Dakota State professor authors textbook

Dakota State University associate professor of education, Linda Venekamp has written a textbook to make using the Internet in the classroom easier.

The 300-page book, entitled “Celebrate the Day: A Teachers Calendar of Internet Sites and Activities,” gives teachers an easier and more creative way to use the Internet in the classroom. The book is published by Allen and Bacon.

Venekamp decided to write the book after hearing from several teaching professionals that using the Internet in the classroom became too time consuming.

“In my work with other teachers, I learned the reason why some teachers don’t use the Internet was because they felt it was too time consuming to find good related sites to the topics they were teaching,” Venekamp stated.

The book covers several topics, from art and music to math and science, as well as sports, history and literature.

Venekamp says her book does more than just provide related sites to teacher’s curriculum. While learning the subject matter, students learn how to use different software programs, such as Excel and PowerPoint.

The textbook is flexible and allows teachers the freedom to teach their class in whatever order they want to.

“I really wanted teachers to use it in a way to personalize the experience,” Venekamp said. “Teachers can use the textbook with materials and the individual skill levels that are available in their classroom.”

Venekamp said she has been working on the book for a number of years and started researching on the Internet last summer. She wanted to get the best sites available and realized some subject matter was referenced with over a 1,000 sites. It was a time consuming process to narrow those sites down to a reasonable number. She said she had no idea how much information was available on the Internet.

“I learned what an amazing resource the Internet is,” Venekamp said. “There is so much material out there.”

Even though she researched for several hours a day, she says she misses being immersed in the Internet.

“I really miss it,” Venekamp said. “I’ll try to write another one.”