Demystifying+the+Internet

NEIT18 | Demystifying the Internet Camille Harrison, STEAM Integrator and Materials Librarian Briar Sauro, Director of Libraries and Research The Berkeley Carroll School

Our model for teaching technology: Build expectations for students to know not how to use a specific app but to give them an understanding of specific things you can do with things like a word processor does x, y, z. So they can handle when an app updates because it builds that expectation of the things they know they can find.

What spurred the need for this in our community? We found our students were doing things like using the word “glitch” and not knowing what or how to really say what is not working.

Lessons we have done:

Google Drive Lesson - teaches about the Cloud, in addition to the idea of how a word processor works

Keyword Lesson - how does Google work, it’s not searching everything in the internet rather the things they have indexed

What is the internet? The preassessment: Draw the internet using pictures and words. Then watch videos (listed below) and having discussions about what they see and hear. Then post assessment: add and edit to original creation in different color.

Organizing your digital files - At first in response with the need to upload and save work every year, but discovered they need help with understanding how to organize their digital “stuff”

Ideas with how to improve and adapt this lesson:

Create the classification system but have to justify based on the materials they are using

Use a physical binder with the Google logos to help have that physical application to understanding this skill

Interesting things people said/mentioned:

“Match info need with info resource” - if you are looking for info on animals, will you look in the biography section. Teach students how to figure out and do this.

Here are the videos we used for What is the Internet:

TED Talk - 12 minutes - maybe too hard but engaging… from Infobase Classroom Video on Demand or here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XE_FPEFpHt4

Undersea cable video - maybe watch 11 min of it? Very technical but easier to see what's happening - start around minute 32 - from Infobase Classroom Video on Demand

Google cables - 3 min - maybe...? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0TZwiUwZwIE

Undersea cable map w interesting facts - 2:22 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IlAJJI-qG2k

Khan Academy - 6:40 - complicated but really well done and helpful

- https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/code-org/internet-works/v/the-internet-wires-cables-and-wifi

The Kids Should See This - http://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/a-journey-to-the-bottom-of-the-internet

FOR NEXT YEAR: How can we incorporate activity into this so they aren't sitting the whole time? Can they act something out or something?

Additional Resources:

Instead of Google, BC Custom Search which is something we have them practice keyword searching but that is something that we tell what to search through.

The Berkeley Carroll Lower School Library Site - https://sites.google.com/berkeleycarroll.org/lslibraries/general-research

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