We started the project by writing our project description and giving it a catchy title, Pick Your Brain! to reflect the challenges offered and authored by the participants. This information was posted on the Internet under the Global SchoolNet project registry. We believed that this site would help us get the most number of responses. We included a sample brain teaser called "PippinTown" in our project description to get people interested. Interested teachers were invited to send us e-mail to be put on a mailing list.
We debated whether to carry the project via e-mail or the World Wide Web. We decided on an electronic mail list for several reasons:
Neither of the project coordinations is a school teacher, and thus we had no initial students to try the project. We invited teachers to try this project and share it with their students. There were only 7 teachers who responded to this project, unfortunately.
The most important participant was a teacher from Romania who submitted a total of 3 brain teasers. He was the one of the first to respond to the project request and dutifully sent the information we requested. He and his class were consistent in trying our brain teasers and posting their own brain teasers. He was the most consistent in writing to us every week with proposed solutions as well. Without his class, our project would be even more sparse than it was. His class was a great help to us in creating a variety of brain teasers so that others could try some other brain teasers (aside from ours).
At the end of the project, we asked all the teachers to send us their thoughts about the project and its organization. After a week, we have received only one reply. Thus, we are not sure how teachers integrated this network activity with their traditional curriculum, or what their classroom teaching strategies were for this network activity.
Within the classroom, we had anticipated that the students would talk about the brain teasers and try to solve them in small discussion groups, which would provide the most effective interaction among students. In these groups, the students would also write their own brain teasers and share with the rest of the class their ideas.
On the network, we had envisioned that the students would try to solve the brain teasers and send their comments and questions to the list. We would broadcast the messages to the other participants to generate discussion among classes. Students could post partial solutions or ideas, then ask for help (e.g., "We figured out X, but we don't understand how to get Y."). Students could issue challenges to other students by creating their own brain teasers to befuddle their peers. It is unfortunate that we did not get to see this process in action.
We started the project on 24 March 1997 and sent the wrap-up request to the participants on 27 April 1997. We expected a fairly large number of participants, but that was not the case. As we mentioned above, there were only 7 participants. We sent out postings once a week, starting the first week's posting which included the answers to our sample brain teaser. When the participants replied, we compiled their brain teasers and their solutions for the next week's mailing. Hence, each week's mailings was a follow-up to the previous week's, be it new problems or solutions to previous brain teasers. This method helped us keep track of our participants, the brain teasers and solutions. We decided that a week was a good length of time to separate the new problem and its solution. This also factors in the time difference between the U.S. and the other countries of the participants. If the delay was shorter than a week, it would not be sufficient time to try the brain teaser before the solution is given out; if the time was longer than a week, participants would soon lose interest in the problem or might even forget the problem.
We feel this project started off with endless possibilities, especially how students from all over the world can share their own ideas. This would have been a proud moment for them too, if they wrote clever ones and stumped the others. The cultivation of critical and logical thinking processes are also vital in this project, and we believe that this a very appropriate way of developing such skills in students. Such thinking skills will prove important in math and science courses as well as other areas.
One bad thing about this project was the lack of motivated participants. Even with the few participants we had, the messages always came directly from the teachers and never the students. Perhaps we would have attracted more attention if we had created a web page for this project and posted the brain teasers. The Web page would allow potential participants to browse the posts of the project before committing and the page could be registered with the Web search engines as well. Due to time constraints and other issues with the Web, we did not do so.
We attempted to start this project as early as possible for this course, but even the maximum time for this project did not seem sufficient. We carried out our project for only a month and this time went by too quickly. We also sent the wrap-up to the participants early the last week, but we received only one responses by the end of the week.
This project could be improved if we had asked a teacher to commit to the project and include his students in writing and solving brain teasers. This way, we could be assured of having a consistent student population to work with, even if there are no other participants. We would also be able to analyze how this type of activity can be integrated into a math or science curriculum and get a feel for how the students benefited from this project. It would also have been helpful if each student that participated could write a short report on what he did, how he did it and what he learned from this activity. We should have been more firm with the other participants. Most of the classes that asked to join did not contribute anything to the project. As part of request to join, we asked that each class contribute an initial brain teaser. Only two classes did so. At the end of the project, we asked for comments from each teacher. Only one teacher sent her thoughts. A future project might drop those members who do not contribute anything to the project. This would encourage teachers to take the commitment more seriously.
In the future, we recommend that others try to use their own classes and do this on a weekly or fortnightly basis for a 6-month period. If the teacher is interested, there can also be graphical (or picture-based) brain teasers. This will be especially appealing visually if it is found on a Web page that the teacher creates. Given the longer time period for this project, we believe that a lot more can be done on the Internet. Students will be more excited about having their brain teasers shown to the rest of the world. They will also be more inclined to work harder on it and be more creative.
We feel that the students stand most to gain out of this activity because it allows them to work on solving the problems and to discuss them with peers when they get stumped. Having tried a few brain teasers, they could then proceed to write their own. They will also be developing their critical and logical thinking processes throughout this project. These skills will definitely help them to answer word problems in math classes or sharpen their observation skills in science classes.
We believe that even the teachers who took part in this project benefitted the same way their students might have. These skills need to be honed and not put away in cold storage. We feel that the teachers have sharpened their observation skills and also their critical and logical thinking processes. Such skills can also help the teachers in helping their students learn better since they might better understand how students think, or show how one step logically follows another. By writing and solving brain teaser problems, students also learn to express their thoughts carefully and clearly.