Catherine's Blog for ECI 511

One of the first activities I always do in my classroom is an classmate interview. I do this for a variety of reasons. First, it is a good ice breaker activity. Second, throughout the year, my students are involved in a variety of research projects and the interview is a good way to introduce good questioning techniques. It sounds like a good idea, but so far, I have had only marginal success. This is due partly to the fact that I teach at a small rural community school. My students have known each other for years so they see no relevance in this activity. I have toyed with taking this activity out of my lesson plans, however, I still want the students to learn good questioning techniques. Imagine my delight when I read Curriculum-Based Telecollaboration by Judi Harris. The answer to my dilemma was clearly spelled out with her interpersonal exchanges.

Because my rationale for interviews was good questioning techniques that would assist my students in various research activities, I decided to focus on the electronic appearances and the question and answer structures. Electronic Appearances offer students guest speakers who are experts in their fields. While students would not be actually interviewing the participants, per se, they would still be able to compose good questions and see how to get the answers from a real person instead of an encyclopedia. The woman of Nasa site was interesting, especially for my girls. It is still difficult to get most girls to agree that being interested in math and science is a cool thing.

I am thinking particularly about the problem-based learning activities in which students list the facts about a subject, write down what additional facts they need to know about the subject, and then write down new concepts that they need to learn about. For instance, students may know that the tiger is a big cat. They may understand about endangered species. They may not know how to define a shrinking habitat. After a few times of the whole class watching an electronic appearance, students could then add this to their repertoire of research skills and pursue other appearances independently. This would also be a chance to get the science teacher involved with the research. Since science teachers do not always have the time to instruct students on how to get information from other sources, this would be a great way to collaborate.

The question and answer structures are a way that students can both practice writing questions and see how other questions are answered. Pitsco's Ask an Expert Site is phenomenal!!! My students will be able to ask questions in just about any category that interests them. Students could still practice their questioning techniques, they just wouldn't have to use each other. Students could choose from venues that interested them, within reason. Finally, students could learn how to glean information from non-print sources. Since my students already have gaggle.net accounts, they would be able to access the information at school. The only drawback is the time involved in waiting for a response, but careful planning on my part should alleviate that.

Although I have long known that students need to be able to get information from a variety of sites, I have fallen into the print trap of many educators. I required my students to find information from web sites, magazines, newspapers, and nonfiction books, as well as the encyclopedia, but I left out the human equation. Now, with these great telecollaboration sites, I can put the humans back into research. My students will certainly benefit from this lesson, both during my year with them and in the future.