|
Posted to ACW-L, WCenter, NCTE-Talk, and TEACH
on 7/1/98
by Traci Gardner
- Place your students in the future. It's the
year 3098. A team of archaeologists discovers your classroom,
exactly as it is now. What do they make of their discovery? How
do they describe the space? What do they imagine happened in the
place? How do they support their findings -- that is, what things
in the space support their conclusions? Students could form teams
(writing groups) and work in online InterChange conferences to
gather ideas about the space. They might write a group paper or
individual papers reporting their findings to the organization
that funded their archeological dig. Or they could write a "newspaper
article" (whatever the equivalent to a "newspaper article" is
in 3098). You might even ask them to write about their discovery
as an email message to a friend or family member.
- Ask your students to work as
ethnographers in the classroom -- explain the idea of
participant-observers, and have your students observe the
community in your classroom. What social structures
exist? How do members of the community interact? How do
the physical structures in the classroom affect the
community? By comparison, you might ask students to
observe the ways that computers work in other places on
your campus -- what kind of community is built (or not)
in public access computer labs, around workstations in
the library, and so forth. Students might examine the
differences: how does the community change, and why does
it change?
- Make your students classroom designers.
Give them carte blanche to rethink the set-up and
layout of the room -- move the desks, tables, machines,
and so forth. Add equipment, furniture, and/or resources.
If you have a drawing program on your computers, they
might even sketch out their designs. After their
rethinking, have students write a proposal to implement
their changes -- ask them to include an explanation of
the changes they would make AND a detailed justification
for the changes. For example, saying that they want to
add a conference table to the room isn't enough -- ask
them to explain why the conference table should be added
and how it will affect the learning that takes place in
the space.
- Enter an online discussion on the
advantages and disadvantages of the computer-based
classroom. Ask students to use pseudonyms -- Your
discussion should include campus administrators, teachers
from other disciplines, family members, politicians,
teachers from other schools, alumni, and students from
other schools (including, say, high schools, other
colleges, and so forth). You might assign roles or have
students choose for themselves, but work for a range of
aliases. Urge your students to think carefully about the
point of view of the speaker that they represent. Before
the online discussion, students might write position
papers from their speakers' point of view, to help gather
their ideas and think through the opinions. You might use
the transcript later -- analyze the range of
perspectives, revise the position papers based on the
group discussion, and so forth.
- If your students are used to coming
into the classroom, logging in (nearly or completely) on
their own, and getting down to work, begin one day NOT on
computers. As your students enter, tell them that you
want them to wait so that you can make some
announcements. Once it's time for class to start, take a
survey. How many students followed your instructions?
What did those who followed the instructions do instead
of working online? What did those who didn't follow the
instructions do? Move to an online discussion about
student-centered versus teacher-centered learning.
Encourage students to discuss the ways that they are
responsible for their learning and how the computer-based
classroom compares to the other classrooms where they
attend classes.
- Have students choose a historical
figure they are interested in. Give them a chance to do
some background research on the figure, and then tell
them that their figures have been plopped down in your
classroom. Ask them to write a paper giving their
figures' analysis of and reaction to the space. You might
set some parameters to help avoid papers gone wild with
make-believe -- the figures know, for instance, that the
space is used for education. The point of the assignment
is for students to think about the computer-based
classroom from another point of view. Students might
participate in online discussion, in the persona of their
historical figure (see Robin Wax's "History Comes Alive
on the Little Screen," NEA Today, Sept. 1994,
p.25).
- Think of your school as a human body,
where does this classroom fit? Where do other places,
people, and organizations in the school fit? -- assign
your students a paper that explores where your classroom
belongs in the bigger organism. Ask them to consider the
ways that your computer-based classroom fits with other
kinds of classrooms on campus, how your computer-based
classrooms adds or detracts from the bigger whole, and so
forth. If you don't like the metaphor of the human body,
try another: the school as an ecosystem, the school as a
city, the school as a company, and so on. You might
encourage students to choose their own metaphor for the
school.
- Assign students the task of writing a
letter to entering students at your school who will
encounter your computer-based classroom for the first
time. What can they tell these new students about the
space and how it works? What information do they wish
they had had when they first began using the classroom?
You might combine this writing assignment with the
student ethnography paper
(#2, above) — asking students
to write their letters after having observed the space
and thought about the community that exists in it.
- Turn your students into computers
(metaphorically, of course). From the computer's
perspective, ask them to observe, analyze, and evaluate
the humans in the room. If the assignment seems hard to
get started on, appeal to popular culture. Ask students
to assume a thinking persona for the computer in the same
way that Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data, Voyager's
The Doctor, or Lost in Space's The Robot take on human
qualities even though they are machines. Ask them to
think about how the machine would evaluate the space.
What role would the machine think it fills? What does it
think of these humans who sit down in front of it? Papers
might be first-person narratives on a day in the life
from the computer's point of view ("I was resting here
happily, drawing fractals. I was sort of pleased with the
fuschia one, and then I felt one of them reach over and
move my mouse. Damn. They want me to work again. Don't
they understand how peaceful it is to sit and draw
fractals?"), position papers (a computer writes, "Why I
Should Be Networked"), or a reflective essay evaluating
the roles that it has played over time (e.g., a hand-me
down computer from the Math Lab reflects on the things
it's seen and the differences between the two labs it has
lived in).
- Put your students in the future,
looking back at your classroom. Ask them to imagine that
they have come back for their ten (or twenty, etc.) year
reunion. They run into one another and decide to find the
old classroom. Miraculously, it's still there (though
it's very likely to have changed greatly). For their
assignment, ask students to reflect on their experiences
in the place and to comment on how the computer-based
classroom influenced their education (and the things they
are doing now that they are graduates). The point is to
ask them to think about what they think that they will
value (or not) about having had a class in your
computer-based classroom once they have moved on to other
places and experiences. They might write their thoughts
in the format of a letter or article for the alumni
newsletter, or they might compose their reflections in a
letter to a politician or campus administrator, urging
more (or less) support for computer-based
classrooms.
Originally Posted July 1, 1998
at the Daedalus Website
Posted Thursday, 21-Mar-2013 13:31:07 PDT
Copyright © 1998-2011 Traci Gardner, P. O. Box 11836, Blacksburg, VA 24060-1836.
These materials may be referenced, linked to, and indexed, but their contents
may not be duplicated without express written consent of the author. See the
Copying and Sharing page for more details.
|
|