Another benefit from networks can come from the process of sharing views with a worldwide group. Students will recognize in the process of seeking truths about topics in math, science, and history that they have a lot in common with students in other places. While working together from across the hallway, the continent, or the globe, bonds can form among students who are sharing common goals of problem solving. Prejudices and insecurities tend to break down when people work together to solve a common problem. Cooperative grouping seems to have a positive social impact in the classroom, so why not stretch the classroom across some borders?
These views of the potential impact of networks on my classroom may appear idealistic, but many good projects get their start from idealistic views of potentially wonderful outcomes. Global communications and networking with that technology is still relatively new to public school classrooms. I hope that my project, founded on idealistic views of seeking universal truths while creating a more unified global community, can give me more insight into the actual impact of networks among classrooms.
To follow my ideals, the first step in my project is to allow students in Tuscola to gather other people's viewpoints of a common topic. One area where cultures are diverse is in their varying bodies of folk wisdom. Other possible diversities that can be viewed come from what people consider as successes in daily life (What was the best thing to happen to you today?) or their greatest fears in daily life.(What are you most afraid of?)
These three topics were submitted to me by the fifth-graders in my classroom when I asked them what they would like to find out about kids in another classroom. Some also mentioned favorite foods, hobbies, clothing styles, and sports; but decided that most of those things can be looked up in books about other cultures.
The interest in folk wisdom came from some serendipitous experimentation in science class to find out the validity of a local belief about making ice cubes from hot water vs. cold water. Many students in my room now fancy themselves as "myth busters" and would like to continue to test out the truth from others' folk wisdom. They also want to know how widespread some of our local Tuscola beliefs are.
The project ideas of trying to discover other classroom students' successes or fears, would involve putting a request out on a network bulletin board or list server to solicit responses. The collected database of responses could then be sent back out to all of the respondents. While this might satisfy some curiosities about other children and could lead to some understanding of other cultures, I'm not so sure that it would really connect students with one another.
The project idea that seems to be moving ahead out of student interest and out of meshing with my ideals for networking, is the MYTH BUSTERS. Students would first seek out the folk wisdom from many locations. This can be accomplished through local interviews, known e-mail contacts, or new contacts made using network newsgroups. We might have to do some "back scratching" to solicit the folk wisdom from some sources. After a due date for submissions to our folk wisdom collection, we can try to sort the information into some organization. This might include sorting those beliefs that can be tested from those that can not be subjected (fully or in part) to laboratory testing.
The list of beliefs and their locations can be sent back to all respondents for mere observation or for those respondents to become correspondents in testing one or more of the beliefs through cooperative experiments. It might be best to choose one testable belief to be subjected to experimentation. It would also be best if each collaborating classroom established their own procedure for testing that belief. Then the lab reports could be compared and contrasted to seek the most valid results from the broad perspective of diverse researchers. Classrooms can share their conclusions drawn from the results of the experiments. If clear conclusions can be drawn from experiments, some participants may even want to disseminate the results and conclusions to a larger audience in an effort to promote the truth about that piece of folk wisdom.
Throughout the entire process, the computer communications technology is used merely as a tool to seek out and connect collaborators in the project. Once found, collaborators could use any other means of communication to continue the project; although telecommunications would probably be the easiest and fastest means to keep in contact.
The primary use of electronic communications in this project was for the purpose of finding participants. By design, the success of the project was not entirely dependent upon finding any particular number of participants or finding participants from any particular locations. Although the project was designed to allow students to recognize regional differences in beliefs, it was not absolutely necessary to find participants from diverse regions. I tried to insure that there could be success in the project even if the volume and distribution of responses from participants was very low. I really only needed a minimum of three of four testable myths from any one or more locations.
I felt that the topic of myths or folk wisdom was universally appealing, but had no way of knowing if people would take the time and effort to contribute. The likelihood that someone will contribute is increased if I expand the set of potential contributors as much as possible. To that end, I did not limit participants to any particular geographical region, ethnic group, age group, or any other group so that the potential set of participants was the entire population of the earth.
Although any contributor of folk wisdom was acceptable for the first part of the project, it was preferable if the some contributors were also willing to collaborate in testing out the myths after they were compiled. I preferred that the collaborators be elementary or middle school students who could work with my fifth-graders on their experiments to test out the myths. It would be likely that any electronic communications with such young collaborators would have to be through their classroom teachers. Therefore, I tried to consider means of directing my project to teachers.
The advantage of using networks to seek out participants is the potential to reach a tremendously large, geographically diverse population. I submitted the project plan to hundreds of people with interests in classroom communications by posting the plan to some network lists. I assumed that many subscribers to those lists would have contact with potential student collaborators. Once I was subscribed to those lists and had submitted the MythBusters project plan, I immediately sought out others' projects in order to use the "backscratching" technique. I collected several classroom project plans that my students could contribute to, and after gathering the requested data, we tacked on a copy of the MythBusters plan and a brief request that they also contribute to our MythBusters project.
In addition to the general requests to the lists and the "backscratching" requests to other project organizers, I e-mailed copies of the MythBusters project plan to several personal contacts that I thought might be interested in contributing myths and/or collaborating with the MythBusters as they test the myths.
Of the three types of approaches I used to find contributors to the MythBusters project, "backscratching" yielded the best results. When my students and I contributed to another classroom's project, they responded by contributing heavily to the MythBusters. We received pages of myths from classrooms in Illinois and Louisiana in this way.
The response from the iecc and Ednet lists was also very good. Unlike the "backscratching" classrooms, the contributors who read about MythBusters from the lists often submitted only one or two of their favorite bits of folk wisdom instead of several pages of myths. Many of those contributors did not appear to be classroom teachers.
The notion that the MythBusters could get by with a little help from my friends proved to be quite erroneous. None of the personal contacts that I asked to contribute to the MythBusters project responded.
Most of the contributors to the MythBusters project first read the project plan and sent contributions during the first two weeks in March,1994. The plan stated that each contributor would receive the complete collection by the last week in March, 1994. I felt that it would be important to keep up communications with contributors during the span of time from when they sent myths and received a copy of the collection. I kept open the lines of communication by thanking them for responding to the MythBusters and by assuring contributors that they would get the complete collection at the end of the month. I also commented on specific myths that were particularly interesting, and attempted to engage in a sort of electronic mail correspondence.
The MythBusters timetable required that I send out by March 22nd, 1994, complete collections of the myths received. To have time to compile and type the myths, I asked that any contributions to the project be sent to me by March 15th. The responses from contributors tapered off before the March 15 cut-off date, so I was able to compile the myths into a typed collection as that day approached. I was ahead of schedule and sent out to all participants the complete collection of myths on March 20th. Each collection was sent along with a brief message to the contributor.
The project ended for contributors if they chose to quit after receiving the complete collection of myths. Some classrooms of students expressed interest in joining in the study of the myths collected. A classroom from Tennessee went ahead without prompting and did surveys of how many students felt the beliefs they collected were true, false, or unsure. Another classroom in Louisiana conducted mini-research projects based on the myths from the collection. That class expressed interest in sharing more research with my students. I am presently pursuing that avenue for collaboration, and it looks like it will happen by the end of this school term.
After the complete collection was assembled, I made several paper copies for students' viewing. Students were asked to choose partners to form research groups of one to three students. Those lab groups chose one myth from the collection to experiment upon. The chosen myth was submitted to the class as the hypothesis to a problem written in the form: How does the (independent variable) effect the (dependent variable). Therefore, the problem, "How does the number of apples a person eats effect the number of visits from a doctor?" yields the hypothesis,"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." The problem was written in such a way as to get quantitative results from an experiment designed to test the hypothesis ( the myth).
Each lab group made an oral presentation to the class about their MythBusters research proposal. Each presentation included a thorough description of the problem chosen, the hypothesis being tested, and the equipment, personnel, and procedure used for doing the experiment. Most also predicted what they thought the outcome might be, and described the difficulties that they might face in trying to get conclusive results.
After hearing all of the research proposals and asking some to be polished and resubmitted, I set a due date for reporting results and conclusions. The due date was based upon the time requirements for the various experiments that the students designed. It turned out that none felt that they needed more than 6 weeks to gather sufficient data to draw conclusions about their hypothesis. The report date was set for the second week of May.
Only one group came up with an experiment that used networks in their experimental design. That group was testing the myth that says,"If it rains on Easter Sunday then it will rain the next five Sundays." They wanted to find past weather records that could indicate if that belief was historically true or false. Those students typed requests to network users, and were shown how to poke around through gopher databases. No information was directly found, but contacts were made with people who could help those students. That lab group eventually narrowed its scope to one source person and then continued correspondence by telephone and U.S. mail.
Most groups chose myths that are easily tested over a short period of time. Some are watching pots of water on stoves to see if it will boil. Some are stepping on cracks and recording the condition of their mothers' vertebrae. Others are handling toads and then keeping daily records of any warts that may appear on their hands. All planned on doing enough repeats of their tests to be able to feel sure of their conclusions about the myths.
Limitations in time and equipment had an effect upon the MythBusters project. I had to incorporate it into an existing science curriculum, and saw that it would not be wise to devote too large a portion of the school year to this one project. I felt that by dividing the project up into short classroom-intensive segments it would not take too much time away from other parts of the science curriculum. Less than one week was spent brainstorming and testing a myth as a model for the project. About one week was spent (a month after the project began) making classroom research proposals. Another week of classroom time will be devoted to hearing and discussing the results and conclusions of the MythBusters experiments. Between those widely spaced blocks of class time, the project was carried on by individuals in study hall time or at home.
Another limitation besides time was the lack of an abundance of computer hardware for networking. Knowing that the networking aspects of the project would be carried out on one laptop computer, I did not make the project too dependent upon every student's access to that computer. Most communications were typed into Eudora by students in study periods, or submitted to me as paper drafts that I would subsequently type and send. Students never independently used the computer to access the network or to send and receive electronic mail. I printed out and posted on a wall all incoming mail from the project, and shared orally with students any other pertinent exchanges of electronic communication that transpired each day.
Although I believe students could benefit greatly from independent use of computers for networking, there were benefits to be found in the method I used for this project. It required a great deal of verbal interaction among my students and me, and therefore forced us to clarify points to one another. Some of this may have been missed if each person was working independently at their own computer terminals.
The bad points of being limited to one small computer in this project included a lack of opportunity for students to "joyride" around the network and become comfortable with that mode of communication and data access. Since I did nearly all of the telecommunication, it put a great demand upon my time. At times, I felt like those demands were outweighing the benefits from the project.
The greatest benefits that I observed during this project were primarily changes in students' perceptions about their community. It was daily posted before them and demonstrated to them that they were sharing ideas with a global sized community. Their eyes widened when on March 16th we shared three back-and-forth e-mail communications with a couple of fifth-graders in Tennessee over the course of a few minutes.
Students also benefited from recognizing that while there were great variations in what people held as beliefs, there were also conventions people used to seek the truth in beliefs. Our version of the scientific method of inquiry used to test the myths was virtually the same as the method used by a student group from Louisiana that sent us their research reports. The project validated the usefulness of having a common scientific method of inquiry.
Though I have not seen the project through to its conclusion yet, I do believe that the project has been worthwhile. Students learned about science as they would have done anyway, but with the addition of a global perspective found through network communications.