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Chapter 7 |
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On the Web! Activities |
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Email is a prime support for developing a global community of learners. School systems are in the forefront of the movement toward global learning communities with widespread programs that connect students all over the world with key pals in getting-to-know-you projects Global email, generally speaking, means around the world and is often defined meaning outside the borders of the United States. It doesn’t necessarily, however, have to be international but can be any contact with others away from the school-home environment of the sender Marcia Worth-Baker’s fifth-grade students at the Gould School in North Caldwell, New Jersey, established a “global” community by teaching senior citizens how to use email (2003). In a program, called somewhat after-the-fact, Network Neighbors, the 10-year-olds developed a lesson plan for teaching senior citizens all about email.
Michael, one of the fifth graders, whom the teacher described as “the one [of her students] most likely born with a mouse in hand,” kept up his correspondence with his senior buddy after the training sessions ended and coined the phrase “network neighbors” to describe the cyberrelationship. All of the children involved in the project felt enormously gratified as they carried out their mission to teach the elderly how to use email. The seniors came to the school’s computer lab for each session. The students became tutors to individually guide their “students’ through the learning process after the computer teacher introduced them to the email process. When the class period ended, the students and their newly found friends had a chance to interact in the real world as they read the messages that had been sent. The collaboration went beyond the computer lab as the students shared artwork they had done and that was displayed in the school hallway. Over and above the rewards of finding new friends across the generations, Ms. Worth-Baker observed, “My class gained an appreciation and talent for teaching, learning the difference between showing someone a skill and doing it for them.”
Technology performs remarkable services for students with learning disabilities as we all know. Larry Soberman, a teacher in the resource room at an Eugene, Oregon, high school found out about the value of chats as a learning tool for students who have difficulty with the “basic skills of organizing and processing information,” indicating Luke Syrius, a student of his, “needed both instruction in notetaking skills and strategy support in how to pick out the key ideas in a lecture” (2003). Project Connect was developed by Professor Lynne Anderson-Inman from the University of Oregon. This program helps learning-disabled students such as Luke with notetaking skills needed in class. It is an interactive program in which the students, with their own text window can simultaneously take notes to the best of their ability and use a ‘chat box’ to ask questions of their notetakers. In this way, notetakers can clarify the content of classroom presentations, build students’ confidence for using new concepts and vocabulary words, and even prompt students to ask questions of the teacher. When class is over, students leave with two sets of electronic notes, one created by themselves and one created by the notetaker. Using study strategies taught to them during out-of-class tutoring sessions, students learn effective ways to use the notes for reviewing, studying, and completing assignments, either on computer or on paper.
Luke, who is both “bright and articulate” but who has trouble as described above receives immediate feedback on his notetaking as he chats with the expert notetaker. Both Luke and the notetaker use a laptop computer provided them that has software and is wirelessly networked for sharing the notes each makes, and Luke can “simultaneously see the notes that the notetaker is typing on the opposite side of the screen.” The final steps involve a comparison of both sets of notes which have been printed out for Luke to refer to see what he has missed and to discuss with the notetaker the disparities between the two sets of notes to ascertain how Luke can improve his comprehension of the lecture and the main ideas with supporting details.
Search the links below and others you find to discover more ways teachers have built learning communities via key pals. Create a one-page summary of your top five strategies and include the URL of the site describing the activity. Be prepared to share your summary with your peers.
Want to know more? Check out these sites:
http://www.iecc.org/AboutIECC.cfm
http://worldkids.net/clubs/kci/
http://www.ea.pvt.k12.pa.us/htm/Units/Upper/modlang/putnam/general/penpals.htm
Sources
Worth-Baker, M. 2002. Network neighbors. Creative Classroom (November/December), 17 (3), 66.
Developing skills to participate in instruction. 2003. LD OnLine Newsletter. [Office of Special Education Programs: U. S. Department of Education]. Retrieved May 28, 2003, from www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/technology/opening_the_door_luke.html. .
Hawkins, E. 2003. Batch email. Retrieved July 1, 2003, from www.nea.org/helpfrom/growing/works4me/tech/techclas.html. .
Carlson, K. 2003. Weekly email newsletter. Retrieve July 1, 2003, from www.nea.org/helpfrom/growing/works4me/tech/techclas.html.
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