This list I compiled is in reference to the sites that I have used to make teaching more engaging for my students. With Psychology there are numerous experiments that are sometimes difficult for my online students to understand. I like searching out tutorials, virtual demonstrations, and interactive labs.
1. What were the three most useful tools or resources resulting from the web walkabout?
My favorite is Mouse Party at the utah.edu site. It reviews the impact of illicit drugs on the body by allowing students to look at a mouse (behaving like a person) under the influence of a particular drug. It is entertaining but provides credible information on how drugs work and effect the body.
Another site that is helpful for my students looks at split-brain studies. It sets up a virtual lab of Mr. Split Brainy and you serve as a researcher. It allows students to stimulate a portion of the left-or-right visual field to see what the left and right hemisphere of the brain can process.
I also like the Exploratorism.edu site about memory. Students really enjoy playing memory games and I can provide these illustrations online and they can easily share with their friends in class labs.
2.How can students be taught to safely collect tools and resources that can help them maximize their learning?
Students can be taught to safely collect tools and resources like we can. They have to be made aware of the potential risk of using sites that are not reliable especially when it comes to producing work at the collegiate level. There are web quests that can be done to teach them the difference between usable and non-usable sites. Also demonstrating as a teacher the references to reliable sites may encourage them by leading through example.
3. What policies or procedures might need to be in place to make this possible?
Maybe a digital literacy course just like what we are engaging in now for all students, not just online students. It could become a prerequisite for online courses for students to complete or required for a course unit. The issue is that someone would have to monitor sites as new sites are being added and hopefully older ones updated. It would require man-power from the educator side to be aware of credible and not-so-credible sites before students. Then students can digitally sign-off a type of a digital literacy pledge.
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