Reading and Speaking 2

14. Read and discuss Article 1. While reading find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use these words in the further discussion of the problem.

To go online, to surf the Web, misinformation, guidance on smth, to be inaccessible, profound(ly), to encounter smth, credible, to scrutinize smth, to enroll smb in a school, to interact with smb, to be at the forefront of smth, cutting-edge technology

Article 1

Log on and learn

No more teachers?

No more books?

For today’s kids the Internet has all the answers.

Increasingly, the Internet is a cyberteacher inside, as well as outside, the classroom. In the United States, for example, more than 78 percent of kids aged 12 to 17 go online, according to a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project. A lot of them are just surfing the Web and instant-messaging their friends. But 94 percent of those online said they also used it for schoolwork.

Some of what they find surely expands their minds. But there is also tremendous misinformation out there – and at times, remarkably little guidance from teachers. “Computers and the Internet by themselves hold little educational value,” says John Bailey, director of educational technology at the US Department of Education. But when used well, technology lets kids tap into a vast store of knowledge that was once almost inaccessible.

Perhaps more than anything else, the Internet search engine Google has profoundly altered homework habits across the globe. When Noako Koyasu, a high-school senior in Tokyo, recently got a biology assignment to write a report on the brain, she just plugged the word “cerebrum” into Google. In the old days, before her mother got a computer, she had to go to the school library and get a stack of textbooks. “I have been able to access stuff, written by experts, which I would have never encountered if not for the Internet,” Koyasu says. But like many students, Koyasu received no guidance on how to surf through Web sources to determine the credible ones. “The Internet is so big and so undocumented, it’s like getting a really fast car and no map. You just get lost,” says Robert Schrag, a professor of communication at North Carolina State University who studies the Web. He teaches his own students to scrutinize Web sources and to limit them to four out of the 14 sources he requires for research papers.

Several schools have gone so far as to put a whole curriculum online. After seeing how much “dead time” her daughter, Heather, endured in Denver public school, Nancy Romberg enrolled her in one of about a dozen “virtual high schools” that have opened in the United States in the last five years. Heather began working from home via computer, choosing when she did what. Romberg thinks her daughter got more attention interacting with instructors online.

Critics say that virtually schooled kids will be socially disadvantaged because they won’t develop the skills to relate to their peers. But Barbara Frey, the principal of Denver’s cyber school, argues that her students interact online with a much broader range of people than they would otherwise. That’s especially true for kids in remote, rural areas.

The state of California is at the forefront of educational innovation. Two public schools – High Tech High and New Tech High in Napa – are using technology to completely revamp schooling. Partially funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, they merge cutting-edge technology with traditional learning. A typical assignment at New Tech High, for example, is a project like “The President’s Dilemma,” a simulation of the 1970s US oil crisis. Students pretend to be the president’s economic advisors and collaborate on what action to take. They meet in online chat rooms for virtual study groups. Everything the students need for the course is kept in a project briefcase online. Students are free to contact the two teachers by e-mail at any time.

This model of education may soon go international. Australia and Britain each plan to open a school based on High Tech High.

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)