Structure 3: Electronic Appearances. Interpersonal exchanges can also host special guests who can communicate with students either in real time or asynchronously. The typical electronic appearance is a one-time visit from a subject-matter expert, or SME; some guests or experts might even be famous.
Although electronic appearances are certainly possible with e-mail and asynchronous computer-conferencing tools, most are done with real-time text-chat or videoconferencing programs such as CU-SeeMe. This gives the session's participants a "telepresence" (Riel & Harassim, 1994) and accommodates the short-term nature of this kind of activity.
The
Women
of NASA project has one of the best developed
electronic appearances on the World Wide Web. The site
acquaints visitors with the specializations, histories, and
daily lives of more than 50 female NASA scientists,
mathematicians, engineers, and administrators. For each
woman, an autobiography and "day in the life" documents are
available. Monitored Web chats with individual
participating
scientists
are scheduled each month; during these sessions participants
discuss "math, science, space, technology, and gender
equity," according to their interests and preferences. Such
Internet-assisted connections of SMEs with students for
synchronous or asynchronous inquiry-based dialogue is an
exciting but underused aspect of global telecommunications.
Electronic appearance activities usually allow only
relatively short periods of communication between students
and other people.
Structure
4: Telementoring. When exchanges with SMEs
become more extended, and a "teleapprenticeship" (Levin,
Riel, Miyake, & Cohen, 1987) forms, the activity
structure can be described as telementoring. With
this structure, Internet-connected specialists from
universities, businesses, governments, or other schools can
serve as electronic mentors to students who want to explore
specific study topics in an interactive format. For example,
Hewlett
Packard's E-Mail Mentor Program helps individual
U.S. students in Grades 5 through 12 who are interested in
math or science find mentors in the company's international
centers.
The
Electronic
Emissary (under my direction) is a service that
matches volunteer SMEs from around the world with teachers
and their classes. A database of information on the
Emissary's volunteer experts can be searched by teachers and
students according to curriculum topics. The service helps a
new team of SME, teacher, and students structure a mentoring
project that focuses on students' curriculum-related inquiry
in the SME's field of expertise. Students and teachers then
communicate with the SMEs, often using e-mail. All
communications are monitored and facilitated by Emissary
staff members, who are experienced educators and online
project facilitators. After the project has ended, team
members share what they learned with other visitors to the
Emissary site; they create searchable documents for other
Internet-connected students and teachers to use in their own
project planning. A sample exchange, Lanier
Middle School's Electronic Emissary Project, is
available online; it addresses journalism and involves
students from Lanier Middle School in Houston, Texas, and
James Derk, the computer columnist for The Evansville
[Indiana] Courier.
Structure 5: Question-and-Answer Activities. Another activity structure has recently emerged in which students' contacts with SMEs are the briefest possible. As the amount and varieties of online information continue to grow exponentially, so can the difficulties in finding answers to questions that meet our needs as learners. For students who either cannot find the information they need to answer a question or do not fully understand the information they have found online, a question-and-answer activity might be appropriate.
By
far the most common question-and-answer activities on the
Web are "ask-the-expert" services. Pitsco, Inc., for
example, has organized more than 300 services into its
Ask an Expert index; the company has made it
much easier for learners to find answers to their questions.
Ask an Expert divides its growing index of services into 12
subgroups (e.g., science and technology, health, arts, and
law), and a search engine helps visitors locate the best
expert service to answer a particular question, whether it's
"Ask a Volcanologist" or "Ask a Veterinarian."
<All Experts> Allexperts, created in early 1998, was the very first large-scale question and answer service on the net. Thousands of volunteers, including top lawyers, doctors, engineers, and scientists, answer your questions. All answers are free and most come within a day!
Structure 6: Impersonations. In every activity structure we've examined so far, participants have shared information that directly pertains to their work, their lives, or their learning. With the impersonations structure, however, at least one participant in an online group communicates as a character. These virtual performances are popular for both the actors and the other participants. In an impersonation project for students in Virginia, for example, Robin Gabriel, the education director at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, has impersonated that president by answering students' questions using e-mail. A wonderful archive of sample questions and responses from this project is available at Ask Thomas Jefferson: Sample Letters
[This kind of activity also can involve students as online characters. Harold House, a social studies teacher at North High School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, devised a rich role-playing project, County of Wurtz, in which he and his students interact in character. The scenario occurs in a medieval land ruled by King Harold Ragnar One-Thumb. Mr. House plays the king's scribe, and the students become inhabitants of the village of Melzar or the town of Draakmar, both in Wurtz County.]
<Letters
to Santa> - Grades: K-12,
Ongoing? Yes
You will be overwhelmed with good cheer when you visit this
site. In this project, younger students e-mail letters to
Santa, which older students (proxy Santas) reply. Both
parties gain writing skills and receive "warm fuzzies" in
the process!
Clearly, impersonations provide a rich and motivating way for students to use telecomputing tools to help them explore curriculum-related topics in dynamic and interactive contexts.
