Welcome to the Learning Exchange for Teachers and Students through the InterNet (LETSNet) project home page at Michigan State University College of Education. This website is dedicated to helping teachers experience the potential value of the World Wide Web (Web) in the classroom by providing actual examples of real teachers who are using the Internet today.
Mission Statement: LETSNet is a dynamic on-line environment where teachers can develop their understandings of the Web and find ways to effectively use - or make sense of - the World-Wide Web in their classrooms. To help teachers achieve these goals, we have organized teaching resources around classroom teachers' stories, including lesson plans, curriculum standards and guides, pointers to e-mail discussion lists, and many other Internet and Web materials. The stories we have collected about teachers document their feelings about their successes, lessons learned, and plans for future Internet activities with their students.
"The goal of this project is to develop a substantial, coordinated set of instructional units on the Web to promote exemplary uses of the Web by real teachers in real K-12 classrooms, giving priority to curriculum integration of Internet/Web resources, with special attention to mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts, and informed by the Goals 2000 initiatives and other national work on curriculum standards. These instructional units will draw from current pedagogical research and will incorporate the latest innovations in education."
Background
Many teachers are overwhelmed by the enormity of information on the Internet and may quickly feel helpless and frustrated in the face of so much stuff. This project is an attempt to distill basic learning concepts and practical Internet classroom activities in a single source. The people you will meet here are from a variety of organizations - including schools, colleges, and communities - who have collaborated to develop lesson materials that we believe will be of value to teachers nationwide.
We believe a powerful way to learn about the potential of the Web in the classroom is in the form of stories told by real teachers who are using these resources in their classrooms today. Every story we tell is not just about the materials or the lessons these teachers created, but also about the struggles, failures, and successes these teachers have encountered as they have adopted this new medium in their teaching practice. We believe as important as resources on the Web are to K-12 teachers, the experiences of actual people who are engaged in the process of incorporating these resources into their everyday classroom activities are equally important.