Hello SATEX group,
I need to jump into grading your projects so I can get grades in on time, but I wanted to send this note out first to reflect on Saturday and to share some thoughts with those who didn't make the class or who couldn't be there the full time.
There is no way to compress all of the good ideas into a short note, so this may get longish but I'll try to be brief.
On behalf of Jim and myself, I would like to say that this was an extremely successful group. Although many of you struggled at times (who among us didn't ever struggle?) for the most part those efforts paid dividends. Every major hurdle was cleared and through sheer force of will (with some modest external support), you pushed your local "systems" into making the required changes to get you connected to the Internet. This took many forms....in some cases it was getting them to provide equipment or time or a phone line or modifying their local area network so you could use it to access internet resources. I said this on Saturday and want to repeat it here. You were all asking for reasonable things that your systems weren't providing...and through your tenacity, you made them accommodate your needs. NOW, you and others in your school will be better off as a result of your hard work. As Linda Reed said, you are all lifesavers!
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Linda said lots of good things but I really like her conception of how she can be of help to the teachers in her building. She surfs to find good things and then passes them on to teachers in the appropriate areas. I'd like to see her expand her system to include the student library helpers in the searching and notifying. She might also be able to use those folks as project mediators between the net and some of the instructional faculty. One of the key ideas she brought up is that we are all pioneers in this area. I'd like to add that we need successful pioneers before the rest of the folks can follow and settle. Don't imagine for a minute that MOST folks out on the net know more than you do. Although there are many people exploring the net, most are not farther along than you are. In fact, I'd say that you are in the most advanced group. Scary, eh? ....but true. I'm not saying that you know it all or that you are as experienced as you need to be, but you have the skills and some solid experience and that puts you far ahead of most folks on the net right now.
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On Saturday, we heard about kids controlling a magnetic resonance imaging machine to follow the development of chicken embryos. What Tino Villaflor didn't tell us is that most scientists and medical folks can't even do this yet. This technology is so new that it isn't in use anywhere except here. They are still working to make the device user friendly and having the kids work with it is giving them some insight in how to do this. Tino also reminded us that size of a project can impact the degree of sharing possible. This is a key issue. We need to be able to keep the size of these projects reasonable...or we need tools to make the management much easier. IF it is just as easy to handle 1000 participants as it is to handle three or four, then we'll have successfully addressed this issue.
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Judy Rooney described her project with just a few students as almost being held "hostage" to the fact that there were so few students on her end involved. This illustrates the flip side of the scale issue. We need sufficient participants both locally and remotely to help us keep the "ball" rolling. However, too few and it creates major problems.....too many and it creates major problems. As with several others of you, Judy reported that this project provided a major motivation boost for several of her students and one in particular. While we can't afford to completely re-focus on the students who have problems engaging with school, we certainly need to look for all the techniques and strategies we can find to help draw those students into constructive, learning interactions with others. I think we had several good examples of how on-line projects like this can offer assistance in this endeavor.
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Deb Adelman and Cheryl Mitchell and Greg Douglas and Melanie Tracy and Deb Killough all wanted to tackle problems of how to teach Internet skills to their student groups. This is quite a daunting task when you feel that you are only a half step ahead of the students in your understanding of the technology and instructional applications. However, you heard Jim and I and others say that this is ALWAYS going to be the case. Regarding technology, there is no Nirvana-level of absolute attainment where you know all and can tell all and don't have to continue to work to be current. If you understand that, then the future is somewhat known. You keep digging and learning and having fun. IF you stop, you die......(not trying to be overly dramatic). If you stop...you stop having fun.....and if you aren't having fun....
Trying to get back on track... they've developed or are developing materials and strategies for introducing Internet to others and some of these materials may also be of use to others in the group. I am sure that they learned far more by having to prepare to teach it then they would have learned from following a set of directions and exercises. Hmm... maybe this is a good strategy for teaching others? Have them take a "feature" of the net and learn it well enough to teach others about it. This was really the overall strategy that Jim and I had in mind in structuring the SATEX course the way we did it. I think it worked well. Let us know what you think.
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Mike Cornell showed us an excellent example of how a web site can be used for project organization and management. Email and listserves can be used quite well as means for communicating and collaborating but when there is LOTS of information to share among members of the group, having a web-site which can serve as the project home-base is very desirable. It is also helpful when you can have data entry forms and databases connected to the site. Web sites which employ powerful project management features are going to provide the kind of tools that we need to facilitate large groups working together. Although email can and will continue to be used (there will always be a need for a "private" communication channel), large scale sharing and collation of data are done much more efficiently through something like what Mike showed or through a conferencing mechanism like netnews. Since the Web server can do netnews-like things and gives you graphics, sounds and database connections as well, I predict that these new environments will emerge as the most common way to run projects in the near future.
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Minerva Hogan and Georgia von Behren showed us that learning to use the net to interact with others can have frustrating aspects. I still don't understand how their communication with Hilights got so protracted and confused. Be that as it may, I'm sure that all involved learned many lessons. They wrestled with issues such as how to send back large sets of results to the participants. And, they shared out the various parts of the project with their students (as did many others of you) so as to get them more involved in the overall process. I recall one or both of them citing teamwork and learning to work together as the kind of responses their students made about what they liked most about the project. In addition, they developed a handbook of resources to help their students find jobs after they graduate.....perhaps some of their students will aim a bit higher now that they know the broad range of types of jobs that are available in the world and the kind of skills they'll need to acquire those jobs.
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Mary Beth Graziano must have been followed around by a little white cloud all term (in contrast to the little, black clouds that rained on many of you periodically). She said that "it seems that everything went all right" during their project.....except for the grumpy surfer. She reported the project as a real motivation builder and we heard how she conducted the project with a powerbook and display panel in a group discussion/joint writing mode. She stressed that having a strict timeline was one feature that helped her keep the project moving forward and kept all involved and organized. We've seen this to be the case as well, but we've also encouraged each of you to BE FLEXIBLE in the time you can allocate to the project and in thinking how you can space out various parts of the activity to keep students motivated and meet your other scheduling committments at school. Many of you found that these projects take lots of effort and TIME. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right and often this takes a bit more time than you might imagine. Be aware of this and plan accordingly. Sometimes things will work as they did for Mary Beth and other times you'll be shadowed by a little black cloud.
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Teresa Boland described doing a weather project on the net. They started with a narrow focus but the project broadened to incorporating other aspects of the local community. She was able to get the students involved in writing about their locale and had some problems in exchanging attachments with others but eventually solved those problems. From the sound of report, the students were involved in almost every phase of the project even though they had to use a library-based computer for sending and receiving messages. MANY folks out on the net are working through procedures just like this one in order to get access to the net....and this makes the project work more difficult. However, sometime soon schools will have better connections and those of you who have learned to actually run projects will be much better positioned to take advantage of this new medium.
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Meg Dawczak had her share of problems in getting connected but she finally succeeded and launched a successful project. "Meg, you have 149 new email messages. Would you like to read them all now?"
She also conducted her project using one computer in her class. As an aside, I'd like to comment on the prevalent view of computers in the schools from a few years back. No one really articulated this, but the idea was that one day each student will have his/her own computer and THEN we'll see how beneficial these machines can be. Many are still waiting for this to occur. One day it may occur, but if we wait until then to do anything with computers in schools, we will have totally missed the boat. Several years back a series of studies were done and it was found that quite a lot of good work could be done when students worked on computers in teams or small groups. Many concluded that the ideal size for a group was pairs and triples. At about that point, many educators realized that lots of good work could be done when a group of students shared a computer....because it wasn't actually the computer, per se, that was the key factor in the learning, but rather the group work. Now, I don't mean to argue that each child should not have a computer. Rather, I'm saying that there will be lessons that are best learned by each of us individually and there are other lessons that will be best learned through group work. Computers can play a role in each of those social structures and there is no need to imagine that a single instructional model will work best for all. By starting to work with the computers you have available to you now, you'll be able to learn about what works in these (multiple student--single computer) situations and you'll develop insight about the kinds of situations in which a single student should have access to a single computer. Use what you have and be creative and good teaching and learning will surely follow.
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Katie Oplawski told us about the food chain project that grew out of control but she saw many positive advantages in having the mixed grade level groups working together. She provided us with an object lesson of a project "succeeding too well" and almost overwhelming the project administrator. Luckily, her students knew that their performance on this project would affect her grade in College, so they pulled together to "win one for the gipper". I'd say if a teacher can get a group of students to rally in support of them and work with them to do whatever is needed....even learn new stuff..., then they are doing the right kinds of things in their classroom. I'm sure I speak for the others on this, Katie. We hope the disctrict realizes that they can't RIF one of their best young teachers (and this goes for the other new teachers in the group that are worrying about this as well. I think Meg and Mary Beth are also in this situation) and rehires you soon so you can stop worrying during summer vacation.
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Melanie Tracy told us about an assignment in which she has her students searching to locate URLs related to their content area so they can share them with the class and anyone else interested in this content area. The next step is to get these items "banked" on a server so all can access them at any time. Several of you mentioned the need to "bank" items and information so others could get at it later. Jim and I mentioned that we would be happy to help you get started doing this. Just let us know. Later on, when you want to put the information on your own server, we can help you make the move and then we'll link to your information on your server.
The other item I remember from Melanie's presentation was that all her students wanted to learn about how to do this EARLIER in their program of study. I'd say that whenever you have students who want to learn more and more quickly, that's a good sign.
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Debbie Black told us about her many project ideas but focused on her success story. I remember her face at the third class meeting. It seemed that the little black cloud had been following her around up until then and she was tired of being rained on. But, on Saturday, we heard a different story.....the silver lining emerged. Debbie and her class hit on the idea of a French cookbook and it seemed that this was the kind of thing that really resonated well with folks out on the net. They collected 65 french recipes and got involved in translating them to English. The cookbook will contain the original French language submissions and all of the English translations. She reported sustained interest and high motivation to learn about other aspects of French culture. Despite the fact that they missed out on instruction in future perfect tense....maybe you haven't permanently damaged them. Is there a way to coordinate with the instructor next year to tie in that work with recipes? Jacque will have prepared the crepes because they are his favorite and he will want to impress you.
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Beth Flickinger's Fantasy Hoops project seems to been the right project at the right time. She too was nearly swamped with responses. I heard her state several things she would do differently, but I didn't hear any loss of enthusiasm for how it engaged the students in doing practical math. She reported coordination problems...especially around spring break week. Again, since schools all over the world have different calendars (we can't even coordinate the UI calendar and both the Champaign and Urbana schools), this can be a problem for projects with tight timelines. Ease up on the time line so that schools can contribute when they CAN and it will make the project flow more smoothly. Unless there is some critical need to synchronize an environmental observation of some sort (sun, moon, comets, meteors, first day of spring, bird migrations, etc.) then try to provide a broader window for observation. This may make the project extend longer than one might wish, but.....if you want variation in responses, then that is the price to be paid. Personally, I think that kids attention spans are too short and they need to be encouraged to wait a bit longer for some things. Many good things take time and we should be willing to wait for them. ANYTHING we can do to reinforce that big idea is a good idea in my book.
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Thom Priest discussed the development of his questionnaire and how he worked with a listserv to collect information about teaching listening skills. I think Thom did a lot of very nice things and would recommend that you look at his procedure and his final instrument if you ever wish to poll a larger group for their inputs. People out there who don't know you feel little obligation to collaborate with you when it costs them time and effort. We all have to develop skills in working with people....learning how to talk to them/approach them to gently persuade them to work with us so we get what we want. The key, is to give them something in exchange...respect, understanding, other information, a data summary... If you are perceived as a sharer, a collaborator, then people are much more likely to cooperate with you than if you just jump in and ask for information--some effort from them--and then take that and go about your business. As Jim pointed out, if we can involve them in the process in some way....make them part owners of the endeavor, then they are much likely to work with you.....work with US....since they are a part of it. This is a skill and it takes practice to perfect so we need to provide our students with opportunities of this sort early and often.
I think he mentioned getting about 75 responses to a 20+ item questionnaire within about a week. This is a wonderful return rate for an on-line survey.
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Deborah Killough, a.k.a "Crash" Killough, had a harder time than most getting her network service providers to respond to her needs but she is past the hard part and will complete her work this summer. "Sometimes, it takes more time than you might think".
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Ed Allen spoke for his wife Louisa. They also found that simple plans can expand quickly. They worked with the Grimm's fairy tales in a project where students modified the stories in creative ways and submitted them to a panel of student judges to select winners in various categories. His student judges did lots of reading and translating in the second language they are studying and they learned some literature as well since they needed to compare the new stories with the originals. Ed conveyed that the volume of information exchange was a problem and speculated that a web page would be a better means for sharing. I agree. Next time you should plan to modify the project to work through a web home page. I wonder if there is a way to get more of your classes involved in doing the translation work or reviewing and ranking submissions? They may not be as capable as the advanced students, but they would be involved in reading and critiquing and that would also be valuable for them as well. Putting the work on a web site would make this easier to accomplish.
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Kirsten Tripp and Wendy Olsen became involved in a Limericks exchange project. Thad to push the envelope to get their network manager to modify the parameter settings on a computer system on their LAN so it could communicate with the Internet. That sort of worked but then they determined to do the work via modem on a stand alone computer. "Just when they thought it was safe to go in the water....." ISBE crashed on them and that set them back a couple of weeks.
The ISBE situation was something that affected many of you and the main lesson to draw from it is that "sometimes the magic doesn't work". Very often it isn't your fault, so don't immediately start changing a lot of software settings or connections, etc. Call someone and attempt to find out if the problem is entirely yours or if others are having problems as well. Another lesson to reflect on is the devastating effect something like this can have on students and teachers. When teachers invest a lot of time and effort in using the technology and it won't work for them when they need it, then we can imagine that many of them will back away until the technology is stable and reliable...and they'll be hard to convince that all is now well. As hard as it can be to try to change teacher's attitudes and opinions initially, it can be twice as hard after they have a bad experience with the technology. So, what is the solution? There really isn't one, since none us can control all of the variable involved, but forewarned is forearmed. IF you can take steps to prepare materials so that some activity can occur even though the net is "down", that is a good plan. Encourage your teachers to plan for this kind of situation rather than depend on the magic always working. Murphy's law will demonstrate its supremacy at one time or another. Another strategy you can employ is to try to control as many of the critical elements as you can. IF you can run the server for your schools or classroom, do that. Don't depend on someone else doing it for you. It really isn't that hard.
Get to know your tech support people (or become one yourself) and try to solicit their help when you are at a critical point in the instructional process and you need for everything to work. Another strategy is to arrange for alternate means to connect to the net so that if one method is down you have another method waiting as backup. I'll give a short story to illustrate. I often go around the state and talk to teachers about the Internet and using it in their classrooms. I have an 800 number I can dial to connect to the net at UIUC. I can also connect through the 800 number at ISBE. I often have a temporary connection through Midwest Internet and/or netILLINOIS. This means that I have several ways to connect to the net. Personally, I think one alternate method is sufficient. I've never had to go beyond my backup connection.
One last suggestion is one offered by Jim. You can save images/pages from the web onto your hard drive and simply tell netscape to OPEN FILE instead of go to a URL. When you do this, the info LOOKS like you are out on the web. It can look so good the audience may not know the difference. Naturally, this depends on what you are trying to do on the web, but it is a strategy that can work....in a pinch.
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Jeff Morrison also worked on a survey and was trying to develop an effective staff development program. He is a graduate of SATEX but worked with us to take advantage of you folks as a group who are learning about the net this term. They are trying to develop a community of educators in his district....which means they need to get them all online. He cited the ISBE troubles and stated that folks need reliable and consistent access before they can make much progress in encouraging them to use this new medium.
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John Carter
told us about his calculus class and their use of lessons to
calculate the value of "g". They had students perform experiments all over
the world and report back their determined value of "g" and then they
averaged the experimental values and compared it with the text book value.
John told us about a program at TI which loans sets of calculators and
materials to classrooms. He spent a good bit of his time in working to
identify ways to infuse this technology into courses through inservice
education. Now that they have a vision of what they want to do, it is
necessary to work on the other teachers to integrate it into their
curricula.
1800ticares
www.ti.com
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Doreen Romero had lots of hardware problems but solved them and joined the group a bit later in the term. Her project involved sky watching for elementary students. They collected data related to the recent appearance of the meteor shower in April. The students collected data, longitude and latitude, elevation, description of the sky and constellation field, etc. She too, worked with the group in class but put the info on disk and took it home to do her connection to the Internet since the school did not have a telephone access point or the computer/modem in her classroom.
On the night of the observation, it rained. So, they had to reschedule. This reminds us of the need to be as flexible as we can in scheduling observation dates/times.
This reminds me that Doreen and a couple of others were literally using the Internet as their virtual classroom since they don't have real classrooms but rather substitute on a regular basis in the local school district. I know we are all hopeful that they continue their virtual classroom work but we'd also like for them to have a real classroom as well.
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Kristin Churney did the bubble gum experiment and hoped to have all sorts of strange bubble gum types for comparison. Instead, she found that just a few types of bubble gum seem to reign supreme in Kid-dom.....Fleer, Bazooka, Bubble-yum... She also found that many of the sugared gums are almost half sugar by weight. She learned a lot about having students get involved in projects of this sort. They don't seem to think very scientifically unless they are helped, so some students chewed whole packs and some threw away the paper that was needed in the weighing, etc. Sounds like kids need supervision to do these kinds of projects as well.
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Su Quarles and
Lynne Dunne
These two worked together in a classroom and shared duties and
responsibilities. Both indicated that in addition to networking support,
human support and educational/curricular support are critical. Su told us
that her principal was excited about this networking stuff, but reminded
her that she wasn't to put too much time on it such that she neglected the
real curriculum that needed to be covered. I think I captured the essence
of her point in that statement. They worked on a persuasive writing
activity that involved folks out on the net collaborating with them and
sharing their student's work. Su felt that her students were much clearer
on what a persuasive letter was and what sorts of elements were needed than
had ever been the case before. This may be due not only to their writing
their own letters but because of the reading of examples of other students'
writing.
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Pam Shallenberger and Linda Blumenthal
These two are both from the C-U area so they decided they could work
together to their mutual benefit. Their project concerned having students
write fairy tales and share them with distant classes. Pam had the
students (4th grade) writing the stories out in long hand in class and
then she would enter them on the computer at home. They exchanged stories
with folks on the net and had the students read what was sent back to them.
Linda did most of her work in tech support while Pam handled the classroom
aspects of the project.
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Yu-hua Lan shared the results of her survey of visually impaired web users. She wanted to find out if these individuals had significant difficulties in using the web since it is so visually oriented. She received responses from 8 participants, 5 from USA and 3 from Taiwan. She is hoping to use this information to examine design characteristics of web browsers to help make them easier to use by the partially sighted. She found a variety of devices to help with reading text from the screen and alternate ways that folks could input data, but did not find a very satisfactory way to help the partially sighted deal with embedded graphics.
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Jake Novak
My Town is Cool Period Project
Jake is kind of a laid back guy and was totally amazed at the overwhelming response he received to his project....35 towns around the US and abroad. He first had them declare and interest in the project before he started sending them detailed information about the project. He said he felt this was a good strategy. Approximately 90% of these sites sent in a final submission....so they stayed with the project to the end. The project required participants to write a theme about their local community and describe why they like it and what makes it unique.
Jake made extensive use of the Eudora Nicknames feature to simplify sending info to his large group of participants. Once he got all the responses back, he was really in trouble....because then he had to get them graded and choose a winner! I'm sure he had been thinking about this, but probably felt he could handle it himself....until he saw the overwhelming response. So, he had associates help with the reviewing and selection of winners. Mary Beth Graziano's class helped him out and did some of the grading of the submissions. He indicated that if he does this again, he'll specify that locales hold their own mini-competition and only submit the very best writeups.
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Bonnie Flanagan ran a global grocery list type of project but she simplified the list of items and felt that this made the project better. She found the Global Grocery List Project out on the Internet (the web site which hosts a large project of this type that has been ongoing for several years) and communicated with the people who run the project and site. She says she felt intimidated about proposing a project so similar to theirs. I tried to tell her that no one has the market cornered on good ideas and she should simply press on with her idea and see how it is similar and different to the original GGL. I encourage the rest of you to do this as well. An existing project may do what you wish, but it may not. Don't be discouraged to find something similar to your idea. If it works for you, join them. If not, run your own project. Large projects tend to take on a life of their own and then they don't change much. Ideally, these projects would evolve as the situation changes. We find better ways to do something or share something or better roles for the students, etc. Beware of projects which are so overly specified that they lose the capacity to adapt to your specific situation. Why do a project that is perfect for somebody else but not you? You need to weigh this against the cost to you of doing the project management and coordination but don't be intimidated merely because someone else does/has/is doing something similar.
One of the articles we list on our server is about the Noon Project. We worked on that years ago and often run it again. Kathleen Smith is the real coordinator/manager and Jim and I just help out with tech support. Anyway, shortly after we published that article, we began to see lots of "clone" projects which measured the noon shadow. They all had unique twists to them but the ideas were fundamentally the same as the original one that we had been doing. We just looked at the similarity as a type of flattery. Folks must have liked the idea to have wanted to keep working with it.
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THAT'S ALL FOLKS. Sorry this was a bit long but I wanted to make a few comments on all the presentations.
====== By the way..... (in net shorthand BTW) ======
How many of you would be interested in some sort of follow-up course like SATEX where we talk about how to shift gears away from surfing and move toward serving? Or, perhaps you feel that another course focusing on some other issues would be desirable. Please let us know what you think of the idea of our offering some sort of follow-up course. Thanks. ===============
This has been a very enjoyable class. Let's keep the discussions going. The SATEX reflector will remain active until next spring term and then we'll ask if you want to remain on the list along with the new SATEX group. IF you want your email address removed from the list, let us know. Otherwise, you'll continue to get copies of everything sent to satex@mail.ed.uiuc.edu .
Michael
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Michael Waugh <mwaugh@uiuc.edu>
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign