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[Electronically reprinted with permission from The Computing Teacher journal, published by the International Society for Technology in Education. This article appeared in 1989, volume 16.]
Observations on educational electronic networks: The importance of appropriate activities for learning
James
A. Levin, University of Illinois
Al Rogers, San Diego County Office of Education
Michael L. Waugh, University of Illinois
Kathleen Smith, Champaign School District
The uses of long-distance computer networks are becoming increasingly attractive for educators, as the price
of modems and communication decreases, and as communication software slowly becomes easier to use. Once
we have purchased modems and interface cards and mastered complex communication programs, several questions
remain to be answered: what are appropriate network-based activities? How can networks be most effectively
used for education?
Since this is a new frontier for education, these questions are by and large unanswered. However, in this
paper we will describe several network-based activities, and by contrasting successful with less successful
ones, try to sketch out some general guidelines of how to explore this new educational tool.
An obvious but not-very-successful use of electronic networks.
Once a teacher thinks of electronic networks as a means of communication rather than just a way to access
information, one activity that occurs to many new users is some form of "electronic pen pals". Teachers
have their students write pen pal letters on their word processor, send these out on a network, and then
hope that teachers and students elsewhere (hopefully somewhere exotic) will respond. Here are two of many
such messages from new users on the FrEdMail network, an electronic bulletin board network distributed across
more than 70 schools across the United States (Rogers, 1988):
From: $IDEAS Sent: Mar 29, 1988, 11:48 AM Subj: looking for correspondence From: [teacher] IM A SIXTH GRADE TEACHER AT [school name] LOOKING FOR AN INTERESTED PARTY TO EXCHANGE CORRESPONDENCE WITH MY CLASS. PLEASE RESPOND ASAP. [teacher's name] From: $IDEAS Sent: Mar 29, 1988, 3:38 PM Subj: pen pals From: [teacher] Hello! My name is [teacher's name], and I am a Jr. High School Science teacher at [school name] in [city name]. Our home room is looking for a class that would like to be pen pals with us. Any grade level is welcome. If you are interested, please contact me as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from you!
These are fairly common initial messages from teachers who have just joined a long-distance communication
network. In fact, we ourselves went through this process - in one of our first explorations of long-distance
networks, we started with exactly this same kind of activity (Levin & Kareev, 1980; Levin, Riel, Rowe, &
Boruta, 1986). Electronic Pen Pals seems like a productive way to start out a network interaction: students
are motivated, they can write for a distant audience, they may learn about different cultures through their
interaction with their electronic pen pals. However, there are a number of non-obvious problems with this
activity, especially when used as a whole-class introduction to the use of electronic networks. Here is
a message that was sent in response to the two messages asking for electronic pen pals.
From: $IDEAS Sent: Mar 31, 1988, 12:32 PM Subj: Why pen pals is a bad idea. From: JLEVIN I've been noticing several calls for "electronic pen pals". While this seems like an attractive use of the network, especially as an initial project, I would like to warn folks against this activity, and instead urge several alternatives as kinds of network activities to become involved in. Here is the sequence we've seen too many times in the course of our work with instructional networks. 1. Your students work hard to write pen pal letters on a word processor. There is a lot of excitement and motivation, and this seems like a productive activity. Finally, you send off the pen pal letters to another site. The next day your students ask if responses have come back yet (they know they have been sent electronically, and so therefore their pen pal messages got there "instantly", or at least overnight). There are no responses. The next day they ask again, and the next, and the next ... 2. Finally, weeks later, responses come back, but only for SOME of your students. Those who got responses are excited, but the others are disappointed. You try to get them to respond, but its difficult to motivate those who didn't get responses to write again. You try to get rapid turn-around, but school assemblies are scheduled, Johnny misses his turn at the computer because he's sick, Mary misses hers because of a field trip, etc. Finally, weeks later you send out responses, but only from SOME of your students (MOST of your students that got responses). NOW you understand why only SOME of your students got responses. Also NOW you understand why YOUR students didn't get instant responses. It takes weeks to organize a set of responses, and all during the time you've been working hard to get your students organized and scheduled on the computer to write their responses, the students at the OTHER school have been asking their teacher every day why your students haven't responded yet! 3. Since only a smaller and smaller fraction of the students at each school get responses, this activity rapidly dies away, leaving everyone feeling vaguely frustrated and unfulfilled. What to do instead of penpals? As an alternative initial activity to "computer pals", let me recommend that you join one of the "project" oriented activities currently ongoing on the network. Read through the $IDEAS postings for the past month or so and select the one that is most interesting. Its much easier to start out by joining in with an ongoing activity, and then once you've gotten a feel for how these networks work, suggesting new ideas for activities. When a new message relevant to the project you're participating in arrives, all students will be interested in it, and many will read it several times in the process of carrying out the project. When a "computer pal" message arrives addressed to one student, other students are much less interested in reading it, and none of the students are very interested in reading it in much depth. If joining into an ongoing project seems too ambitious, or if none of the ongoing projects seems appropriate for you and your students, a better initial activity than computer pals is to create and post a "class directory", in which each student in your class writes a short description of him/herself and what s/he is interested in. You can post this directory on $KIDWIRE and then any students elsewhere who read it and who have matching interests can establish contact with your students. If a cluster of common interests appear in the directory, then someone (you, one of your students, or someone elsewhere on the network) can use that as a basis for organizing a new network activity centered on that interest.
($IDEAS is a bulletin board for teachers to exchange ideas about network projects, and $KIDWIRE is a
bulletin board for students to exchange messages on the FrEdMail network.)
This discussion is not to say that electronic networks should never be used for Electronic Pen Pal exchanges,
but our experience strongly suggests that Electronic Pen Pals is not the best way to start out interacting
on a network.
The Noon Observation Project.
Let us contrast the less appropriate Electronic Pen Pals activity with a more successful one, The Noon
Observation Project. This project involved students in a number of locations in measuring the length of
a shadow at noontime on a specified day, in order to determine the circumference of the Earth. Here is the
first message that proposed and described this project.
Attached is the description of an interesting project for
gifted junior high or high school trigonometry classes.
This project has students making simple measurements of the
sun's shadow, sharing their data, and then calculating the
circumference of the earth.
This is a replication of the Eratosthenes of Cyrene experiment
of over 2000 years ago in Ancient Greece. A real, practical
experiment which will provide lots of practice using
trigonometry.
Al Rogers
Project name: ERATOSTHENES OF CYRENE EXPERIMENT
Purpose: Use simple measurements and trigonometric
calculations to determine the north-south
circumference of the earth
Content Area: Math, trigonometry
Grade Level: Gifted 8th, 9th, or higher math Trigonometry
classes
Background: Background information below describes how over
2000 years ago Eratosthenes made a remarkably
accurate measurement of the earth's north-
south circumference. This project requires
collaboration of students in the northern and
southern latitudes of the US to make some
simple measurements, share data, problem-solve
the algorithms required, and then replicate and
share their results.
General Procedures:
1. At least two sites must collaborate whose latitudes are
different enough to give a significant difference in
measurement.
2. When at least two sites have signed up, a date will be set
to conduct measurements.
3. On the given date (or within a day or 2 on either side,
depending on weather conditions) students will conduct
their measurements outdoors at high noon, local time.
Local time must be used, as with standard time the sun
varies in altitude depending on location within your time
zone. You can use this observation to discuss the whole
concept of time zones, looking at their locations on the
map, etc.
4. Using a standard meter stick, at precisely high noon local
time, each team of students (probably 2/team) will:
a. hold the meter stick perfectly vertical
b. use another meter stick to measure the length of the
shadow cast by the vertical meter stick to the nearest
cm.
c. Several measurements should be made by several
different students or teams of students... the more
the better.
d. The longest length and the shortest length should be
discarded. All others should be averaged.
5. This averaged shadow length, along with the standard time
at which local high noon was observed, will be modemed to
the other sites involved in the project.
6. This data, along with the precise latitude and longitude
measurements for each site, should be enough information to
use trigonometry to make a fairly accurate calculation of
the earth's circumference.
Additional Details: Additional details need to be worked out.
I will work with you in developing the remaining details.
1. I am not a mathematician myself, and thus don't have
the actual algorithms required. However, it strikes me
that this could be the basis for some really good problem
solving for your class. Using your own "secret"
algorithm, this could be a "contest" to see who,
using this data, gets the closest results.
2. Or, this could lend itself to some interesting discussions
between the students at the cooperating schools to come up
with a joint algorithm.
3. Preparation could include the drawing of pictures to
illustrate the original Eratosthenes solution. Also of
value would be pictures illustrating this experiment. You
could mail these drawings to me. I will write up the
results derived by participating schools and include
samples of the best of these drawings, print them, and
publish them for every participant in the project.
4. Plotting of each site on maps using latitude &
longitude to nearest second will enable each site to
calculate exact north/south distance, east-west distance,
and then exact straight line distance between sites. North-
south distance is essential to know to solve this problem.
How to participate: Send a message to Al Rogers at
SDCOE!AROGERS stating your intent to participate. I will
set up a private conference which will give us easy access
to one another as we develop this project.
Deadline to Respond: April 22 (giving everybody plenty of
time to have spring vacations, etc.)
Observations: Week of May 2
Final Results Shared: Week of May 9
------------------------------------------------------------
The following background information was downloaded from
Grolier's Academic American Encyclopedia featured on
Compuserve.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene
--------------------------------
(air-uh-tahs'-thuh-neez, sy-ree'-nee) The Greek
geographer Eratosthenes, c.276-195 BC, is best known for his
accurate calculation of the Earth's
circumference.
[several more pages of encyclopedic information were
included here in this message]
Following this message were several messages from adults at different sites around the United States
agreeing to participate in the project, which became known as the Noon Observation Project. Here is one
such follow-up message:
To: UIUC!$IDEAS Sent: March 27, 1988, 11:02 PM Subj: Al's Noon Observation Project From: UIUC!JLEVIN We're excited by Al Roger's proposed Noon Observation Project. I just checked my world atlas, and the north-south distance between Alexandria and Aswan is about the same as the n-s distance between San Diego and Champaign. So we should be able to do at least as well! We're interested in giving this project a try. I'll start working on an AppleWorks spreadsheet template, both for storing the data and for computing circumference from two sets of shadow measurements. Also, I'll send tomorrow a simple method to calculate local noon, given your longitude. Jim Levin
After several weeks, enough such messages were sent that the project could proceed. Then there were a
set of messages organizing the effort. Here is an example organizational message:
FROM: SDCOE!AROGERS Sent: April 17, 1988, 2:29 PM Subj: Noon project... ... getting a nice array of participants... SF Bay area, Montana, Orange County, and perhaps a couple of sites in San Diego.... Will put all the pieces together this week. Al
Finally, the first week of May arrived, and shortly thereafter, messages reporting the data were sent.
Here is one from Montana:
From: SDCOE!$NOON Sent: May 2, 1988, 9:02 PM Subj: NOON PROJECT From: [teacher's name] OUR MEASUREMENT FOR MONDAY WAS 29.6 DEGREES. AM EAGER TO HAVE OTHER MEASUREMENTS.
And here is one from Helix High School in California:
From: SDCOE!$NOON Sent: May 12, 1988, 1:14 PM Subj: HELIX DATA From: [teacher's name] HI! MY NAME IS [student's name]. I'M A JUNIOR AT HELIX HIGH SCHOOL. I'M IN [teacher's name]'S ALGEBRA II CLASS. MY FRIEND [another student's name] AND I DID THE MEASUREMENTS ON MAY 5, 1988. OUR RESULTS WERE ANGLE 15.3 DEGREES. THE LONGITUDE IS 117.09 DEGRESS WEST. THE LATITUDE WAS 32.43 DEGREES NORTH. WE ARE LOCATED IN LAMESA, JUST OUTSIDE OF SAN DIEGO. THE LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE WERE FOUND FROM AN ATLAS USING SAN D AS OUR REFERENCE.
Then a week later came the report of the Illinois data:
From: SDCOE!$NOON
Sent: May 17, 1988, 8:56 AM
Subj: Noon Data
From: [teacher's name]
Greetings,
The eighth grade Pre-algebra class of Columbia Middle
School in Champaign, Illinois has arrived at the angle
needed for the "Noon Project". The angle
is 23.04 degrees. We measured on May 5, 1988.
We will be glad to hear of the results.
eight-grade Pre-algebra class
of Columbia at Champaign, Illinois
There were then a set of messages discussing the analysis of the data. Although data came in from four
sites, various problems arose that in the end only allowed the project to use the data from Champaign, Illinois
and La Mesa, California, reported in the messages above. The estimated circumference of the Earth derived
from the measurements in these two sites was within 1% of the current best measures. This is a surprisingly
good estimate.
The data reported from Montana was collected on a different day from the other data, and so couldn't be
used directly. Finally, the data collected from a second California site deviated quite substantially from
expected, and would have predicted a negative circumference when combined with the La Mesa data. An exchange
of messages revealed that this site collected their data an hour before local noon, having failed to take
into account Daylight savings time, which had gone into effect shortly before the week of the data collection.
Finally, the students in Champaign sent out a summary of the project:
From: $KIDWIRE
Sent: Jun 16, 1988, 11:10 PM
Subj: Report from Columbia 8th Grade
From: UIUCED!KSMITH
Here is a report from the 8th Graders at Columbia Middle
School, Champaign, Illinois on the Noon Observation Project
proposed by Al Rogers that theyparticipated in during the
first week of May.
-------------
Final report on the Noon Project from Columbia Middle School
The 8th Grade Pre-Algebra Class at Columbia Middle School;
Champaign, IL would like to take this opportunity to thank
all the other schools who participated in the Noon Project.
We enjoyed the experiment very much, especially since our
readings with Mt. Helix were so accurate! That was the
best part.
Let us tell you a little about how we arrived at our
reading. Well on Tuesday, May 3rd we broke the class up
into 10 groups of 3 each and with meter sticks taped to book
ends we went out to the black top playground. We all split
up and using computer paper taped to the ground we tried to
measure the shadow our meter sticks cast. We measured every
minute for 10 minutes. It was very windy so one person held
the book end, one steadied the meter stick & the third
measured. We had a rough idea of what pattern the shadows
should have - a lot of them didn't fit the pattern.
On Wednesday our teacher showed us all the data and we
decided we hadn't been very accurate. There was more
than a 10 centimeter difference between the longest &
shortest shadows in some minutes, and no two groups agreed
on what minute (actual noon) had the shortest shadow; also
there was some question as to whether we had missed absolute
noon. So we decided to try again with a bit more
organization and experience.
On Thursday May 5th, armed with our meter sticks taped to
book ends, we went out again. This time we had 11 groups,
and we lined ourselves up on the painted end line of the
basketball court (in an area we thought looked most level).
We took 12 - 60 second interval readings. The wind was not
as bad, and we were much better at keeping the stick still
and marking an accurate shadow (where the dark edge
started).
When the data was displayed on the over-head on Friday we
were delighted. There was only a 3 centimeter difference
between the longest & shortest shadows over the entire
12 minutes, and 9 of the eleven groups reached their
shortest shadow in minutes 6, 7 or 8.
We decided then to use only those 9 readings. We then threw
out the longest & shortest of those and took the average
of the remaining 7. This is how we got the length for the
shadow we used to compute our angle.
Our teacher then told us about how to find an angle in a
right triangle using the tangent ratio and we came up with
our angle.
After we sent it off we couldn't wait to get the
results. When we found out how accurate we were with the
California reading, we were proud of our effort.
Aside from getting two class periods on the playground, we
also learned a lot from the experiment.
It was interesting to learn about what Eratosthenes figured
out so long ago, and to do it ourselves in 1988. We also
learned about the solstice, the Tropics of Cancer &
Capricorn, the way the sun shines at an angle, the pattern
the shadows made, and how careful you have to be to be
accurate. We also felt the concept of circumference became
clearer and we could almost visualize the curve of the Earth
between here and California.
So again, thank you to all the other sites, and we hope you
enjoyed this Noon Project as much as we did.
The Pre-Alg Class at Columbia Middle School
Champaign, Illinois
As indicated by this message, students learned a variety of things from this project, many of which bridge
the content areas in the conventional curriculum. They learned mathematics in a meaningful context, got
a better feel for geography, learned first hand the importance of careful measurement, they participated
directly in dealing with the issues of data analysis and reduction, and learned some of the values of working
jointly with others.
The role of the network in providing support. In order to learn about the role that the network played
in this project, let us consider whether such a project could have been done without an electronic network.
In terms of conducting a project which provides a practical context for mathematics skills, the class could
have gone out and used their meter stick shadows and the shadow of the school's flagpole to determine the
height of the flagpole, as mathematics teachers have done for generations. However, the network seemed to
provide a highly motivating context for learning, both for the students and for the teachers involved. More
specifically, it provided support in the following ways: 1) as a source of ideas, 2) as a supplier of tools,
3) as a source of diverse data, and 4) as a diverse audience.
First of all, the network serves as a source of ideas, suggested by students, teachers, or other adults
elsewhere. Ideas for projects appear on a bulletin board, and those of interest can be picked up easily.
Unlike source books of teaching ideas, the network provides an interactive environment, within which ideas
can evolve through interaction.
Secondly, the network provides a means for distributing various diverse tools for carrying out the project.
This includes not only the instructions and background information (such as those contained in Al Roger's
March 1988 message above), but also computer-based tools (such as the spreadsheet mentioned in Jim Levin's
March 1988 message above).
Thirdly, the network provides access to a diverse range of data, beyond that available at any one location.
In this project, the diversity was the different shadow lengths measured at each site. Phenomena that are
common to different sites, but that differ in some specific way are good candidates for successful network-based
activities. On one hand, phenomena that are identical between sites provide little motivation for network
communication : a project in which each site measured how fast a ball rolled down a ramp would provide little
motivation since each site would report essentially the same data. On the other extreme, network projects
are impossible if based on a phenomena that has no correspondence in some of the sites (a project between
Illinois and southern California schools that involved measuring the depth of the snow on the ground outside
the school wouldn't work very well if the schools in California never had snow piled up to measure).
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, the network provides a wider and more diverse audience for the learning
activity. Student data collection, analyses and project write-ups are aimed not just for the teacher (the
usual audience) but also for a wider range of students, teachers, and other adults across the country or
even around the world. Students' writing has been shown to improve when aimed at a wider audience provided
by a network (Cohen & Riel, 1989). Our observation is that the same holds for students engaged in other
sorts of network activities as well.
In general, the network allows us to use the diversity present in the world in powerful ways for education.
Appropriate network projects are those that are located between the two extremes of too little diversity
and too much diversity, activities that are based on some common ground, but that use diversity between
sites as a point of focus.
The role of the class in providing support. Now that we've talked about the various ways that the
network can provide support for learning, let us now consider some of the ways that the class structure
can provide support for network-based activities. Just as we have classroom activities that don't involve
any electronic network, so we can have network activities outside the frame of a classroom. Students could
participate after school, or during their free time even while at school. However, one of the things we
have learned from this Noon Observation Project is some important ways in which the classroom can provide
additional support to network activities.
Let us contrast the Noon Observation Project with an earlier network-based observational project we conducted,
called the Moon Observation Project (Waugh & Levin, 1988). In this project, students went home on the night
of a first quarter moon, and measured the angle that the points of the crescent moon made to the horizon.
This angle varies from place to place as a function of latitude, just like the length of the noon shadow.
When we conducted this project, some students failed to bring in an observation, others were not very careful
about drawing the angle, and probably some students were not careful about making the observation at the
specified time. The data reflected this by showing a large amount of variability, large enough to wash out
small differences between sites that didn't have a very large deviation in latitudes.
One change we plan for this Moon Observation Project is to switch to observing the last quarter moon
instead (which appears in the early morning sky rather than the early evening sky), so that the observation
can occur during school time as part of a class activity. It will be harder for students to forget to make
the observation, they will have peer models and teacher help in making the observations, and the class as
a whole will have a shared context to make the analysis of the data more meaningful. It will also make it
easier for the teacher to integrate the whole process into the ongoing curriculum. These are all ways in
which the class can provide support for a network-based project.
Improved observations on educational electronic networks
While we consider the Noon Observation Project a successful network-based project, we still feel there
are aspects that need to be modified. In this section, we will describe what we would like to change to
improve this project. We will try to describe these changes in ways that point to general properties of
networks projects, as well as this particular one.
One of the strengths of this project were illustrated by the summary message sent by the Columbia Middle
School classroom, listed above. We would like to increase this sort of student involvement in the post-data
collection aspect of the project. Part of the problem for this project was the lateness in the school year
that the data was collected. But we also think more emphasis and planning should go into the post-observational
phase. Students should be encouraged to look in detail at the overall data, try to identify patterns, and
interact with the other sites to clarify any problems or issues that arise.
Students should be encouraged to work jointly with other students to develop presentations of the project,
which could be a project for a school's science fair, or even a project for a TeleScience Fair (Levin,
Waugh, & Kolopanis, 1988). This is a science fair activity conducted on an electronic network, with project
descriptions submitted electronically, posted and judged by distributed judges, and then "visited" by students,
teachers, and other adults electronically.
Another post-observational activity would be to write up the project reports for publication in a network-based
newspaper or journal. In the area of science, we have explored the notion of TeleScience Chronicles
(Levin, Waugh, & Kolopanis, 1988), an electronic journal with sections for student reports of network
projects, as well as sections for review articles, discussion forums, book reviews, etc.
The main point of these suggestions is that networks can allow us to engage students in the full range of
activities of adult scientists, including conference presentations, paper submission, review and publication,
scientific debate, etc., not just as data collectors for some distant expert.
Finally, we would suggest opening up these activities, so that as students acquire the expertise, they can
transcend the "known answer" aspect of the project and tackle extensions that would challenge even adult
experts. Even with the Noon Observation Project, one such extension was suggested in a message that pointed
out that an alternative to the round earth with distant sun hypothesis that Eratosthenes formulated is the
hypothesis of a flat earth with a fairly nearby sun. The differing shadow length data fits both hypotheses.
The challenge to the students and also to the adults involved is to find other directly measurable evidence
that the earth is round. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to gather such first hand evidence.
These observations on educational electronic networks can guide the exploration of the educational use of
these networks. It is already clear that electronic networks are very good for conducting certain kinds
of educational activities that would be very difficult in a conventional classroom. It is also clear that
they are not suitable for all possible activities. Discovering appropriate network-based activities is the
most important challenge to those exploring education on the electronic frontier.
References
Cohen, M., & Riel, M. (1989). The effect of distant audiences on students' writing. American Educational
Research Journal, 26(2), 143-159.
Levin, J., Riel, M., Rowe, R., & Boruta, M. (1986). Muktuk meets jacuzzi: Computer networks and elementary
school writers. In S. W. Freedman (Ed.), The acquisition of written language: Revision and response.
Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex.
Levin, J., & Kareev, Y. (1980). Personal computers and education: The challenge to schools. La Jolla,
CA: Center for Human Information Processing.
Levin, J. A., Waugh, M. & Kolopanis, G. (1988). Science instruction on global electronic networks. Spectrum:
The Journal of the Illinois Science Teachers Association, 13 , 19-23.
Rogers, A. (1988). Executive summary of work in progress: FrEdMail Project. Report submitted to the California
Educational Technology Committee and the State Board of Education, July 1988.
Waugh, M., & Levin, J. A. (1989). TeleScience activities: Educational uses of electronic networks. Journal
of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 8 , 29-33.
Waugh, M., Miyake, N., Levin, J., & Cohen, M. (1988). Problem solving interactions on electronic networks.
Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Meetings, New Orleans.
Acknowledgments
We want to thank everyone who helped make the networking activities described in this paper possible. The communication was supported by the State of California, the University of Illinois, San Diego State University, and by over seventy elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States, each with one or more truly dedicated teachers pioneering this new instructional frontier. We especially want to thank those teachers and students who participated in this project: Chris Martin and D. Starshi from Helena, Montana; Danny Blodgett from Montana City, Montana; Leigh Zeitz from Bell Gardens, California; Marsha Korobkin and the students of Helix High School, La Mesa, California; George Kolopanis and the students from Columbia Middle School, Champaign, Illinois; Naomi Miyake from Aoyama Gakuin Woman's College, Tokyo, Japan; Dick Riedl, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and David McMullen, Peoria, Illinois.
