The web in high school science teaching: constructing a technology in practice

The Internet is becoming omnipresent as a resource for K-12 education. Teachers are a diverse set of users who must incorporate this resource into ongoing practice. Research on using the Internet in classrooms is lagging far behind deployment, and teachers are left to their own devices to figure out what works. Using case studies of three teachers, this study considers the work of teaching with the Internet as a site for understanding the challenges and problems teachers experience as they incorporate the Internet into their high school science teaching. Challenges include figuring out how to fit the Internet into the curriculum and finding time to do so; managing a new kind of discourse around Web sites; and establishing ways to hold students accountable for their work and to evaluate what they do. This research is aimed at informing system designers who provide technologies for teachers and teacher educators who prepare teachers to meet these challenges.