Internet Resources: Designing and Critiquing Materials for Scientific Inquiry
Résumé
In twenty-first century science classrooms, teachers and students are frequently engaged with Internet resources: lesson plans, digital textbooks, various kinds of software, videos, and much more. There is, in particular, a profusion of online resources for the teaching and learning of science. This raises important questions about the design of online resources that are effective and engaging, and how educators can evaluate the quality of items they find. This entry discusses criteria for evaluating such resources in terms of their relevance for science inquiry learning. It presents a set of criteria for evaluating resources, with a focus on the nature of the inquiry tasks that those resources can support and their link to authentic science practices.