I would like to focus on the poster created by group two. To my mind this one is interesting for a variety of reasons. At first, I want to make clear that this decicion has nothing to do with the fact that I was a member of this team. No, I would like to concentrate on this poster, because it points out the biggest advantage of the World Wide Web in a vivid way. It offers an infinite number of possibilities for a teacher using it to improve the skills of his pupils. He or she might has a teaching unit focussing on "British culture". One effective way for the pupils to find out more about this topic would be that they start a research based on the internet. One strategy could be that the students start to inquire for information at the British governmental department via e-mail. This approach would have the positive side effect that the students would be confronted with an authentic speaking situation. Another possibility could be, that the students start to make contact to British teachers or students via "ICQ" or other forms of communication. These are only two possible suggestions leaping in my mind at the moment.. there are boundless possibilities to look for information in the World Wide Web.
These boundless possibilities I mentioned above can also have negative side effects, of course: The internet also offers many ways to restrain oneself from doing effective rersearch. This could be a problem for students in particular. If this problem arises, the teacher is in charge: He has the difficult task to guide the students. this is a rather tricky business because on the one hand, the teacher should direct the students that they focus themselves on their research, on the other hand, he should leave a margin for them, so that they still have the chance and the liberty to find an individual and creative way to find information.
In my opinion, that every teacher who wants his pupils to use the internet in his lessons, has to find a way to motivate the students to do an intensive and effective research on the internet. I think one way to achieve that could be that the teacher shows his studentts that he is a kind of partner who wants to help and to support them. Forcing his students to click on websites he already checked out before, would for one thing make it boring for the students and for another thing it wouldn`t lead to a variety of results making it exciting to compare them thereafter.
