Introduction
Beginning Stages
Stage Two
Stage Three
Problems Arise
Stage Four
Suggestions for Future Project Coordination
Seasons Project
Geogame
Reflections on Network Activity
Appendix A:
Monster Paragraph Project Description
Appendix B:
Some requests to participate
Appendix C:
Four sets of monster descriptions
with photocopies of original and second
drawings and some reactions
Appendix D:
Spreadsheet with participant information
Appendix E:
Summary statements from participants
Appendix F:
General Comments from Monster Paragraph Participants
Network log
The goal of this project is to involve students across the country in a meaningful and fun network learning activity. The intended audience is students in grades 4 - 8. In groups of three or four, students will draw a monster. When the monster is completed they will write a paragraph describing the monster they have drawn. They need to include details which will help another classroom recreate their monster just from the written description. These descriptions will be sent to the project coordinator and then sent on to another participating school. Since students won't have the opportunity to see the original drawing until later in the project, accurate, detailed descriptions are necessary in order for the receiving students to be able to reconstruct the monsters.
On February 22, 1994 I sent my Monster Paragraph Project proposal to the class email account and to the class reflector. After receiving some suggestions to emphasize the summary activity, I reworked the timeline and rewrote the instructions about the summary. During this time I received Erica Rogers suggestions for posting a project. I decided to send my Call for Collaboration to call-ideas@acme.fred.org on March 5, 1994. The complete project plan is attached in Appendix A.
Response to the project was almost instantaneous. I first received the proposal which was bounced by several FrEdMail boards. This went on for about 3 days. I began hearing from interested teachers two days later. There was 1 inquiry asking for more information. Two registrations were received on the third day (examples of requests in Appendix B). From this time until March 25 I continued to receive registrations. As each participant expressed interest in the project, I sent an acknowledgement and a reminder of when and how to send the monster descriptions. I had hoped to have ten participants and ended up with twenty seven contact people. At least three of these were working with two or more classrooms. One participant had thought the project was really two, with the pictures being one and the descriptions being another. I sent her an explanation of the project again so she would be clear as to what was expected of her. I sent acknowledgements to each participant as they registered. Of the twenty seven sites participating two were on FrEdMail, one on America Online, and the remaining 24 were on Internet.
I began receiving monster descriptions on March 17, 1994. Spring breaks caused the need to adjust the timeline for some participants. Descriptions were due March 25, but I extended the due date to March 30. This turned out to be a good plan due to the crash of the icebox server. When the server came back up I had 19 messages, mostly descriptions from participants. Descriptions continued to come in and the server was erratic in being able to be accessed.
I set up a spreadsheet with the participating classrooms, the school name, email address, the contact person, other teachers involved at each site, the date descriptions were received, the date descriptions were sent out, the partner school classroom, and the date summary was received. I used this as a place to write in the information and to add it later on the computer (see Appendix D).
I made the decision to match each classroom to another classroom in a different state and have these classrooms exchange descriptions. I put together an explanatory message and then pasted in the descriptions from the partner classroom. One day during spring break was spent sending out monster descriptions. Two teachers who originally expressed interest in the project failed to send in descriptions or respond to messages. I decided to match them with each other if they did decide to participate.
I sent out about 10 classrooms worth of descriptions at a time. Then I worked at setting up the next group of messages to send out. When I checked mail to send the next set, some of the first messages were returned to me. I checked the addresses, made corrections in them, and resent the messages. I found that I had originally incorrectly typed some addresses when I set up the nickname monsters for all the participants in the project. This change was easy to make.
Three classes at my own school were involved with the monster paragraph project also. I worked with one Language Arts teacher for two of the classes and she worked with the Learning Disabilities resource teacher with the other class. The students were divided into groups, not necessarily the same groups in which they drew their original monster pictures. In these new groups they were given a description of a monster from another school and worked cooperatively to try to redraw the monster. Some students had very good descriptions from which to work, while others had incomplete descriptions which only told how to draw the head. They worked on the drawings and wrote reactions to the descriptions detailing the ease or lack of ease with which they were able to recreate the monsters. These drawings were then photocopied and sent with the accompanying description and reaction to the activity by US mail to the partner classroom. Also included in the mailing were photocopies of the original monsters they drew and the descriptions of them we had sent by email.
The students were very critical of the descriptions and the lack of some information. Some descriptions did not say to draw a body or left out information about neck, arms, or feet. Others were very detailed and the students were able to fairly well recreate the monster. The amount of detail in the descriptions seemed to be consistent within a classroom. That lead me to believe that the success of the project really hinged on the interest and amount of influence the classroom teacher showed.
It was during this period of time that the Icebox server decided to crash. When the server was fixed, I was able to get some messages about the project. Then on April 18, the pop server was not working. I thought I was being resourceful and used gopher to telnet to the Icebox server and view my mail there. I first tried to read the mail using Elm. I read part of the message about the final project, but could not get the second message to display. I later tried to send a message using Elm, but couldn't figure out how to do it. I finally sent one to Michael, telling him of my problem getting messages with Eudora, using Pine. This was so much more difficult than using Eudora. It became clear to me how difficult the process was for some of the participants in my project since they were using Elm to participate.
During this time I was corresponding with Karen Thompson, our technology coordinator, over FrEdMail. She was also having trouble getting messages so I wasn't really worried. I tried Eudora once or twice a day. Finally it connected and said I had nine messages. One long message of session notes was sent and part of another. Then the connection was broken and I could not get the rest. I couldn't view them with Elm or Pine either. They were in limbo somewhere. When I telneted to Icebox, I was able to read the message on the welcome screen that there was a problem with the pop server and that some email was corrupted because it was missing beginning information which stopped it from working correctly.
I also found that I could successfully send messages with Eudora if I went about it in the right way. Sometimes, when you choose check mail, Eudora will check for messages first and then send mail. Other times it will send mail first and then check for mail. If it checked for mail first, the connection would be broken and no messages could be sent. If it sent messages first, my messages could be sent out and then the connection would be broken when the second corrupted file was attempted to be retrieved. I learned just to send queued messages to avoid the continued problem.
Since I was able to use MacSLIP, I checked the class folder for the messages about the final project report, but there were none posted there. I sent messages about my problem connecting and getting mail to Craig Tatar, Michael, and Alex. The problem with the one file continued to stop the retrieval of the messages. I sent another message to Craig asking him to remove the second message so the rest could be sent on to me. There was still no improvement. On April 26 I called Craig Tatar, having gotten his phone number from the Ice Cube newsletter. He said he would fix the problem. That evening I was able to get the first message and then the second message would hang up the connection once again. The next morning I called Craig again. He said there was no mail in my box. I told him Eudora said I had 33 messages, so they must be hung up somewhere. I asked him to search for the messages, delete the first and second messages, and we would see if I could get the rest. If he had trouble doing this he was to leave me a message at my America Online address.
Later on the morning of April 26 I tried to connect again and had the same problem. I tried to call Craig, but the phone was busy. I tried to call Alex at 11:15, but there was no answer. That evening there was no message on AOL, but Eudora finally was able to retrieve 33 messages. Some of the messages had two combined, probably due to the viewing I had done with Elm and Pine. Some were duplicate messages. One message was from a project participant who had only receive part of her descriptions. The message was written 10 days earlier. At this point I quickly resent the descriptions to this participant and sent messages to Michael and Alex that the problem with my mail had been solved.
By now, all the participants should have received the descriptions from another class and had time to draw them. I sent out reminder notices to the participants telling them to make photocopies of their pictures drawn from the descriptions done by the other class. They were reminded to send these photocopies to the partner class. With this they were to send photocopies of their own original drawings and the descriptions so that each class could compare both sets of drawings. I also sent a message asking participants to answer the three questions asked for: 1. What was the monster project about? 2. What did you contribute to the project? 3. What did you learn from the project? One of these messages was returned. It was to a participant who had failed to respond after the initial registration for the project, so I just deleted the message and the address from the nickname list.
At this time I have received the requested responses from 3 participants. They are included in Appendix E. I am sure that most participants did both ends of the monsters with describing their own and trying to redraw with their partner's descriptions, but they may have forgotten about the final aspect. I will send out a reminder note to all about this.
I am still getting requests to participate in the project. One teacher in British Columbia, Canada has been sent descriptions and is sending some back to me. Another teacher on Catalina Island off the coast of California has also been sent the descriptions. The classroom whose descriptions I have sent had a very poor original match so I know they are willing to try again. This will be the last time for this school year. It is hard to say no when people sound so excited about trying the project. We will be finished soon and can use the US mail for our final swap.
There are several ways the monster paragraph project could be improved. One thing I would do for certain is post the project earlier in the semester or possibly in September. This could easily be done in the fall of the year to get teachers interested in using telecommunications as part of their teaching. I would also limit the number of participants to 20 per coordinator. It could easily be run by someone who is willing to take the time to check for messages daily and to try to track down the answers to why some participants haven't responded to some part of the project. A second coordinator would just need to keep another group going. Another solution would be not to try to participate in the project and coordinate it at the same time. The necessity to meet the needs of participants and my own students could have been overwhelming. Because I was working with another teacher to do the monster drawings and descriptions, I should have let her do the organizing of the materials and descriptions like the teachers in other schools had to do and just taken care of sending the descriptions out and coordinating the whole project.
Another improvement would be to give an example of a written description. Some descriptions were just measurements and shapes. Others were descriptions of the monsters habits and actions. An example might have given the needed format to some of the participants.
I decided to join a project that would be interesting and ongoing with one class of sixth graders with which I work. The Seasons Project fit the bill. I initially sent in my registration using FrEdMail thinking that this project would go on longer than our class. I thought I would lose my email address so I would start the project in a place where I have a permanent address. The local FrEd node was having trouble. Karen Thompson suggested that I just use the Internet address, so I registered that way also, letting Erica Rogers know that I wanted to change the address.
In class we brainstormed all the signs of spring that we could think of and made a list of these in categories such as plants, animals, weather, and people. Away from class I used the word processor to type these signs into a list and sent them off to the Seasons Project. Each day we recorded high and low temperature as well as sunrise and sunset times. We used math skills to determine average daily temperatures and length of day. We had to calculate weekly average temperature and weekly average length of day. This was challenging for some of the students even done in groups and as a whole class. They were also watching for signs of spring that we had determined and that had been sent to us as an overall list. The students were very eager and excited about what they were observing.
The Seasons Project had received a huge response. We were in a group of 30 schools from around the world. There were four such groups in the whole project. Participants in our groups were from Glenview, Illinois; Webster, New York; Springfield, Oregon; Upper Arlington, Ohio; Fort Worth, Texas; Florence, South Carolina; Mokena, Illinois; Denmark; Maidstone, Kent, United Kingdom; Hanty-Mansiiskii Region, Russia; Wanniassa, Australia; Hollister, California; Moscow, Russia; Syracuse, New York; Springfield, Illinois; Dublin, Ireland; Loulukeskus, Finland; Helsingor, Denmark; Hornell, New York; Bolton, Ontario, Canada; Wisconsin; Camarillo, California; and Herndon, Virginia. These diverse locations should provide some interesting data about the arrival of spring.
We sent in our first report telling the average weekly temperature, average length of sunlight for the week, dates and times various signs of spring had been observed, and a narrative about the signs that were observed. This was done two more times. We received data from the first and second reports from all the participants several weeks after we sent them in.
In my classroom I put up a large map of the world with the participating schools located by index cards and string. This visual provided a good way for my students to understand the scope of the project. I made a chart on large story paper to record the temperature and length of day data. We also had a chart on which we recorded the signs of spring as they were observed by students in the class.
The first two narrative reports that were due were compiled and typed by students. I took what they typed, converted it to text, and sent it by email to the Seasons Project coordinator. The last report was due during our vacation so I wrote and sent this one on my own using the data the students had collected.
We have received the summary results from all the participants. I have put this into a database and have sorted and printed it as was suggested by the coordinator. I am having trouble getting the data into a usable form so my students can determine where spring arrived first. There were 299 records in the report so it is extremely long when printed out. I need to figure out a new arrangement of the database so it will be more usable when printed.
The students have enjoyed the project and were quick to share observations they had made about the signs of spring. Several students did bring in weather data to use for the daily report. We had a lively discussion about when spring arrived in Springfield based on the data we had collected. One group felt it had arrived the first time the temperature was above 80deg. and another group felt it had arrived a week later when other sings such as tree leaves and flowers were observed. Both sides had good arguments for their case. We reluctantly agreed to choose the second date, but there were still hold-outs for the first date. We are almost ready to send in our final summary report.
I saw the instructions for this project on FrEdMail and took a copy to one of the teachers in my building who teaches history. She was interested so we first got her logged onto FrEd as a new user. Then we had to use my address to send in her registration. I had our latitude and longitude coordinates from my participation in the Season Project so we were easily able to send in her data. When the data came back for the game, I copied it and took it in to her. She put the individual location clues on cards to give to pairs of students to try to figure out. This project had six separate sets of thirty locations involved. They are just in the final stages of determining the locations and will be sending in their results this week. I feel good about this project because I was able to share the information with her and she was interested enough to pick up the challenge and participate without much further encouragement from me.
This semester has been a real learning experience for me. I had previously had experience using FrEdMail, America Online, Ziff/Net Mac on CompuServe, Springfield Access through Club Mac, and Prodigy, but I had not participated in a network project and had never coordinated one. I have learned that you cannot count on technology working all the time. This is no surprise to a teacher since film strip projectors, tape recorders, and VCRs are notorious for not working when you need them. A lot of flexibility in time frame needs to be built in to the time line. This does not need to be stated, but should be in the mind of the coordinator as the activity is planned. Although I do not know all the technical terms relating to the technology we have used, I do feel comfortable using it and could show others what to do. I did have some trouble with NewsWatcher lately and at this time can not get access to the group lists. I would need to figure out what I am doing wrong here and what needs to be changed in the preferences before I would want to rely on this way to find project in which to participate.
The students I work with have enjoyed the projects we have participated in and have been eager to do more. I would like to work out a way to have students do some of the actual sending of information. I just was not comfortable having students receive my messages because I was unsure of the process myself. I think other teachers in my building have become interested in trying a network activity. That is important if I'm going to increase the use in my school. I feel that the Monster Paragraph Project was successful for teachers in other places as well as for me because for many it was their first network activity. It was fairly easy to accomplish and gave them more than one opportunity to use the network, but didn't require sophisticated equipment or software. I think students learned that kids all over are similar in what they think about in terms of what they drew and how they described what they drew. They all need work on becoming better masters of the written word.
Please print and distribute this CALL FOR COLLABORATION to teachers you know may be interested in participating.
Project Name: Monster Paragraphs March 5, 1994
Date: March 15 - April 22, 1994
Purpose: To challenge students to write descriptively to describe a picture of a monster they have created in a cooperative group. Students will use vivid and precise language to describe the monster picture. They will need to be very specific in order to allow another group of students to attempt to recreate their monster picture based on their written description of the picture.
Subjects: Language arts, art
Grade levels: 4 - 8
Summary: Students will create a picture of a monster in cooperative groups. In their cooperative groups students will write a paragraph describing the monster they have created as accurately as possible. The paragraphs will then be collected and sent over the network to the project coordinator. These paragraphs will then be sent to participating classrooms. Each classroom will receive one set of paragraphs with which to work. Students will then draw their interpretation of the monster described. These drawings will be sent by U.S. mail to the authoring classroom. After receiving pictures, students will write a summary of what they have learned from the experience. This summary will be sent to the project coordinator and will be sent to all participants.
Number of participants: 10 classrooms
Special instructions: Send all text files in ASCII format. Make photocopies of original monster pictures to be sent to your partner classroom.
Monster Picture requirements: Monsters must have a head, a body, and legs. These should be drawn on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper.
Monster paragraph requirements: Use adjectives to describe the monster that was created by the group. Use vivid language to describe the size, shape, placement,texture, and color of your monster.
Project Coordinator: Jill Hicks
Enos Elementary School
524 W. Elliott Street
Springfield, IL 62702
Email: jhicks@icebox.ncook.k12.il.us
Voice phone: 217-525-3208
Registrations: Fill out the registration form and send by email to: jhicks@icebox.ncook.k12.il.us
___ Register me for the Monster Paragraph project.
Your full name:
Your email address:
Your school:
District:
School address:
School voice phone:
Home voice phone:
Grade(s) taught:
Subject(s):
March 15 Registration deadline
March 17 Receive registration information and further instructions.
March 18 Draw monster pictures and describe in a paragraph.
March 25 Send paragraphs over network to project coordinator.
March 30 Receive paragraphs from another classroom over the network. Draw your monster pictures for each paragraph.
April 15 Send monster pictures for each paragraph by U.S. mail to classroom partner. Keep a photocopy of each picture for yourself.
April 22 Send in summary of project with students' reactions to pictures created by other students, a comparison to their original picture, and to their own ability to describe their picture. Send partner classroom photocopies of your original monster pictures by U.S. mail.