5.3.4 Control and Monitoring

Monitoring and controlling what students access and do while online presents an important area of consideration for many teachers. Beliefs about this issue were expressed frequently in the context of this study. Unlike the classroom where natural limits or boundaries may lessen the need for control and monitoring, OLEs were described by some participants in this study as presenting challenges in terms of control.

One belief expressed was that teachers have less control over the pedagogical material which their students access while online: "I try to help my students learn how to find the answers. With the Internet I don't have control over what vocabulary is used or the complexity of the grammar structures". An additional concern for teachers in terms of control relates less to monitoring vocabulary or grammar and more to ensuring that students remain on task and at sites where the teacher expects them to be: "Some students are extremely adept at using the Internet. This is a problem because they start going into areas where they should not". The issue of control relates to a broader issue of students accessing "inappropriate sites" as well as to the issue of determining when the browsing is pedagogically acceptable and when it is not: "The most difficult part is the control. It is wonderful to let a student go and discover what s/he may and watch the excitement. But how do you grade that? Or how do you let them wander and yet still put boundaries up in way of proxies and supervision in the name of what is fit for the classroom and what isn't".

In the excerpts that follow, teachers relate experiences they have had in relation to the issue of control and their beliefs about how best to deal with this issue. In this first excerpt, the teacher explains how it is the role of the instructor to ensure that students act responsibly while online:

One other problem is, of course, the inappropriateness (to put it mildly) of many sites - sites that kids can stumble upon quite innocently. I was doing a search on Paris attractions recently and in no time at all found myself at the Folies Bergeres, and you can imagine what that page had to offer! We do not have to take on the role of Internet "vice squad," but it is our duty as adults to help our students - especially adolescents - make appropriate choices. The presence of the instructor and other students can help kids be responsible "cybernautes."

The teacher’s role in ensuring that students access "appropriate sites" is described by the following teacher as one of choosing sites, guiding them and monitoring their online activities:

I would not have the students do a general search without guidance! I saw what that could lead to in a music class, where, the music teacher was doing an activity in the computer lab with my class. Ten minutes before the end of the class, she decided to let them do a search for the "Spice Girls" which the students had been requesting. Well, the results of that search certainly were not appropriate! We must be careful and guide the students to appropriate web sites that we have chosen and that we continue to monitor.

The following teacher’s beliefs about her role in controlling access to sites consists of more than just guiding students. Here, the teacher stresses the importance of ensuring that students access only sites which are at an appropriate pedagogical and age level by putting in place both guidelines and consequences:

The adult level of most www sites -- in terms of interest and reading level means that teachers and parents must be vigilant in supervising children and/or must set up very clear guidelines and consequences for on-line behaviour. Our school requires that all parents and students sign an appropriate use policy at the start of each school year, and our computer program goals include enabling students to become powerful searchers and responsible thinkers.

While some beliefs emphasize the importance of control, other beliefs focus more so on the need to educate children about uses and misuses of computers:

Il ne s'agit pas tant de mettre un policier derrière chaque ordinateur que de faire un véritable travail pédagogique en apprenant aux enfants tout ce que permet de faire un ordinateur ( et le réseau) mais aussi quels en sont les dangers. C'est pourquoi, dès la rentrée prochaine, nous envisageons de mettre en place un petit groupe de pilotage internet, composé d'élèves volontaires qui seront chargés (sous le contrôle du responsable informatique) de rechercher et mettre en forme des informations qui seront alors mis à la disposition des autres élèves du collège. N'oubliez jamais qu'il est rigoureusement impossible de suivre chaque ordinateur, ne serait-ce que parce que nous n'aurons jamais les ressources humaines suffisantes et que les logiciels seront toujours, en ce qui les concerne faillibles. Par contre, un véritable travail d'éducation s'impose et ce d'autant plus que de nombreux enfants disposent d'accès au réseau chez eux, c'est à dire là ou nous ne pouvons rien contrôler.

Another approach to monitoring students’ use of the Internet is through extensive preplanning on the part of the teacher. In the following excerpt, the teacher explains how such planning aims to encourage effective and efficient use of students’ online time by ensuring that classes are interesting and goal-oriented:

For me, the crucial element is to have the period planned well, otherwise the temptation is there for the students to start surfing if there is any down time. I find that if there is a set project with a goal, they will focus and work time-effectively. We have Cyber Patrol as our filter but some of our students are so computer-savvy that they are up to no good in seconds and bringing everyone else with them! I try to make the internet classes interesting enough to keep their attention, but also language-related and this unfortunately requires a lot of preparation and ultimately, correcting as they must pass in the completed assignments by the end of the internet class.

In spite of attempts by some teachers to ensure that students do remain focused on the task, maintaining students’ attention can present serious challenges: "I just had them surf on 3 sites and I thought they would enjoy them and they did, but only for about 5 mins each. It was impossible for me to keep them on track after they had fulfilled their part of the bargain and investigated the sites". Some teachers believe that they can ensure student control by preplanning and preselecting the sites which students can access during the lesson and by disallowing random browsing:

I do not conduct many classes in the computer lab that require random browsing. Usually the students must do a guided search or I have pre-selected the sites that they must visit to find out certain information. During a 40-minute class it would be impossible to have much constructive on-task work completed if students were permitted to randomly browse sites.

Preplanning can involve previewing sites. For the following teacher, previewing sites is combined with intensive monitoring and consequences for those who go where the teacher does not want them to be:

...I most often preview the site I want a pair of students focusing on---I also rove around constantly, and found one day last year a student who had quickly reverted to his Metallica homepage---I hollered and told him he was off navigating (my chosen site) for at least a week. The fact that he had to keep his fingers still and go back to the 'old way' of learning a FL scared the heck out of him, and it never came up again. I also threaten that I will review the "GO" button on the tool bar to make sure everyone has followed la bonne piste. Of course, I never do, like who has the time? Three teachers use my classroom during the span of two days (A/B Block)..we barely have enough time to close down the server. I am never in my room during the day, which makes pre-planning a must, especially on the Internet.

Testing sites or previewing and strictly controlling which sites students visit may be a solution to the problem of control for some teachers but it is not believed to be a solution by all: "Something I gathered from reading the various mails is that most colleagues seem to "test" all the sites beforehand. I doubt that this is the use of the possibilities of the net to its full, because pupils are much more inventive and likely to try out things (i.e. sites) we would not think apt or even find."

Consequences such as revoking students’ computer privileges is one means of ensuring that students do not "abuse the time allowed in the lab":

I have one guy who is a comp. whiz and he is playing muds and moos in class and knows that I know less than he so he can hide what he is doing most of the time. It's frustrating but I will be revoking his computer privileges soon if he continues to do this. I guess that is my ultimate threat...they will lose comp. privileges and sit at the desks if they abuse the time allowed in the lab. Simple as that.

Teachers’ beliefs about the need to control students’ online access may relate to external pressures to guard against students accessing inappropriate sites:

I live in a very religious, small community. Our network goes through a proxy which hopefully filters out any undesirable sites. However our district is very worried about something going wrong and watches everything we do. Because of my strong desire to keep our access to the Internet I am very much like a dictator on what they are allowed to do.

Placing restrictions on how and where students "surf" while online as well as having a carefully controlled lesson represents another way to ensure that students’ online activities are acceptable to the teacher:

Next time they will have an objective for each of the sites that they will either have to pass in or I will circulate and verify they have written the answers down. It still boils down to guided surfing, Elizabeth. It's all fine and good to think you're restricting them but they're only kids! Most of them don't have internet at home and they are desperate to explore their own sites and will sneak them in however they can! So..preplan..visit the site before the kids, make sure there is an objective for the lesson that can be evaluated at the end of the period and be vigilant.

In spite of the teaching and learning value of certain sites or technologies, the lack of control available to the teacher can discourage use of such technologies: "I have used chat lines to speak to friends in other countries; we have used live chat and it is a great technology. However, I would not use chat rooms on the Internet with students due to the lack of control that we would have over topics that could be addressed".

The issue of control in the second-language classroom, can also present itself in the form of monitoring students to ensure that they are working in and with the French language as opposed to with their mother tongue. Monitoring becomes even more essential on the Internet where so much material is available in English. The following teacher explains the approach she takes: "For elementary core French, I must preview sites in order to find visually-rich pages with child-level language; otherwise, kids will go to English sites and translate later". Monitoring students while they are online is important to some teachers in order to ensure that they make effective use of instructional time as the following comment suggests: "I would not want my students to waste too much time while doing their research". Guiding students may be necessary given the nature of the Internet and the broad array of information to be found there: "Since there is a lot of info to be gotten on the ‘net’ i (sic) feel that a teacher would need to guide the students closely with assignments." Such guidance may result in fairly elaborate strategies to ensure that students are capable of working effectively. These strategies result in a highly controlled activity:

I make a point of using http://www.altavista.com as a search engine because of its ability to do rudimentary translation of sites and text. As well, I ensure that projects are simple enough and have lots of frame language (i.e., repetitive sentence stems or criteria blanks — find out xyz about n) so that students can weed through all that information to find key points. One strategy that I have used is to locate the sites(myself) that the students will be required to visit. Then I prepared my activities by requiring the students to find specific information. In this way, the students are not so overwhelmed by the amount of text that they are presented with. I make sure that the material is not too difficult by reading it through in advance of assigning a project that would require the students to use the Internet...

The issue of control and monitoring focuses more so on students themselves than do issues related to training or time-management. The beliefs in the next section centre specifically on students’ interests, reactions to the technology and skills and how these may present challenges to teachers in the use of OLEs.