One of the most important things that we can teach students today is how to use the Internet to improve their own work. While it’s common to teach kids the basics of Internet use through computer courses and general education, it is not yet as common to teach kids where the good material is online and where it’s not.

For example, many teachers are starting to ban the use of Wikipedia as a resource for students but they are failing to teach those students where to go to look for more accurate information when doing online research. Likewise, we often teach students how to set up a basic website but we don’t teach them where to find the resources to make that website really work for them.

One thing that a teacher can do to start changing this is to set up a template forum in the classroom. This is a place where the entire class can go online to discuss different aspects of web design. One assignment could be to find web design tutorials or free templates online and then to link to them and discuss them in the forum.

This teaches many skills include online research, online discussion and the proper use of forums. It’s exercises like these that really take kids beyond what they already know about the Internet and into an educational area that benefits them.

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