Activity Structures

Curriculum-Based Telecollaboration

Using Activity Structures to Design Student Projects

By Judi Harris

[Instuctor's Note: Michael Krauss, 2/4/04 - Links in the article that are no longer functional appear as bolded text and are no longer active links. Where this has occured, I have added additional, similar resources from Judi Harris' Virtual Architecture Web Home. The newly added links are <bold, italicized, and enclosed in angle brackets.>]

How teachers use the Internet to create learning projects for their students depends a lot on the tools they have at their disposal. In this feature article, the first of the new volume, Judi Harris describes 18 major "activity structures" that can be used by teachers when they design their classroom projects. She also points out some of the best uses of these activity structures in projects that already reside on the Web.

ctivity structures are design tools. Teachers can use them to help their students "telecollaboratively" use the Internet to accomplish curriculum-related learning goals. The nature and reasons for using activity structures were introduced in an earlier "Mining the Internet" column ("Wetware: Why Use Activity Structures?" December/January 1997-98). Here I discuss all 18 activity structures, which have been updated since their last appearance in The Computing Teacher in March, April, and May 1995. More information about each structure is available in my book Virtual Architecture: Designing and Directing Curriculum-Based Telecomputing (ISTE, 1998).

How were these design tools created? While analyzing the structures of thousands of educational telecomputing activities that were shared by teacher-designers via the Internet, I was able to identify three major categories of student action, each with five to seven activity types. I labeled these categories according to the dominant type of learning act that each activity class used: (1) interpersonal exchange, (2) information collection and analysis, and (3) problem solving. In this article, I provide an overview of these categories and structures. See Virtual Architecture's Web Home for more examples.

Interpersonal Exchange

Interpersonal exchange is the oldest and among the most popular types of educational telecomputing activities, one in which individuals or groups can "talk" electronically with one another by using electronic mail (e-mail), asynchronous large-group discussion tools (such as Web conferences, bulletin boards, and newsgroups), or real-time text or audio- and videoconferencing tools (such as Internet Relay Chat [IRC] or CU-SeeMe). Six activity structures are now associated with interpersonal exchange processes: keypals, global classrooms, electronic appearances, telementoring, question-and-answer activities, and impersonations.

Structure 1: Keypals. Keypal projects were the first commonly used telecomputing activity structure; it is similar to more traditional penpal activities. Students typically work in pairs and communicate with each other electronically, often suggesting their own discussion topics.

For example, fourth-year students and teachers at the Hobart School in Tasmania produced a beautiful Web site, the Hobart-Malang Electronic Mail Project, to chronicle their rich year-long exchanges with peers attending the Malang School in Indonesia. By electronically sharing messages, photographs, and artwork, these students helped each other understand their respective cultures, customs, and everyday lives as they discussed such topics as native animals, traditional folktales, homes, religions, school curricula, and what it "feels like" to be Australian or Indonesian.

<How People Live in Europe and the Middle East> - Grades: 6-9 Ongoing? No
Click on this site see one way to "advertise" a keypal project. On this webpage, an eighth grade English teacher in Israel invites European schools to start an e-mail exchange with his students. The purpose? To compare life in two cultures, as well as to help students practice their English skills. The teacher's plan is focused, yet seems flexible enough to accommodate the needs and interests of potential keypal partner schools.

Keypal-like interactions also can occur with real-time text-chat tools such as IRC. For example, students at the Leo Ussak Elementary School in Rankin Inlet in the Canadian Arctic communicated with children in Hawaii and two adults who had just completed a dogsled trip from Manitoba to the Northwest Territories. (You can learn more about accessing and using IRC at IRC Help.)

Unfortunately, student-to-student keypal exchanges often take more time to manage than teachers typically have. Sending and receiving many e-mail messages through a single class account (or monitoring many messages if students have their own accounts) can make keypal activity structures difficult to justify for the time and effort required.

Structure 2: Global Classrooms. Group-to-group exchanges--or global classrooms--especially those that emphasize a particular curriculum area, can be fascinating yet manageable collaborative explorations. With this activity structure, two or more classrooms in different locations can study a common topic together during an agreed-upon time period. Global classroom structures are much more common than keypal structures, probably because they are logistically easier. Their activities also seem better for focusing on specific content, which may be why teachers often see them as better fits for the curriculum.

The simplest type of activity that uses this structure creates a virtual learning space, usually as one class extends its own discussion of a topic to other classes studying the same topic. The Instructional Technology Development Consortium in San Bernardino County, California, for example, coordinates literature study through its Read to Write Project, which sponsors activities according to literary genres, such as historical fiction or biography.

Some global classroom projects are structurally simple and short-lived, while others are quite complex and can involve students from many countries for one or more semesters. These projects are often conceptualized as both interdisciplinary investigations and thematically organized inquiries. For example, Hannah Sivan and David Lloyd (both in Sde Boker, Israel) coordinated several such projects, including Desert and Desertification and Earth's Crust and Plate Tectonics.

<Voices of Youth> - Unicef's Voices of Youth is a place where students worldwide can discuss (in three languages) social and economic issues such as child labor, the girl child, and urban children. This attractive site also includes quizzes and interactive "games" to set the tone for deep discussion and learning...one particularly powerful example is an interaction on stereotypes.

I have been using both activity and project to describe what can be designed with activity structures. Although both words are probably used interchangeably by educators, we'll use activity here to denote something of shorter duration and project for something longer. Usually, though, activities combine to form a single project. The activity structures described so far might best be considered projects. The next structure would probably help us build an activity.

<ENO-A Global Web School for Environmental Awareness>

Grades: K-12

Ongoing? Yes

Sponsored by the European Commission and National Board of Education, ENO creates a global school environment with over 100 schools from over 50 countries participating in a year long program that is actually part of their curriculum. The purpose of ENO is to raise environmental awareness. There are two lessons per week and you must apply during the previous school year in order to participate. Registration information is available at the site.
1 2 3 4 5 Index

Back to Workshop Syllabus

Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 6/13/07

	Curriculum-Based Telecollaboration
	*Using Activity Structures to Design Student Projects*
	By Judi Harris
[Instuctor's Note: Michael Krauss, 2/4/04 - Links in the article that are no longer functional appear as bolded text and are no longer active links. Where this has occured, I have added additional, similar resources from Judi Harris' Virtual Architecture Web Home. The newly added links are *<bold, italicized, and enclosed in angle brackets.>] How teachers use the Internet to create learning projects for their students depends a lot on the tools they have at their disposal. In this feature article, the first of the new volume, Judi Harris describes 18 major "activity structures" that can be used by teachers when they design their classroom projects. She also points out some of the best uses of these activity structures in projects that already reside on the Web. ctivity structures are design tools. Teachers can use them to help their students "telecollaboratively" use the Internet to accomplish curriculum-related learning goals. The nature and reasons for using activity structures were introduced in an earlier "Mining the Internet" column ("Wetware: Why Use Activity Structures?" December/January 1997-98). Here I discuss all 18 activity structures, which have been updated since their last appearance in The Computing Teacher* in March, April, and May 1995. More information about each structure is available in my book *Virtual Architecture: Designing and Directing Curriculum-Based Telecomputing* (ISTE, 1998). How were these design tools created? While analyzing the structures of thousands of educational telecomputing activities that were shared by teacher-designers via the Internet, I was able to identify three major categories of student action, each with five to seven activity types. I labeled these categories according to the dominant type of learning act that each activity class used: (1) interpersonal exchange, (2) information collection and analysis, and (3) problem solving. In this article, I provide an overview of these categories and structures. See Virtual Architecture's Web Home for more examples. Interpersonal Exchange Interpersonal exchange is the oldest and among the most popular types of educational telecomputing activities, one in which individuals or groups can "talk" electronically with one another by using electronic mail (e-mail), asynchronous large-group discussion tools (such as Web conferences, bulletin boards, and newsgroups), or real-time text or audio- and videoconferencing tools (such as Internet Relay Chat [IRC] or CU-SeeMe). Six activity structures are now associated with interpersonal exchange processes: keypals, global classrooms, electronic appearances, telementoring, question-and-answer activities, and impersonations. *Structure 1: Keypals.* Keypal projects were the first commonly used telecomputing activity structure; it is similar to more traditional penpal activities. Students typically work in pairs and communicate with each other electronically, often suggesting their own discussion topics. For example, fourth-year students and teachers at the Hobart School in Tasmania produced a beautiful Web site, the Hobart-Malang Electronic Mail Project, to chronicle their rich year-long exchanges with peers attending the Malang School in Indonesia. By electronically sharing messages, photographs, and artwork, these students helped each other understand their respective cultures, customs, and everyday lives as they discussed such topics as native animals, traditional folktales, homes, religions, school curricula, and what it "feels like" to be Australian or Indonesian. *<How People Live in Europe and the Middle East>* - Grades: 6-9 Ongoing? No Click on this site see one way to "advertise" a keypal project. On this webpage, an eighth grade English teacher in Israel invites European schools to start an e-mail exchange with his students. The purpose? To compare life in two cultures, as well as to help students practice their English skills. The teacher's plan is focused, yet seems flexible enough to accommodate the needs and interests of potential keypal partner schools. Keypal-like interactions also can occur with real-time text-chat tools such as IRC. For example, students at the Leo Ussak Elementary School in Rankin Inlet in the Canadian Arctic communicated with children in Hawaii and two adults who had just completed a dogsled trip from Manitoba to the Northwest Territories. (You can learn more about accessing and using IRC at IRC Help.) Unfortunately, student-to-student keypal exchanges often take more time to manage than teachers typically have. Sending and receiving many e-mail messages through a single class account (or monitoring many messages if students have their own accounts) can make keypal activity structures difficult to justify for the time and effort required. *Structure 2: Global Classrooms.* Group-to-group exchanges--or global classrooms--especially those that emphasize a particular curriculum area, can be fascinating yet manageable collaborative explorations. With this activity structure, two or more classrooms in different locations can study a common topic together during an agreed-upon time period. Global classroom structures are much more common than keypal structures, probably because they are logistically easier. Their activities also seem better for focusing on specific content, which may be why teachers often see them as better fits for the curriculum. The simplest type of activity that uses this structure creates a virtual learning space, usually as one class extends its own discussion of a topic to other classes studying the same topic. The Instructional Technology Development Consortium in San Bernardino County, California, for example, coordinates literature study through its Read to Write Project, which sponsors activities according to literary genres, such as historical fiction or biography. Some global classroom projects are structurally simple and short-lived, while others are quite complex and can involve students from many countries for one or more semesters. These projects are often conceptualized as both interdisciplinary investigations and thematically organized inquiries. For example, Hannah Sivan and David Lloyd (both in Sde Boker, Israel) coordinated several such projects, including Desert and Desertification and Earth's Crust and Plate Tectonics. *<Voices of Youth>* - Unicef's Voices of Youth is a place where students worldwide can discuss (in three languages) social and economic issues such as child labor, the girl child, and urban children. This attractive site also includes quizzes and interactive "games" to set the tone for deep discussion and learning...one particularly powerful example is an interaction on stereotypes. I have been using both activity and project to describe what can be designed with activity structures. Although both words are probably used interchangeably by educators, we'll use activity here to denote something of shorter duration and project for something longer. Usually, though, activities combine to form a single project. The activity structures described so far might best be considered projects. The next structure would probably help us build an activity. <ENO-A Global Web School for Environmental Awareness> Grades: K-12 Ongoing? Yes Sponsored by the European Commission and National Board of Education, ENO creates a global school environment with over 100 schools from over 50 countries participating in a year long program that is actually part of their curriculum. The purpose of ENO is to raise environmental awareness. There are two lessons per week and you must apply during the previous school year in order to participate. Registration information is available at the site. 1 2 3 4 5 Index Back to Workshop Syllabus Created by: krauss@lclark.edu Updated: 6/13/07