Michael L. Waugh..............................................James A. Levin
Department of Curriculum & Instruction..Department of Educational Psychology
College of Education, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
This interaction illustrates one way the work of education professors Jim Levin and Michael Waugh are improving education through long distance networks. "We have developed a number of ways to connect UIUC and K-12 educators and students," said Levin. Teaching Teleapprenticeships and extramural classes for practicing teachers are two of Levin and Waugh's main initiatives.
The Teaching Teleapprenticeships project utilizes electronic network-based activities to expand the teaching and learning experience of teacher education students and practicing teachers. "The project extends the traditional face-to-face apprenticeships currently used in student teaching settings," Waugh said.
The program aims to provide access to people resources through network interactions and resource sharing. These links strengthen the communication among student teachers, district K-12 teachers and university-based teacher educators. "The point," Waugh said, "is to build a community of people who can mutually support one another as each engages in traditional or network-mediated instructional activities."
Education students doing Teaching Teleapprenticeships have access to sixty Macintosh PowerBooks that Levin and Waugh purchased with the help of a National Science Foundation grant. These students use the portable computers in their university classes and in their student teaching.
The PowerBooks are equipped with built-in modems and the Eudora and other communication applications, enhancing, according to Waugh, the communication between the student teachers and their university professors. "The focus and intent of the grant," Waugh said, "is that the PowerBooks go to undergraduates who are doing field-based experiences, so that they can communicate back to campus and we can continue to talk."
"In some cases," Levin said, "student teachers use the PowerBooks to communicate with their own cooperative K-12 teachers, or even with their classroom students."
The first year of the Teaching Teleapprenticeship project focused on introducing education students to electronic mail and network access. "This year," said Waugh, "we're going to move to broader Internet access, because the tools have evolved to allow us to do that. The students using the PowerBooks will be able to use SL/IP and a series of powerful Macintosh TCP/IP client software tools to call up the World Wide Web and the Gopher system through the Internet."
Levin, Waugh and a team of graduate assistants are developing these information server resources. However, according to Levin, students are also contributing to this network resource development through their classroom assignments.
For example, students in an introductory science methods class have an assignment requiring them to identify, then compare and contrast, several resources on the Internet. The best of these reports are placed on the server for other people to use. "This process can continue indefinitely," Levin said, "and the students' efforts provide an ever expanding curriculum resource for use by others."
To help students prepare for teleapprenticeships, Levin and Waugh collaborate with other faculty members in an effort to introduce freshmen and sophomores to the Internet. "They've got to get comfortable with it before they take the next step," Waugh said.
"We've been working, for instance, with George Kieffer and his introductory Biology 101 course," Levin said. "A lot of freshmen and sophomore education majors are enrolled in this course. During the semester, he offers students an opportunity to earn extra credit by working on an Internet project with K-12 kids. In one assignment, a student would work with a K-12 classroom, helping them to find answers to their questions about biology.
"A K-12 classroom could be doing a lesson on leaf structure," Levin said. "The kids wonder why there are evergreens and non- evergreens. They send this question to the freshman or sophomore doing the project. The student researches the question on the network, at the library and maybe even asks someone at the Ag School, depending on how complicated the question is."
These types of exercises, according to Levin, help education students become familiar with the Internet. The interactions also expose students to the kinds of questions K-12 students ask, and help them learn how to phrase their answers in ways K-12 students can easily understand.
"The first year we did this exercise with George Kieffer," Levin said, "we got 30 people interested. About 12 students ended up participating that year. The second year, there were more people interested and about 25 people ended up participating. The instructor made the announcement Monday in his class and 150 people were interested."
"In a sense," Waugh said, "we've been too successful in terms of the equipment and personnel resources we can apply to supporting this sort of involvement. Together, we'll have to try to figure out how to scale back a little bit in terms of the size of the group that we can study and learn from.
"In the broader scope of things, though," Waugh continued, "these numbers are very encouraging and we feel that we will definitely have an ever increasingly more sophisticated group of network-using students coming in to our education courses over time.
"This will be wonderful because it will mean that our instructors won't have to sacrifice any instructional time on 'basic skills' training, but rather will be able to concentrate on activities in which the students actually apply their knowledge and skills to improving instruction through using network resources."
When students begin their field work in their senior year, they are prepared to utilize network-based activities in their student teaching. Levin and Waugh have found that most master K-12 teachers who are unfamiliar with the Internet enjoy having their student teachers introduce the network to them.
"Some of our cooperating teachers," said Levin, "mention that teleapprenticeships are kind of funny because they imply that someone is the apprentice and someone is the master. The master teachers are finding that it sometimes works both ways with their student teachers. They, of course, are the masters in how to teach, but they are often the beginners on how to use telecommunications."
Levin said that although the student teachers may still be at the beginning stages of using the network, they are usually able to explain what they know to the master teachers. "With networks, it is increasingly clear that no one can be the font of all knowledge," Levin said.
Sometimes, student teachers work with their cooperating teachers to introduce the network to the K-12 students in their classroom, Levin said. Student teachers often pattern classroom exercises after the network-based projects they learned in university classes.
A simple project that has worked well for some student teachers and K-12 students is a project we call the Noon Project. In the Noon Project, students collect data from other participants on the network to calculate the approximate circumference of the earth. Levin said the project might be conducted this way: A student teacher takes the class outside at noon. Using meter sticks, the students measure the shadow that the sun casts when it is directly overhead. The class takes a number of measurements and determines which measurement is the most accurate.
The class returns to the classroom and the student teacher demonstrates how to send the measurement out on the network. They also retrieve measurements from other classrooms around the world. The class uses these measurements to compute an estimate of the circumference of the earth. Levin said this project is extremely popular with the K-12 students.
It involves the students, Waugh added, in problem solving skills in which they apply a variety of mathematical skills including simple geometry, algebra, trigonometry and simple statistics.
Another way a student teacher can introduce the Internet to K- 12 students is to conduct hands-on experiments with them using the PowerBook. The student teacher asks the class to come up with questions that they would like to research using the network. With the students watching, the student teacher types the questions into the computer, sending them to places on the network that will hopefully provide a response. When the student teacher receives mail answering a question, he shares the answer with the class.
In this exercise, Levin said, student teachers "are mediating the question asking." They help the kids to come up with questions, and then work with them to figure out the best ways to word their questions for the computer so that they have a good chance of getting a response, Levin said.
The student teacher is also responsible for choosing appropriate places to send the questions on the Internet, and resending the questions if the first attempt does not work. Each of these steps is important in the learning process of the student teacher, master teacher and K-12 students.
Each spring, Levin and Waugh conduct a continuing education course for practicing K-12 teachers that focuses on learning to use electronic networks in education. Teachers from rural and urban areas across the state participate in the class, which typically fills-up quickly.
"The practicing teachers in our extramural classes," Levin said, "are learning about the network. Although most are beginners in using electronic networks, they are experts doing educational projects. Many of them have been teaching 10 or 20 years."
Some teachers in Levin and Waugh's class have experience using electronic networks. More common, however, are teachers who have heard about networks, think that networks would be a valuable tool in their work, but do not know how to use them.
Levin and Waugh encourage teachers to enjoy themselves as they learn. According to Levin, they structure the class to expose teachers step-by-step to the network, and are careful not to overwhelm anyone.
"In the first part of the class," Levin said, "the teachers are just learning how projects are done on the network; in the second part of the class they are actually doing them."
"We spread out a smorgasbord of kinds of activities" that are possible for the teachers to do on the network, Levin said. The teachers first explore the network to learn about the types of educational activities that are available.
Next, each teacher joins an existing activity of some sort. Later in the semester, Levin and Waugh require the teachers to generate their own activities. "They get to experience all three stages of surfing around the Internet to find interesting things," Levin said.
Levin and Waugh stress to teachers that they do not need a lot of expensive equipment to use electronic networks. "To get started," said Levin, "all you need is a computer with a modem and access to a phone line.
"We've tried," said Levin, "to sketch out a range of things so that teachers who are very excited can start at the very beginning with a minimal need for equipment. They try some exciting things and use that to motivate other teachers, their principal and their school district to get more widely connected and high speed.
"We've had teachers, for instance, who found that there was a phone in the kitchen [at their school] that was only used between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. because that's when the kitchen staff was there. These teachers arranged with the principal to use the phone to link into the network from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. when school was out."
Levin and Waugh are leading an effort to institute a state- wide K-12 network. One of the motivations for building this network, said Levin, is the dilemma some UIUC education students face when they graduate and go on to teach in an area of the state that has no access to the Internet.
"Since most of our students teach here in this state," Levin said, "we feel that it is somewhat our responsibility to come up with a solution."
"We are working," said Waugh, "with the Illinois State Board of Education so that as the kids leave UIUC, there will be a facility available where they can continue to dial-in and get access to the Internet. We're working with the board to provide the dial-up linkages for the kids so that once they graduate they don't have to lose contact with their colleagues and the vast, ever increasing curriculum resources on the Internet."
Levin and Waugh's outreach also includes sharing their developments with other universities. "The National Science Foundation," said Levin, "is very supportive of our effort to develop and improve the preparation of teachers at the University of Illinois. But they think it would be even better if it could be done at universities across the nation.
"We have been working out partnerships with universities here in the state and around the country, and, in some cases, with universities around the world."
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