Mary came to WCLL on a regular basis to work with students involved in the online project. The students participated in a parent/guardian training night before being issued Toshiba laptops.
AmeriQuest was also part of a study, funded by the Joyce Foundation, done by the Center for Children and Technology (CCT). It was designed to show the effects of the E-rate money that has been spent on technology and how it has affected teaching and learning other than the raising of test scores.
Visit www2.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/wcll/module.html for more on the project.
“Welcome to the Online History Course: Operation D-Day. In this mission you will be given tasks that involve research and creativity. … If you choose to accept this mission, you should click the link below, and you will be sent to a page displaying your assignments. If you choose not to accept this assignment, you’ll be asked to forget we had this conversation. Remember, your grades depend on you. NOW GO KICK SOME RESEARCH BUTT!!!”
Thus began one Wisconsin Conservatory of Lifelong Learning (WCLL) middle school student’s introduction to an online module he created after taking an online history course titled “All I Never Wanted to Know About U.S. History and Still Don’t Want to Ask.”
U.S. history, or history of any kind, is not typically a middle school student’s idea of a good time. It is one more course he or she “has to take” to get into high school. But creating an online history course and its accompanying student Web project has allowed me (Mary) to make history come alive for my students while incorporating the Internet, not only as a means to acquire information but also as a content delivery system.
How Could I Develop a Course?
Writing an online course takes time and effort. To help me prepare a well thought-out course in advance, I recruited Char Harteau, media/library specialist at WCLL, to help me with the task. Together we spent many hours organizing the material. Initially it took Char and me about a semester to organize the project. But now we have pared the time down. I have worked with teachers who can do this for the first time in about 24 hours. Each time they repeat the process, it gets much easier and takes less time.
The online course we created contains three modules that delve into the early history of the United States. The first module invites the students to become aware of their own ethnic background and to realize the wide ethnic diversity in the United States and in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they live. The second module discusses the European explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries. In the third module, students study the Native American tribes who inhabited the region before the Europeans.
Char and I worked with these students for two semesters using the online course. Because middle school students also need face-to-face instruction, we included classroom as well as online activities. The students had two instructors: Char acting as in-house teacher and me acting as online instructor. We created this course to contain content and activities students would find and do online and content and activities they needed to learn and do in a classroom setting. A collaborative activity to make a map of the world is one example of an in-class project we did. The students referred to this map at different times throughout the course. Char and I worked collaboratively on each of the activities in the modules. Table 1 shows the in-class and online activities associated with each module of the online history project.
In planning the online activities, we realized our students would be looking at a screen, not at us. When standing face-to-face with students, we know we can explain the assignment many times so all students understand it. With the online environment, we had only one shot at phrasing our sentences and asking our questions. What we typed had to be exactly what we wanted our students to understand. Therefore, we used very simple English sentences to convey our message.
Online course developers do not need to be adept at HTML to create inviting and exciting courses for their students. Many different courseware delivery systems are currently available for the Web (e.g., BlackBoard, Prometheus, LearningSpace). (Editor’s note: See Resources at the end of the article for URLs.) Our online history course was created in Lotus Learning-Space. The different courseware software and delivery systems have their own editors that can convert to HTML. The pages we created in LotusNotes looked very professional, with color and graphics we hoped would keep the students’ attention. We spent many hours devising ways to make each screen come alive through the use of graphics, color, different fonts, and hyperlinks. I wrote most of the content and Char provided the interactive aspects of the course.
Char found Web sites where students could go to look for pertinent information such as primary sources, how to evaluate Web sites, and how to cite Web sites in their work. I had always used printed secondary sources when teaching history because it was difficult, if not impossible, to acquire primary sources. With access to the Internet, that difficulty has disappeared. In this online course, students can read from Columbus’ diary with a click of the mouse and then discuss what they read with each other online. We used our eighth-grade U.S. history textbook in conjunction with the Web sites and then asked the students to discuss their findings online.
Although Char and I targeted all students, including ESL, in writing our project, a group of gifted students in Grades 5–8 at her school were the ones available to pilot the course. The students were given laptops for home use during the course. They also had the use of the computers in school on specified days.
Each time they logged on to the computer they encountered a message from me telling them what they had to do for the week. After reading what the activity was on the screen, they would answer the questions by typing in the Discussion Area of the software. They then read other students’ responses and responded to them, creating a threaded discussion for each activity. As the on-line instructor, I also responded to the students and they, in turn, responded to me.
In a traditional setting, it is very difficult for a teacher to respond to 30 or 35 students for each activity everyday. In an online course, each student is responsible for responding to each question in all the activities, and the instructor has the ability to respond to each student. It is still time-consuming, but rewarding and worth doing. You can interact with all your students for each activity, which seldom happens in a traditional setting. Our experience with this course showed us that student participation was higher than in a traditional setting because it was very noticeable who was not participating, and I could give them encouragement in the online course environment, by
e-mail, or by calling home.
Parents were especially interested because they could find out immediately what assignments their child needed to do. We also discovered that interaction between students stayed at a consistent level for each activity. They would keep watch and let each other know if they were behind. They also encouraged each other to stay on task and on time.
After they finished the three U.S. history modules we had provided, we asked the students to create their own teaching module and to publish it on the Web. We asked them to pick a topic from U.S. history they were interested in researching. Thomas Jefferson, Pearl Harbor, the history of baseball, and the Boston Tea Party are some of the modules they developed. Students wrote these modules as though they would become the online instructors for the elementary students in the school. Students were to:
1. Choose a time they were interested in and write their own module patterned after the ones in their U.S. history online course, complete with outcomes, activities, discussions, and project-based assessments using simple templates we provided.
2. Use Netscape Composer to enter all of their work, publish it online, and link to it from the WCLL
home page.
What Did We Learn?
In these two semesters, we discovered very quickly that today’s students simply do not learn in the same way we did. And the corollary to that is: We simply cannot teach them in the same way we were taught. Because of this, we changed our minds about some of our methods of teaching and ways students learn.
Table1. The In Class and Online Activities for Each Module of the Online History Project |
Modules |
Activity 1 In-Class |
Activity 1 Online |
Activity 2 In-Class |
Activity 2 Online |
Activity 3 In-Class |
Activity 3 Online |
Module 1: Ethnic Background |
Discuss ethnic origins of students |
Share own ethnic stories in asynchronous discussion online |
Create world map and connect countries of origin to U.S. with yarn |
Research family genealogies of students using Internet and discuss findings online |
Create chart of students’ ethnic origins |
Research one other ethnic group in U.S. using Internet and discuss findings online |
Module 2: European Explorers |
Compare world maps of 1500s and 2002 |
Locate Columbus’ diary on the Internet and discuss activities of five different days online |
Create map of U.S. showing exploration of European countries |
Research reasons for exploration of 14th and 15th centuries using Internet sites and discuss findings online |
Discuss meaning of expansion and colonization |
Discuss online the effects of European expansion in U.S. on native people |
Module 3: Native American Tribes |
Discuss four representative native peoples in U.S. before European exploration |
Research each group using Internet and discuss findings online |
Create map showing territory of different Native groups |
Compare and Contrast different native peoples’ life styles online |
Discuss meaning of expansion and colonization |
Using a draw program, create a box and put things into it from today’s culture to be studied 500 years from now as artifacts and post it online |
Create Opportunities for Students to Collaborate. Our students continually amazed us with their ability to help each other in content and computer skills. The feeling of hoarding their knowledge in a competitive spirit so they could get the “A” was never present throughout the two semesters.
Most online delivery systems allow for asynchronous discussions. The students took advantage of this to compliment each other or critique each other’s work. Students viewed this kind of interchange as non-threatening. They had the freedom to express themselves in a safe environment.
Collaboration was especially noticeable in the final projects when the students were creating their own courses and Web pages. Someone would discover how to best display an idea, a question, or a graphic, and four or five students would huddle around the computer to find out how it was done. For us, this meant an end to the days when students worked in isolation.
Tap into New Approaches. A girl we’ll call Susan made us change our thinking about how students approach projects and put together all of the pieces. For the module students were to develop, we had assumed they would follow a top-down approach. I had given the students a graphic showing how Web pages should be laid out on paper before going to the computer. It showed a home page stating the title and the objectives of the module, two to three Web pages each with one activity, and a final page explaining the final project or assessment of the module. Each page linked to the home page and to each other for easy navigation.
Students were to map their module on paper and show it to me before going to the computer. Susan sat and sat not writing anything at all. Finally, she looked up and said, “Ms. Delgado, I have all my notes on the computer. Can I go and print them out for you?” Char and I will never forget what we saw on Susan’s computer: Not one module, but three—with clearly stated objectives, activities that flowed from the objectives, and a final project that tied all three modules together.
Susan hadn’t had to write on paper or even take notes on the computer. She was able to “see” the whole Web structure in her head and was able to weave Web pages filled with well-developed content and graphics enhancing the content, not detracting from it.
Most of the other girls were content to use paper and pencil first to organize their thoughts before they went to the computers. The boys were divided. Half composed at the computers, while half relied on their papers to guide their computer work. We’ve adjusted our requirements so that students may choose to present the organization of their Web sites orally or in writing.
Capitalize on Student Interest. We found that our students were self-motivated to finish all the projects on time. They exuded a sense of pride in posting their responses to discussions, their questions or concerns, or their final projects online for their instructor and their classmates to view.
Online courses in general are prevalent in the realm of higher education and high school. There needs to be a push now for online courses geared toward the middle school student. It is here that many students fail to understand why they are in school. They lose their earlier desire to learn and explore the world of ideas. Written with sound pedagogy, online courses can motivate and energize middle school students.
Allowing students to control their own learning is difficult for many teachers because we view it as “giving up” control of our curriculum. Actually, it is the direct opposite. An online course is one way for teachers and students to truly become partners in the learning process. Teachers become guides who walk alongside their students in search of knowledge. Through hands-on projects and interactive discussions, students become aware of how they think and how they learn, which provides them with a foundation for continuing lifelong learning.
Enlist Support from Home. Increasing parental involvement is a mantra in today’s conversation about education. We discovered that with the laptops provided by the school district, parents became more interested and involved with their child’s homework. They were able to see exactly what the assignment was and what we expected. They could read their children’s responses and those of the online instructor and the other students. Unless parents physically sit in a classroom to hear all the interaction, they only have the word of their children as to what was said. In the online environment, any parent can log on and find out what his or her child is learning.
Conclusion
Char and I are firm believers that working with students in this Information Age is a challenge that cannot be met with outmoded traditional teaching methods. When given guidance, students can grasp and control the world of the Web. We, as teachers, need to create avenues that allow students the freedom to explore and navigate in this world. Because of this experience with these students, we have rededicated ourselves to providing our students with opportunities in which they can delve deeply into the world of learning and come out successful and whole human beings.
Resources
Course Delivery Tools
BlackBoard: www.blackboard.com
Lotus (LearningSpace and Lotus Notes): www.lotus.com/lotus/products.nsf/fa_prohomepage/, then search by product name
Prometheus: http://company.blackboard.com/prometheus/
Project-Related Sites
Online U.S. History Course Project: www2.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/wcll/ushistory.html
Student-Created Modules: www2.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/wcll/module.html
Research-Related Sites
Owl Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/
Primary Sources on the Web: www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/PrimarySourcesOnTheWeb.html
Seven Steps to Better Searching: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/searching/sevensteps2001.html
Mary Delgado is an online professor at Marquette University. Thirty years ago, Mary was given a technology tool that allowed her to actually look at the class and write at the same time. Incredible! The device is still being used—the overhead projector. She has come a long way since those heady days. For the past two years, Mary has worked with K–12 teachers to develop and publish their courses online. But when the Internet is down or the presentation software just won’t work, there is always the ubiquitous overhead projector to save the day.
Char Harteau has taught numerous classes from graduate-level to prekindergarten. Currently, she is the technology/media specialist at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Lifelong Learning, the only PK–12 Milwaukee Public School. She is also an online instructor in the School of Education at Marquette University and she teaches undergrad and grad outreach courses at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and a St. Thomas University online course called Developing Curriculum for Online Courses.
Reprinted with permission from Learning and Leading with Technology, vol. 30, no. 5 copyright
© 2003, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777(Int'l); iste@iste.org, http://www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Permission does not constitute an endorsement by ISTE.
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