In 1990, when I enrolled in college to become a teacher I already realized the importance of modern media in instructional settings. A year later, thanks to a scholarship at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, Florida, I had the opportunity to further my interest of computer-based instruction. As a graduate student in instructional systems design I received an intense introduction to the theories and applications of computers in education.

Upon my return to Germany, I applied the knowledge that I gained at FSU and my exposure to the Internet to an internet-based project on "renaissance" in collaboration with a high school in Wisconsin. After graduating from college, I not only instructed my own students in the use of the Internet but I also offered recreational courses in web site design and Internet applications for children and teenagers.

The experiences that I gained from these courses and the desire to refocus my interest in this field of study resulted in a partial leave of absence from my teaching position. With the blessings of my principal, I moonlighted as a teaching assistant in the Department of School Pedagogy at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1999-2001.

Next to the preparation for my Ph.D. thesis on "knowledge-management and online education," my responsibilities included the training of future elementary and middle school teachers on how to design a meaningful online project with their students. At that time, the educational technology incorporated in my training was limited to the use of the Internet and at best a smartboard. While even state of the art equipment was not very reliable, I was still able to gain some initial experience with online cooperative learning environments.

In the years after I completed my assistantship at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, I received the first requests for teacher training and I was happy to share my knowledge and experience in online teaching.  The rapid development of technology in and outside the classroom made it possible to facilitate true synchronous and asynchronous projects.  For example, during my participation as an instructor for the training of consultants in media- and information-technology for the state of Bavaria (medien- und informations-technische Berater in Bayern) I employed messaging and e-learning platforms installed on BSCW servers both for the preparation of the curriculum as well as the guidance and evaluation of the final exams of my students. The most recent project was my
participation in the multimedia contest "Join Multimedia" sponsored by Siemens corporation.

In collaboration with my students, we developed a vision for how and why the Internet can bring together students from different cultures. This vision was implemented in a multimedia and flash animated presentation.  Since my students meet only once a month for a week and are scattered across northern Bavaria, the project evolved primarily via email and online discussion boards.

1. Renaissance Project:
In 1992, I administered for one year a project called "Renaissance" which involved 20-30 students from an 8th grade class of a Middle School in Wisconsin and the Dientzenhofer Gymnasium (high school) in Bamberg, Germany, as well as three teachers.  The objective was to discuss historical and social topics across the Atlantic using the respective "new
media" available at that time.  The results were a set of questionnaires, exchange of email and documents on "Renaissance in Bamberg" and "Indian Tribes in Wisconsin."
The project was initiated by the American school and their interest in the renaissance in Germany.  The American students gained more insight into 15th century as well as contemporary issues and questions in history. This inquiry by the American students also triggered the curiosity of the German students in the birth of America as a nation as well as the history and current situation of Native American tribes in Wisconsin.  Since this
project was done prior to the release of the first Web browser, it was exciting to see how fast information could be exchanged across the Atlantic.  Furthermore, it was interesting to observe the rather unusual and virtual collaboration of the participating students.

2. Multi-Media Contest "Join Multimedia"
In 2003 and 2004, ten of my media-design students from different cities in northern Bavaria and I participated in the contest "Join Multimedia."  The students were enrolled in our track for non-print media design and the learning objective was to use email and online message boards for information exchange.  The entire project was managed online in a collaborative fashion and there was only one meeting right before the students had to turn in their assigned topics and where attendance was required.  The title of the project was "Building a Bridge" and its objective was to design and develop a multimedia story about how we could establish a partnership with a fictitious vocational school in India and how the Internet and information technologies could be used to create a sense of "team spirit."  In addition, we contemplated a joint curriculum. It was very exciting to watch how the project evolved strictly online and how the ideas of the students blossom without an immediate assessment or grading by an instructor but from the feedback and input of their fellow students.  Important factors for successful project management for these kinds of projects are: the meeting of deadlines, keeping the various HTML, database, and flash files up to date, coordinate their exchange and finally merging them into a master file. In this respect, the online forum http://www.panassis.com/wbboard/main.php was very helpful.

3. Comenius-Project:

This is a current project and started on January 1, 2005.  Comenius Projects are supported by the European Union (EU) and are supposed to establish multinational partnerships between teachers and students within the EU (see http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/socrates/comenius/index_en.html). 
In this particular projects, hotel management schools from several European countries are supposed to collaborate.  The vocational school where I teach has an established partnership with a hotel management school in France for over ten years. As part of the Comenius project, this established relationship was expanded to include students from hotel management schools in Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Cyprus, Germany, and France to devise projects on the topic “Globalization in Europe: Comparison and Reasons for the Globalization in different European Countries and its Impact on the Life of Young Adults.”

Attention should be given to the behavior of youngsters as consumers with respect to nutrition, fashion, advertising, marketing, and hobbies.  We are presently in the first phase of this project and the participating schools in each country are asked to develop a questionnaire that later on will be exchanged with the other schools.  The questions from this preliminary set of questionnaires will be compiled into a final set of questions and then answered by the students in the project.  My task is the technical supervision as well as the management of this project via a web portal.

The technologies I used to promote collaboration among participants were web sites and portals that supported the generation of dynamic pages, e-mail and online learning platforms.  The strategy that I used was primarily project-based learning.  In particular, today’s web-based and collaborative learning should meet the following criteria:  self-paced learning, a networked environment (not only physical but also social so that opposing views can clash), if possible, there should be an event where instructor and students meet to exchange ideas and stimulate and encourage each other to spark new ideas.  All of these aspects need to be embedded in a constructivist learning theory.

As the designated system administrator, I could convince our principal and the county administration that we need a server with an installation of PHP5.  This is a minimum requirement to setup web portals with dynamically generated sites and online discussion boards so that students can add their part to a project via a web browser.

It is one of the major objectives of the MiB-teacher training that all my input from didactical seminars and design-workshops will be assessed aftre two years of training by creating a final multimedia-project. The teachers will be proofed how they use the new media and online-instruction for learning outcomes with their students. As a tutor in Bavaria, at the moment I’m supervising about 25 of these projects. I’m tutoring my student teachers via Email, BSCW-servers, telephone and face-to-face-meetings. Here are some examples listed:

1. Web site of the Realschule Hirschaid (a middle school graduating students after grade 10).  Supervision of Christoph Kasseckert, a teacher at the school who installed a content management system as an information portal for the school (see www.rs-hirschaid.de ).
2. Development of the Web site www.schulentwicklung-mfr.de , where I supervised Mr. Vogel, a high school teacher and project manager of this portal for innovative school projects in Central Franconia (a county in northern Bavaria).
3. Supervision of several Comenius-Projects (these are projects promoted by the European Union for multinational collaborative school projects) of the Lindenschule in Memmingen http://www.mness.de/ls/. Project managers were Mr. Mayer and Mr Neß. They have conducted projects with schools from Finland, Poland, and Italy (see http://www.mness.de/ls/comenius1/fcomenius-vorlage-europa.htm ) for several years.
4. Supervision of the development of a Web site for FOS Kulmbach (a more vocational oriented school graduating students after grade 12 (high school students graduate after grade 13)) http://www2.bsz-kulmbach.de/index.php. Mrs. . Renz-Kiefel is the project manager of this site with innovative teaching methods implemented in PHP.

Students were affected in various ways. But the most important goal was that students and teachers would feel a sense of ownership and identity in their project such that they would recognize themselves and their creative ideas in the topics that they have chosen. In particular, that they would advance and further develop those topics with very positive and at times surprising results.

As an advocate of constructivism, I am open to experience the differences in thoughts, ideas, and methodologies. Only a good listener can become a better communicator. My own experience reaffirmed my conviction of the necessity of lifelong learning. On occasion, my theoretical assumptions of teaching methods were replaced with the methods from colleagues when their implementation has been proven to offer a better approach.

The nature of collaborative learning implies "learning with" and "learning from" others. My personal and professional life has been enriched because of the differences in conceptional and mental models of others involved in the project.

My projects are strictly promoted by word of mouth either by colleagues and former students.

As an instructor, I consider myself to assume multiple roles with various levels of assistance for my students. I'm a teacher in matters of the fundamentals and the theoretical context of the project, I'm a coach who guides his team towards the desired goal, and I'm a counselor where personal and individual attention is necessary. All of these roles are used to employ a "scaffolded learning" where I provide sufficient support for the students so that they can acquire the learning objectives and processes on their own.

I hope that my way of teaching, both on a personal as well as a professional level will make a difference in the lives of others. My goal is to pass my excitement for learning and teaching to my teacher students so that they in turn will become better teachers for their own students.

While I do not have too much experience with international projects in general or GSN projects in particular, I am in the planning process of a cooperative learning environment for mathematics. My goal in this project is not only to motivate middle and high school students to excel in math but also to establish relationships between students from industrialized nations with students from developing or emerging nations.