Successfully Implementing Online Communications in Schools

The study results offer insights into what it takes to effectively use online communications in schools. In addition to support at the school to insure that new technologies such as online access are actually working, teachers need training and ongoing support to help them use this technology effectively and integrate it into their classroom teaching.

Curriculum and Teacher Supports

The Civil Rights Unit was designed to allow teachers the flexibility to teach a unit of study that they most likely had taught in the past and it provided teachers with suggestions for activities and ways to help students organize their work. The curriculum supports helped students and teachers develop strategies for analyzing and synthesizing information. An often-heard criticism of online use in classrooms is that the amount of resources available can easily overwhelm students and teachers, thereby doing more harm than good. The STS curricular framework and worksheets offered strategies to help students identify key elements of their topic, to organize the information they found into categories, and to structure their ideas into a compelling presentation for their project.

Scores on student projects, student and teacher questionnaire responses, and teachers' interview statements, show that curriculum and ongoing teacher supports combined with online use had positive effects on student learning and on teacher practice. Evaluations of student projects offer the most significant support for the importance of a curriculum that can adapt current practices to the inclusion of online activities and resources. Many teachers reported in their phone interview that the curriculum framework, lesson plans, activities, and worksheets for the Civil Rights Unit were useful. In addition, teachers in the experimental group relayed the importance of online communications in supporting their teaching efforts. They spoke about the help they received from peers and experts online, the community-building interactions they had with other teachers and community mentors, and the benefits of the wide range of resources available on Scholastic Network and the Internet. As a result, teachers themselves became engaged in learning.