Will I ever NOT be terrified of my students using the internet for Active Learning?

Will I ever NOT be terrified of my students using the internet for Active Learning? 

I have a hard time letting go of control in a teaching environment. I’ll just put that out there. I’ve never been the teacher who is comfortable in a loud, chaotic classroom “as long as they’re learning.” In my classroom, movement, unpredictability, and laughter terrify me.

 That being said, it is easy for me to avoid many opportunities for authentic learning. Authentic learning is best described as any learning the student does either on their own or that can have an impact in the 'real world,’ paired with the idea that not all learning is “particularly meaningful, relevant or necessary.” The idea is that the only relevant learning a student can do is best done on their own or in service to a question that they brought to the table themselves. Terrifying. This concept relies on the notion that children are naturally curious and yearn for information at all times. These notions are echoed in essays and interviews Ken Robinson  who claims “All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think.” There is a way to take this and, to use one of Robinson's words, turn it into fertile ground for education: Conversation.

Conversation is a lost art, and nowhere is that more true than in a classroom. In this world of standardized tests, Cornell notebooks, and exit slips, telling your principal that the best way to evaluate student learning is by having a group discussion is career suicide. Yet that is precisely what is encouraged by this model. Asking higher order questions, focusing on the ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ rather than the ‘who's’ and ‘what's’ have proven again and again to show results. Students are unsatisfied by surface level instruction and will undoubtedly want to know more.

“Students, today's lesson is that water is wet.”
“Teacher, is all water wet?”

“I'm sorry, I don't have time to answer that, we have to move on to 'all fire is hot'”

Sticking to the old model has produced educators who are forced to dismiss questions and students who do not feel empowered to take control of their learning. If they've learned anything at all, it's not to bother asking questions. If the response to the question had been something to the effect of “Yes, but are there wet things that aren't water? How can we look that up?” Suddenly you've empowered the very idea of asking questions in the room and engaged the children to access the entirety of their intellect to answer the question. Provoke them like this often enough and you train the students to make connections where no obvious ones exist and they start to become reflexive lateral thinkers.

Now for the terrifying part—allowing kids use the internet to satisfy their own curiosities. Will I ever feel comfortable enough to allow “free time” on the internet for my students? Probably not, and that is not good.

I picture students in my classroom using this free time on the computers to hack my gradebook, send a bomb threat to Washington, live-stream some unexpected classroom disaster that will go viral instantly, or completely crash the entire network beyond repair. When I get fired for this, the one question people will ask me is “Why weren’t you watching them?” All I will have to say is… “I was letting them participate in Active Learning, of course.”  

But, of course, I give my students way too much credit. Truth be told, the worst 99% of them could do is google inappropriate things. What needs to occur before any student-directed active learning projects can occur on the computers in my classroom, is some serious training. I need to know that students are familiar with the dangers and ethics of the internet. I need to find a way to instill a sense of responsibility in them when they are using our computers (as in… they won’t automatically have the urge to destroy the computer as soon as they touch the mouse). But most of all, I need to provide opportunities for guided practice. I need to TEACH them how to become active learners and use technology to open doors to fascinating universes.

I am currently open for tips on how to feel comfortable allowing your students to have free time on the internet. Surrendering control in the classroom can be a terrifying prospect, but if you set up an infrastructure early on that allows for free time to pursue projects, then you'll be able to push your kids in directions you never thought possible before and they'll think it was all their own idea! To boldly go where no teacher has directed them before. They may fall down a YouTube hole and discover the likes of Ken Robinson's musings on education. You don't give them a worksheet, you give them a concept and focusing on concept driven programs instead of specific topics and using projects and 'provocations' to point students in a direction but not lead them down a path, instead you let them google the path instead.