Problem Solving
Problem solving is one of the best learning opportunities we can offer students of any age. The Internet can be used to support problem-based learning around the world through information searches, peer feedback activities, parallel problem solving, sequential creations, telepresent problem solving, simulations, and social action projects.
Structure 12: Information Searches. Problem solving online can be competitive or collaborative. In the simplest problem-solving activity, students are given clues and must use either online or more traditional resources to answer questions. These information searches are usually structured as competitions, with the winning students or teams being those who correctly answer the most questions by a common deadline.
Probably
the longest-running and most well-received information
search activity on the Internet is found at GlobalSchoolHouse.
The GeoGame
was originally developed by Tom Clauset of North Carolina.
Classes that participate in this geography game send in 10
pieces of information about their schools' location. The
project's organizer then scrambles the submitted information
to produce two information lists (one of clue sets and the
other of locations) that are then sent to participating
classrooms. Students have approximately two weeks to use
information resources to match clues with communities. The
winners are announced by e-mail.
Information searches also can be longer and require extensive and sophisticated research, analysis, and communication activities for participating students. Typically, though, this structure supports deductive and convergent reasoning.
Structure 13: Peer Feedback Activities. In peer feedback activities, participants offer constructive responses to others' ideas and their expression. The Writers in Electronic Residence project, for example, helps young Canadian writers respond to each other's poems, essays, and short stories through a national computer-conferencing system. Professional authors work directly with participating classes, adding telementoring to peer feedback and making this collection of activities especially exciting.
Peer
feedback activities also can be set up as electronic
debates. The How
Far Does Light Go? project, sponsored by the
University of California-Berkeley, is a good example. The
project's organizers suggest that middle or high school
students use relevant information they find on the Web to
prepare position papers about the scientific properties of
light, as well as critique other students' statements
according to what they understand about light's
properties.
Peer feedback activities also can be successful with young children. In the MindsEye Monster Exchange Project, for example, children draw original monsters and use words to describe them. These descriptions are then e-mailed to students in other schools who read the descriptions and then draw what they think the described monsters look like. Both sets of pictures and the descriptions are then displayed in the project's "Monster Gallery," and students communicate with each other about the similarities and differences between the first and second drawings.
Structure 14: Parallel Problem Solving. In parallel problem solving, a popular activity structure, students discuss each other's problem-solving processes. A problem is presented to and explored by students in several locations before they come together online to compare, contrast, and discuss their separate problem-solving methods.
The Electronic Schoolhouse's International Egg-a-Thon is one of the most creative and best developed parallel problem-solving projects around. In this collection of related challenges, students use eggs to solve several problems. In the "Bundled Egg Drop," for example, participants must create a holding crate for a raw egg in 30 minutes from a collection of previously assembled materials. The crate is supposed to protect the egg from breaking when the crate is dropped from a standard height. In the "International Egg Toss," teams of students create packages to protect raw eggs when they are sent by surface mail to other participating classes.
Grade: 4 Ongoing? Yes
Math, Science, and Language Arts combine in one fun competition. Students construct a simple vehicle using recycled or reused materials then test how far this vehicle can travel by sending it down a ramp. Photos of the top-performing vehicles from each competing class will be posted on the project's website.
Such rich and varied problem solving and discussions of multiple problem-solving methods are becoming quite popular among telecollaborating classes.
Structure 15: Sequential Creations. Students can also interact by collaboratively creating a common work. This is the purpose of sequential creation. This intriguing activity structure, a type of artistic problem solving, has participants progressively creating either a common written text or a shared visual image. The structure thus far has been used with a variety of expressive media in support of intriguing collaborative creative efforts.
Kidlink's
MIDI
Music Relay, coordinated by Stefan Gustafson in
Stockholm, offers a good example. The project invites
students to add to songs that are progressively built with
30-second MIDI segments as the files travel from person to
person on the Internet. In another project, children create
sequentially illustrated stories one page at a time in
Write and Illustrate a Children's Story coordinated
by Deborah Falk of Duck Bay, Manitoba.
Another good example of the sequential creation activity structure is Rosa Gunnarsdottir's heart-warming Benni the Bear Around the World. This project follows a stuffed bear from his packing in a box by Rosa's class in Iceland through his travels from classroom to classroom around the world. As each class receives Benni, the students explore the mementos that previous classes placed into his box, as well as take photos and write short pieces for display on the class's page at Benni's Web site.
Structure 16: Telepresent Problem Solving. Telepresent problem-solving activities bring together participants from different geographic locations and time zones either asynchronously or in real time to participate virtually in a computer-mediated meeting, to use remotely located robotic tools, or to engage simultaneously, without direct electronic contact, in similar activities at different project sites.
Creativity
Cafe's KidCast
for Peace, for example, shows student artwork
and sponsors periodic CU-SeeMe audio- and videoconferences,
helping young people from all over the world create and
share ways to "make this a happier, healthier, safer and
peaceful world." Each Saturday at 18:00 hours Greenwich
Mean Time, members of the international Kidclub use IRC text chat to discuss current topics that often involve solving such global challenges as endangered species, hunger, and poverty. Telepresent problem solving can take many forms and use various types of multimedia to connect students with each other and help them solve real-world problems.
Structure 17: Simulations.This activity type offers students the chance to solve problems in simulated contexts. Online simulations require the most coordination and maintenance of all the projects designed with activity structures, but the depth of learning and task engagement that are possible may convince a project's organizers to spend the extra time and effort needed to make a simulation work well.
Brian McGee's Electronic United Nations
project, for example, invites classrooms to "become"
countries and interact with other participating classes in a
simulated United Nations, discussing issues, creating and
completing surveys, and crafting and voting on proposals.
Participating students and teachers can learn much about
global issues, politics, debate, and social ideas. In
another simulation--Leni Donlan, Jory Post, and Leslie
Christman's Taking Stock--classes can develop
and monitor the progress of stock portfolios.
<The
Election Connection>
Grades: K-12
Ongoing? No
Here's a great way to encourage students to become actively
involved citizens while teaching them about our political
system. The Election Co-nection site was created as a
Webquest with free registration required to participate. Two
weeks before the 2000 U.S. general election, students from
all overthe country held a mock presidential election. In
addition, some studentscreated fictitious
candidates--according to the required presidential
qualifications--and ran for office in a parallel election.
One highlight of the site is election results broken down by
state and demographic profile. Resources for teachers
include: clearly written instructions for how to use the
various sections of the site, a wide range of suggested
curriculum applications (from social studies and language
arts to math), assessment rubrics, and a long listof links
for additional election-related information.
Federation Role
Playing Game
Grades: 9 -12 Ongoing? Yes
Join the characters of Star Trek in an exciting new
adventure! FRPG is a very well-organized and long running
email role-playing game. Individual participants create
characters based on the Star Trek Next Generation series (40
years afterward). To apply, participants submit a three-page
application story involving the character they created.
Players do not need to be Star Trek experts, but do need to
be able to express themselves clearly in writing (and
willing to commit the time to the role play).
Structure 18: Social Action Projects. Social action projects help learners understand and take action to help solve authentic global challenges. As many educators know, the Internet can serve as a venue for "humanitarian, multicultural, action-oriented telecommunications projects" (Ed Gragert, I*EARN) that involve the future leaders of our planet: our children. Social action projects focus on real and immediate problems and often propose that students take action to help solve a problem, rather than simply stop learning once they understand it.
Many examples of social action projects can be found online. Some are sponsored by I*EARN, such as the multinational Holocaust/Genocide Project, which explores the Holocaust in Europe during World War II among other genocidal incidents in history. Students aged 12 to 17 are guided by mentors as they study genocide and participate in teleconferences. Through these conferences, the students publish An End to Intolerance, an annual magazine. They also have the option to take a two-week study trip to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Israel, an annual event occurring each spring near the Passover holiday.
Many social action projects focus on environmental issues. The annual Earth Day Groceries Project, for example, coordinates the efforts of thousands of U.S. elementary students to decorate grocery bags with images and text to increase environmental awareness. These bags are filled with groceries and passed out in the children's communities each year on Earth Day (April 22). Nina Hansen's annual international Save the Beaches project, which is supported by the University of Hartford in Connecticut, helps students who live in coastal communities clean their local beaches and generate data on the quantities and types of litter found. Project participants share the data and try to detect general patterns. After analyzing these patterns, the students share their suggestions on how to reduce excess amounts of particular types of litter.
Potentials
The potential in these projects for multidisciplinary, forward-thinking, and truly collaborative learning is awesome. Many of the more sophisticated projects--by being interdisciplinary, authentic, and active--focus participants' attention on the problems rather than on the telecommunications technologies used to share information with distant collaborators. This clear emphasis on curriculum-based learning, rather than technologies, is one of the characteristics that makes all types of telecollaborative projects so potentially powerful.
References
Levin, J. A., Riel, M., Miyake, N., & Cohen, M. (1987). Education on the electronic frontier: Teleapprentices in globally distributed educational contexts. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 12, 254-260.
Riel, M., & Harassim, L. (1994). Research perspectives on network learning. Machine-Mediated Learning, 4, 91-113.
Judi Harris, jbharris@tenet.edu
