, gesture, and story. As a tool for meaning construction, technology provides a means for the learner to move easily within and among sign systems. It can facilitate the child’s use of many forms of expression to explore the dimensions of pictures, print, and sound in representing meaning.

Second, it is important to examine the ways in which technology provides opportunities to explore the dimensions of symbol systems. Salomon (1979) states that a medium is defined by how its symbol systems and technological attributes affect cognitive processing, and that any particular medium requires use of a unique set of cognitive skills to derive meaning from it. Kinzer and Leu (1997) describe how the complexity available to the computer user, in terms of graphics, traditional text, sound, video, and animation, calls for an increase in strategic knowledge and affects reading and writing.

Labbo (1996) describes how children are actively involved in a cycle of cognitive work and hypothesis making that is facilitated through the use of the computer. Chia and Duthie (1994) found that using a computer to generate artwork supported experimentation as kindergarten children played with different dimensions of print. Dyson (1989) describes the inextricable relationship between the message and the medium:

It is easy to pull written language out of the constellation of symbol systems of which it is a part and within which children experience it. Moreover, it is easy to treat that written language as a subject for the child to learn in school, rather than as a tool for the child’s playful and thoughtful expression. (p. 271)

Technology, then, is a tool that may broaden students’ symbolic repertoire in that it contains elements of symbol systems that children are familiar with, such as letters, words, sounds and pictures. At the same time it exposes them to new forms of representation and new ways of making use of the familiar.

The third important element in understanding the role of technology in the child’s meaning-construction process is the nature of the relationship between technology and affect. The use of technology may facilitate the child’s engagement with text and provides an interesting and broad range of opportunities that may increase motivation to read and write (Chang & Osguthorpe, 1990; Phenix & Hannan, 1984). Affective elements are an important part of the child’s developing feelings, beliefs, and emotions about reading and writing (Mathewson, 1994; Ruddell & Ruddell, 1994).

In sum, this study was guided by a social-constructivist perspective of learning. Within the highly social context of the classroom, children make use of different aspects of technology as they move within and across symbol systems, explore different aspects of written language, and become engaged in literacy experiences.

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Background Information

Setting. Ms. Tupou’s classroom of 20 bright and vibrant second- and third-grade students (aged approximately 7 to 9 years) in a middle-class suburban school in the San Francisco (California, USA) area was filled with both order and cheerful disarray. Books were everywhere: on shelves, on desks, on tables, in corners. Riotous colors adorned the walls, where student art reigned. The torn edges of wire-bound notebooks, well worn journals, and brightly colored folders resisted the order of the neatly divided storage cubbies. Cabinets and drawers were labeled, often in Spanish, and freestanding easels framed the scheduling of daily activities. Four personal computers lined a wall. A printer stood at one end of the row of computers, and a color copy machine was at the other end. The center of the room was filled with four long rectangular tables lined with bright blue plastic chairs. A beanbag chair was tucked in one corner to create a private reading space. One could feel a warm, welcoming ambiance and the allure of a place where children’s work, words, and play were valued.

Instructional climate. Six key features characterized the classroom culture that Ms. Tupou and her students created:

• A focus on process
• The centrality of choice
• A critical stance toward information sources
• The use of peers as resources
• A supportive risk-taking environment
• Caring, respect, and a sense of responsibility for others as members of a learning community

The day’s routine began with opening circle, during which the daily agenda was discussed. Within the rich literacy curriculum, students rotated weekly through 90-minute periods in different centers that housed a variety of reading and writing activities. Ms. Tupou would try to spend time at each center each day. Activities, some of which always involved computers (as long as there were no hardware or software problems), might include a word-analysis program run by a parent volunteer, handwriting, one-on-one reading, book clubs, and the writing of essays, poems, research reports, and book reviews.

Students. Seth and Elena, two students with contrasting styles of learning and exploring, are described in this article. Both were second graders. Seth was always in motion, fiddling constantly with his pencil or the computer mouse, and folding and refolding his papers. He had a small, thin frame and dressed as though he’d jumped quickly out of bed and, wanting to get on with the fun of the day, grabbed the first clothes he touched with little regard for color combinations or style.

Seth was strongly drawn to the classroom computers and was considered the class expert on all matters relating to them. He had an open-mindedness about him, and he was unafraid to speculate. Once during a discussion on the meaning of the word photosynthesis, he said, “I know that I’ve seen that word in another place but I can’t really remember what it means.” He didn’t know the correct answer, but was willing to risk a guess. In other situations, he guessed, thought aloud, and was open to considering multiple possibilities. He had this attitude toward computers as well: if he didn’t know exactly how to do something, he simply experimented. Seth’s curiosity drove his actions.

Elena was sweet, shy, and soft spoken. In a large group, she seldom spoke out, though in smaller groups she was much more talkative. She had a wonderful sense of humor and made keen, insightful comments on books, people, and the world. She would laugh with glee when drawing with a friend or playing a computer game.

An avid reader, Elena said she liked to read because “it’s quiet and I don’t like to be that loud.” She also liked to write “because you read when you write,” and enjoyed creating imaginative stories. Elena seemed to look for any opportunity to spend time reading. Once when there were only a few minutes left in literacy center time and Elena realized she wouldn’t have time to write down what she had read about, she said, “I don’t care, we can still read.” She was extremely focused when she was working on tasks, and seemed genuinely to enjoy intellectual challenges.

The following vignettes chronicle Seth and Elena’s responses to their teacher’s invitation to explore technology in the context of their daily classroom lives and illuminate the tensions between freedom and guidance that lie at the heart of instructional decision-making. Seth was caught up in the compelling Web sites he explored, and wandered from the task he had been given. Elena struggled to understand the workings of an Internet search engine that seemed to thwart her efforts to explore. Their teacher’s responses to their efforts illustrate some possible ways to confront the challenges of allowing a student freedom while at the same time providing guidance in literacy learning activities.

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“I Couldn’t Find Anything”

When Seth sat down at the computer during literacy center time, he knew he was supposed to conduct an Internet search for information that he could use in his ocean research project. The students in Ms. Tupou’s class had been collecting information from books and computers at school and at home, and during literacy centers time the previous week, Ms. Tupou had explained to him and the small group working at the computers how to use the search function at Yahooligans, a Web guide created by Yahoo for children aged 7 to 12. Seth and his classmate Oliver worked next to each other. They weren’t working together, but their proximity encouraged ongoing commentary and collaboration. Seth began purposefully, exploring the abundance of Internet sites with information on freshwater jellyfish. He saw videos of swarms of jellyfish waving their tentacles in aqua waters. He found pictures of ocean explorers sharing their finds. He saw purple-striped jellyfish and read excerpts from ’My Life as a Blob.” And somewhere along his path, he got lost in cyberspace.

Seth’s journey began at Yahooligans, where he typed the words freshwater jellyfish into the search box and came up with a variety of site matches. He clicked first on a link that led him to a site housed in the biology department of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. “Now you’re getting some facts,” Oliver said. “Yeah, this is good,” Seth answered. He clicked on a link to “What do they look like?” and used the browser back button to return to the home page, where he selected a link to a page that asked “Is there such a thing as a freshwater jellyfish?” He dragged the cursor to the scroll bar and scrolled down the page. He began to pick up speed, paying less and less attention to Oliver. After a short time, he was moving so quickly that it became impossible even to read the words on the Web pages as they scrolled by.

Seth clicked on a picture and said, “I think it is searching, it’s searching, it’s searching....” He began flipping the picture screen back and forth, up and down at dizzying speed. “It’s searching, it’s searching. Oliver, your computer is the slowest of all.” He clicked on the first image that appeared and was able to view it in a larger size. Then he began to move up and down quickly using the mouse. He pulled down the edit menu and then clicked his back button twice. He followed a link to a different site, and moved the image around again.

“Hello people,” Seth said to a picture that loaded briefly on his screen. He then returned to Yahooligans, scrolled down to the search box, deleted freshwater jellyfish, and typed in jellyfish. When he clicked to the first site from his list of search results, he began to scroll quickly down the page.

Oliver seemed excited that Seth appeared to be successful: “Oh, Seth, you got a whole bunch of facts!”

“Oh cool,” said Seth.

“Better start looking,” said Oliver, reminding Seth of their purpose.

“I hit the jackpot,” said Seth. “I got three paragraphs full of stuff in here. It seems like I have....” He then began to fiddle with the squishy gel in the mousepad. Instead of writing down any of the facts in the three paragraphs, Seth seemed only to want to explore further, and the fact-finding mission the teacher had given him was forgotten.

After dismissing the first site with “Nah, not that one,” Seth went to the National Geographic Web site. “No bones. No brain. But what a sting!” Seth read aloud. He continued to read silently for a bit and then moved on to the Discovery Channel Web site, where he found “My Life as a Blob” and began to explore.

Seth was very excited about all the amazing pictures and video he was finding. He began to follow a pattern of looking at a picture, clicking on it to get a larger image, viewing it, returning to the previous screen, and then moving down to view the next picture on the page. He stared intently at the screen, and commented to himself, rather than Oliver, about what he was seeing. “Let’s get up close on this one. Ooh, this is gonna be a great picture! Ooh! Ooh!”

As he became more and more absorbed in his explorations, Seth began to play. When he came to an online slide show he wasn’t sure how to view, he simply tried several different strategies until he was successful. “Ooh, this is.... Look at this! Doesn’t it look like an alien ship? It looks sort of like an alien ship.... I’m gonna try to do the whole....“ He went to the next slide and the next, commenting to himself along the way. He continued to explore different sites, and seemed to be engrossed and enjoying himself immensely. He was smiling, his eyes widened, and his voice rose excitedly with each new discovery.

Rhett, a classmate, came over and asked him about his topic: “Are you doing freshwater jellyfish?”

“Not really,” Seth answered. “I couldn’t find anything.”

Instructional considerations. Seth had, of course, seen an abundance of facts about freshwater jellyfish in his explorations -- he simply had not formally collected any. He had set out purposefully on the fact-finding mission Ms. Tupou had assigned, but as he became engrossed with what he was seeing and doing, his focus changed and he lost track of the task, and even of his friend beside him. An abundance of images, sound, and motion captivated him. He was fascinated by the processes of exploring as he clicked, scrolled, downloaded, and clicked again at lightning speed, a cyber-adventurer pushing his Internet search to its limits. He actively manipulated and navigated myriad features, reading, rereading, speaking, skimming, and making choices about what to investigate next. He was motivated by what he saw and could do, by what he could share and by what he could keep his own. He enjoyed his journey immensely. He did not accomplish the goal of gathering facts for his research project, but he was immersed in a variety of active learning tasks.

At the end of the 90-minute literacy center period, Ms. Tupou saw that Seth had not collected anything to use in his research report. She knew that Seth was a quick moving, energetic learner whose attention she often needed to refocus on the task at hand. The tension between guidance and freedom became evident as Ms. Tupou decided that, at that moment, her long-term goal of having her students learn how to navigate the Internet was more important than her short-term goal of having them collect facts from Internet sources.

Ms. Tupou’s decision must be considered within the context of the larger instructional goal of the ocean research projects. The students worked on these projects individually for nearly four weeks, while at the same time creating a class research project that served as a model for the individual efforts. For example, Ms. Tupou had the students write the facts they collected on strips of paper, and she then presented a whole-class lesson in which she modeled how to organize facts into coherent paragraphs. She also showed the students how to conduct research on and off the computer, conducted miniconferences during writing time, and monitored the ongoing collection of facts in the students’ reading journals. She taught the class how to critique and review research sources and provided directed lessons on how to search the Internet.

Ms. Tupou’s modeling facilitated the development of research and writing skills, allowed students to gain a more in-depth knowledge of a variety of concepts, and offered a perspective of learning as an incremental process. As she said in an interview,

We go through that whole process from beginning to end as a class first as a model. And I’m trying to kind of stay one step ahead of them, but at the same time the students are either in groups or individually, taking it through that very same process on their own. So they’re getting the actual practice of having to find resources for research, having to gather information and synthesize it, develop those facts, and write the report. Whereas in a more traditional classroom it may not be quite as in depth and as involved and...it may just be “Here are your books, read them, you write a book report on an ocean animal.” It’s just there’s a lot more depth to it and I think the emphasis is much more on process.

Ms. Tupou had both long- and short-term instructional goals for students’ computer use in literacy activities. The short-term goal was the task at hand -- in this case finding information for the research project, but in other cases such things as investigating software programs, reading information on a Web site, answering questions based on online information, or typing poems using word-processing software. Long-term goals focused on more far-reaching aspects of the task: in-depth investigation of topics, learning how the Internet functions, learning how to use particular software programs, learning about Internet search strategies, and determining how to evaluate varied sources of information, for example.

The students in this classroom were in an environment where process was stressed over product. They were encouraged to think about what they were doing, and how they were doing it. For example, in one interview, Ms. Tupou mentioned that although it may have been easier for the students to revise their research reports on the computer, she wanted them to do so by hand so that she could see the process and could modify her instruction accordingly.

Seth’s explorations occurred in the initial stages of the research project, when students were beginning to collect information. Ms. Tupou met with Seth the day following his Internet journey. She had seen that his fact collection was sparse, and she knew that she wanted him to be more productive. To achieve this, she included him in the goal-setting process by asking him to make a reasonable judgment about how many facts he could collect in one 90-minute period and to use this number as his goal. In this way, Ms. Tupou gave Seth the freedom to explore in ways that he was comfortable with. She used what she knew about individual variation to decide how best to facilitate Seth’s literacy learning while using the computer. She modified her instructional goals as she saw how Seth went about constructing knowledge. Her teaching was responsive and fluid. Ms. Tupou’s instructional decision making was informed by her observation of how Seth used technology in the meaning-construction process. Ultimately, Seth completed his ocean research project successfully, collecting facts from a variety of sources.

This example illustrates the delicate balance between freedom and guidance that is continually renegotiated in responsive teaching and learning. In the following vignette, Elena is also given time and freedom to search the Internet, but her appropriation of the tool of technology contrasts with Seth’s in interesting ways.

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“No Match Found for Twilight Zone”

The four classroom computers displayed the Yahooligans Web site. Serena and Elena sat at adjacent computers during literacy centers, listening as Ms. Tupou told them, “I will be working with you on some search strategies.”

“How you do this?” Elena asked Serena.

“Click on this,” said Serena, pointing to the text box. “Do your thing.”

Ms. Tupou let them explore. Elena typed twilight zone in the search box, and the message “No match found for twilight zone” appeared on the screen. Elena realized that she had a problem, but she didn’t know what to do about it. “I got nothing. Look, I didn’t find anything,” she said, looking at Serena and Oliver. “I can’t learn anything. It just says twilight zone.” Elena realized that the other kids had found sites to explore, and she decided that she needed some help. She asked Ms. Tupou to look at her screen.

“Do you know what this message means, Elena?” Ms. Tupou asked.

“No,” said Elena.

After presenting a minilesson, Ms. Tupou let the children explore as she circulated around the classroom to work with students in other small groups. Serena assumed that Elena had simply not used the right search term. “You can just go to deep sea,” she said, coming over to Elena’s computer and moving the cursor back into the search box. Elena typed “deep sea” and scrolled the search results. After a few more clicks, the following appeared on the screen:

Elena then clicked on “Marine Life” in the category bar at the top of her screen and accessed the following page:

“OK, this is better,” she said. “Coral reefs would help.” She clicked several times more, and found herself moving from one page of links to another. Elena began to scroll down the screen, without realizing that it is necessary to click on the words on a search results page to move to the actual Web sites. She saw that Serena had different kinds of information on her screen, including pictures and other graphics. “Where are you? How did you get there?” she asked.

Serena replied, “I searched different things. I’ll get there for you. Go back down. Back to home page.”

“I’m looking at this,” said Elena, resisting Serena’s help. “I do not know what to do on this. I look at this....” Elena then decided to go back to the beginning, and hit the back button three times. “OK, here I was....” She scrolled up and said, “I don’t get what to do.” She scrolled down, looked at Serena and Oliver, and kept scrolling without clicking on any links. “How you do this?”

“What are you trying to do?” asked Serena.

“I’m trying to find ocean animals,” Elena said.

Serena thought Elena was having a problem making a choice of which link to follow. “You did deep sea. You pick the one you’re interested in,” said Serena.

Elena decided that it must be the search terms that were causing her problems. “I’ll just do deep sea,” Elena said. Serena told her she could do this by using the bar or the arrow. Serena clicked in the box to set the cursor, and then Elena typed “ocean animals” and clicked on the next search option. “Next search?” she asked Serena.

“Yes, yes,” she answered.

Elena hit the “Next Search” button and arrived at yet another page of links. Still, she did not seem to realize that she had to click again to move off the search results screen. She asked Serena again, but this time Serena didn’t give any helpful information since she wasn’t really sure what Elena’s problem was. “How should I find the...?” Elena asked.

Now Serena characterized the problem as technical: “It’s a waiting thing. That always happens to me. It’s a waiting thing. It always takes an hour.”

Elena continued to click and found herself on a page titled Ocean Animals. She clicked on “Common Dolphin” and suddenly, as a picture appeared on the screen, she realized she had done the right thing -- she had discovered how to search the Internet at last.

Instructional considerations. Elena’s experience occurred within a classroom culture that valued exploration and experimentation, focused on process, promoted centrality of choice, and encouraged the use of class members as resources. It is possible that, at the end of the literacy centers period, Elena may not have figured out how to conduct an Internet search, but she had the opportunity to discover that for herself. This opportunity was consistent with the process focus of the classroom. Ms. Tupou described her curriculum as one that emphasized “the critical thinking aspect, the problem solving, the fact that the children are very responsible for pulling together and really working out a lot of the problems that in a more traditional classroom the teacher might prepare for ahead of time. It probably means that that is as essential to learning as is the actual worksheet they are going to complete.” Ms. Tupou made the instructional decision to allow Elena the chance to work through her difficulties independently.

The element of choice permeated the instructional and social climate of this classroom, and Elena was responsible for making the choice about how to conduct her explorations on the Internet. When Ms. Tupou described her classroom, she said that there was “an openness and a freedom to make choices, to have responsibility.” Ms. Tupou observed the students’ choices and used them to inform her own ongoing understanding and assessment of their abilities.

Another norm in this classroom was the students’ willingness to rely on one another. In an informal interview, Ms. Tupou said, “I’m not the expert on everything. We’re all learning from resources.... It’s always OK to ask for help.” By validating the students’ expertise, acknowledging her own limitations, and facilitating mentoring, Ms. Tupou encouraged students to use one another as information resources. In her struggles with this Internet search engine, Elena asked her peers for help and also experimented on her own until she experienced success.

Willingness to take risks does not come easily to many children. Ms. Tupou explicitly and publicly supported those who took risks. When a student ventured a guess that turned out to be incorrect, she would say, “That’s okay. We’re learning. Thanks for taking a chance.” She used students’ ideas, gave direct feedback on how to go about risk taking, characterized the difficulties in doing so, and supported students’ efforts. Elena took a risk as she experimented. What could have been an exercise in frustration ended in a heightened understanding of search strategies for this persistent learner.

Elena was not simply a lost wanderer in cyberspace. Instead, she was an active participant in the teaching and learning relationship that existed in her particular classroom culture. Elena’s behavior reflected the classroom norms and was consistent with her teacher’s expectations and instructional goals.

In this event, Elena needed to figure out what words meant in the unfamiliar context of an Internet search engine. A proficient reader, she was used to reading and understanding text; she also knew how to click a computer mouse. What she did not know is that the words displayed on a search results page are hyperlinks to other Web sites and pages. Once she discovered this, she had access to another symbolic representation of meaning. She was driven by the frustration she felt when she compared her results with those of her peers, and didn’t understand what she was doing incorrectly. This drove her to try other strategies, some of which -- such as scrolling -- were unsuccessful. But she persisted until she discovered the unique meaning of hyperlinked text on a Web site. Although literacy centers ended that day before she was able to gather information for her ocean research report, Elena moved on to a different activity with a sense of accomplishment in her newfound skill in searching the Internet.

In this instructional environment, Elena was given the time and freedom to explore and to discover new meanings and understandings. If Ms. Tupou had simply given Elena information on how to search, she would have denied her the opportunity to figure things out for herself. Elena not only found out how to search, but how to be persistent, an extremely helpful trait for computer users. This sort of “tinkering” complemented how Elena liked to learn. She was quite comfortable with independent exploration, as Ms. Tupou knew. She used what she knew about Elena and her learning style to make a decision on how to best facilitate this individual’s literacy learning while using the computer. Ultimately, Elena successfully completed her ocean research project, and became an adept Internet “surfer.”

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Discussion

As teachers and students use technology in the classroom and learn from one another, the balance between freedom and guidance in instruction is continually renegotiated. Teachers take a risk when they step back and allow their students to struggle with technology. It is possible that in classroom cultures with different values and norms, students like Seth would simply continue surfing endlessly for information and students without Elena’s tenacity would become highly frustrated with their lack of success. But in Ms. Tupou’s classroom, technology was a tool approached and used within a particular classroom culture; the constraints, values, and possibilities inherent in the culture shaped the way the students used the tool. It is important to consider that technology use cannot and should not be considered in isolation from the existing classroom culture.

Ms. Tupou’s instructional decision making was based on her belief that students need time to explore and experiment with technology. She valued observation and reflection in teaching, knew how to make decisions, and was aware of the need to modify her instruction based on students’ needs. For her, teaching and learning do not have a tidy start and end point; instead, it is in the messy and unformed boundaries between freedom and guidance where most real learning occurs.

When I asked Ms. Tupou to describe the role of technology in her classroom, she replied, “Well, I think right now I really see it as a support tool for things that we’re already doing...rather than having it be one more thing we have to teach. Of course there are the skills and strategies that come along with using it, but...my goal is to try and implement it as seamlessly as possible into things we’re already doing as a support tool.” In this classroom, technology was a tool that encouraged risk taking and introduced new possibilities for meaning making into the curriculum.

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Classroom Implications

The following implications for computer use in the classroom are suggested by this study:

1. Students need time to explore what technology can do, and what they can do with technology, as they make decisions about how to use this tool to achieve social and intellectual goals. When we ask students to explore, we have to be willing to accept that they may end up in different places than we might have planned for. Then, we adapt our goals.
   
   
2. Teachers need to be aware of each student’s strength and weaknesses as learners, and modify instructional decision making accordingly. As Anderson-Inman, Horney, Chen, and Lewin (1994) suggest, not all students are ready to read and learn in hypertext environments, and each has a different style of using computers in literacy activities.
   
   
3. Students should be encouraged to adopt an open-minded stance toward technology, to be resourceful, and to take risks as literacy learners. Different students have different levels of comfort with risk. The open-endedness of computer use challenges learners who are accustomed to a more structured learning experience. Teachers should use what they know about their students to find the best ways to encourage particular individuals to explore and experiment using technology.
   
   
4. Students and teachers can and should learn from each other as technology users. One of the greatest benefits of Internet technology is that it has made so much information available, from so many sources. The teacher is no longer is the sole “owner” of content knowledge. As Harste (1994) states, “It is when we are inquirers ourselves that we become the best teachers.”

As Bussis, Chittenden, Amarel, and Klausner (1985) state, we must allow children to develop “the seat of their best judgment.” It is only then that they can be empowered agents in their own learning. There is no one best way to incorporate technology into the classroom for all learners. The best that we can do is closely observe how children learn, and decide how best to support instructional goals for literacy development. In this way, teachers and students can ride together the new waves of teaching and learning that technology offers.

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References

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About the Author

Maureen Carroll holds a doctorate in language, literacy, and culture from the University of California at Berkeley, USA. She is cofounder of Bay Breeze Educational Resources, an educational technology curriculum development company. Her background is in education and publishing, in both the academic and nonacademic worlds. She has taught at the elementary, junior high, and college levels.

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Citation: Carroll, M. (2001, September). Internet surfing in an elementary classroom: Students and teachers negotiate the waves. Reading Online, 5(2). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=carroll2/index.html

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Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted September 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232