Again I sat down on this Saturday to prepare my Monday and Tuesday classes, and ended up spending my whole afternoon scavenging on the Web. I should avoid checking my email first, because that's where I get distracted. A message was waiting for me from www.webtools for Education so I started to check out what was offered. One site led to another. Some I bookmarked, using Furl. Some I emailed the links on to other teachers who might have an interest in their content. Some I simply read through.

Then, already in that rhythm, I opened another email, Stephen Downes' OLDaily - a newsletter on the educational use of technology that comes out every weekday. Again I scanned, bookmarked, forwarded, and read. I was three days behind in reading my OLDaily messages, so I checked through the ones I hadn't got to yet, scanning, bookmarking, forwarding, and reading. At least I didn't go to my Bloglines account where I have over 20 blogs aggregated. I could have spent another couple of hours going through what was new in my collection of education and technology blogs. What a way to avoid getting down to my lesson preparation!

Before I get too hard on myself, I have to look a bit more deeply at what I'm actually doing. While it's true I had intended to think through my lesson and create the Web pages needed to direct my students in class and for their homework, I can still do that tomorrow afternoon. What I did today was research. Not organized, pre-planned research, but scavenging through the massive influx of information that the Web provides.

And it is scavenging! I find Web sites that I can link to the Web pages I prepare for my students. I'd rather find and share information and instructions than recreate them. (I think my students benefit from seeing how much they can support their own learning by finding helpful sites on the Web.) I find Web sites that I can send to colleagues, and thereby keep in touch with them. I find free Web tools that allow me to expand what I can do without spending more money than I've already spent on my computer, the broadband access, and the propriatory software I use. I also find information about teaching theories and practice. I learned a lot this afternoon, as I always do when I research by scavenging.

I believe the major responsibility of teachers, especially of teachers of subjects to do with communications and/or research is to teach ourselves and our students how to use the Web.As I worked on my lesson Webpage - preparing it for my WebCT course site - for this week's poetry class, I offered definitions linked to Wikipedia.Why? Because students need to become aware of what is available to help them learn and think.

As I point out in my blog, WebToolsforLearners, available here - http://webtoolsforlearners.blogspot.com/2005/09/why-wikipedia.html
Wikipedia has been checked out and in one study was rated more accurate than Encarta.So I point out Wikipedia to my students, and show them this alternative to sorting through the huge list of sites that Google or other search engines give them.

Answers.com - http://www.answers.com/ - also helps organize the masses of information there on the Web, often using Wikipedia but going beyond it too. A small free download allows even the most impulsive person to look up words and names with ease.

Playing with such resources and spreading the word about them is both fun, and a way of being a responsible educator - IMHO