Electronic Thread

Brenda A. Dyck

Something inside of me has always been drawn to communicating with people in other places. When I was in sixth grade, I was a pen pal addict. My curiosity about what life was like for kids in foreign places led me to seek out pen pals from places like Orlando, Florida; Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania; and Montreal, Quebec. We wrote weekly letters and even exchanged Christmas presents. Those letters seemed to shrink my 1960s world to a size that made me realize that girls my age, regardless of where they lived, shared many of the same hopes, fears, and interests that I did.

I wonder if this positive global experience some 40 years ago actually paved the way for me to search for other like-minded educators across the world so I could use telecollaboration to enhance student learning. By dialoguing with peers who share my path and passion, from places both near and far, I have re-tasted some of the same synergy that I experienced in my old pen pal days.

What Is a Telecollaborative Project?
Telecollaboration is an educational venture that involves students and teachers in different locations. Using Internet tools such as e-mail, chat, Web conferencing, Web page building, as well as audio and video conferencing, the project connects specific curriculum objectives with the best the Web has to offer. Telecollaborative projects offer a wide range of benefits.

• They offer students the opportunity to "visit" places they may never have a chance to see in reality, such as a rainforest, the Titanic, or Ellis Island.
• They provide students with the opportunity to corres-pond with experts and professionals such as writers, politicians, and scientists.
• They help "hook" the reluctant learner who is often unwilling to participate in traditional classroom
  activities.
• They promote global awareness by providing opportunities for students to correspond with learners from other cultures and countries.
• They expose students and teachers to different perspectives by broadening their thinking.
• They provide an opportunity for teachers to "piggy-back" on the rich online opportunities that have been created by colleagues from all over the world.
• They help link students and teachers to various resources that normally wouldn't be available to them in their classrooms.

Creating a Telecollaborative Project
Telecollaborative projects often begin as a fledgling idea in the mind of a teacher who is looking for ways to integrate curriculum standards and challenge student thinking. This idea can develop into a viable project that amplifies student learning in a way that rivals most traditional project work. Project creation moves through a number of very definable stages:

1. Make Something out of Nothing. Take a nugget of an idea and start to flesh it out. Maybe a part of your curriculum seems to be limping along, a specific classroom problem needs attention, or you want to stretch or challenge student thinking. Keep a watchful eye for the annoying classroom "problemtunities" that clearly need the engagement that telecollaborative project work offers. Figure 1 explains three such problemtunities that have presented themselves in my own classroom.
   
2. Now I Get It! After creating something out of nothing, it is important to define a clear picture of where the telecollaborative project idea is going. Begin to imagine ways that the essence of the project can be delivered to your students. With one eye peeled on curriculum standards, choose activities that will meet the various learning styles found in any group of learners.
   
   To help visualize the direction in which my project is moving, I use a brainstorming tool to map the various activities so I can assess how well the activities support my project objectives and observe how the project process will play out.
   
3. Wiring Your Project. Once you have a clear idea of the process and content of your project, it is time to create a Web page that will transport your project into classrooms across the globe. Here we transition from the abstract to the concrete. Using FrontPage or any other Web page- building program, take the contents of your project and create a place for it to live on the Web. Putting the project onto a Web page format is a lengthy but fulfilling process. I always feel a little like an artist as I attempt to create a "feel" to the page by looking for just the right format, colors, graphics, and background. The end results help draw the student into the content of the project, so it is well worth the time involved.
   
4. Come Along with Me! Once a telecollaborative project is living on the Internet, other educators in "CyberLand" need to know it is there. A "call for participation" can be posted on as many education digests, Web sites, and listservs as possible. Here are a few to get you started:
   
   • The Connected Classroom —www.qesnrecit.qc.ca/cc/projects.htm
   • Net Happenings — www.classroom.com/community/email/ archives.jhtml?A0=NET-HAPPENINGS
   • IEarn — www.iearn.org
   • MidLink Magazine — www.ncsu.edu/midlink
   • GrassRoots —www.schoolnet.ca/grassroots/e/index.asp
   
   The "Come Along With Me" step is the true beginning of the telecollaborative process. Without this step, an online project is simply a project posted on the Web. Without posting a call for participation and establishing a project partnership with other classrooms, you and your students will miss the chance to broaden your global perspective and to tap into the power of intercultural collaboration.
   
   As you receive responses from potential telecollaborators, you will send a friendly, detailed e-mail in which you describe the details of the project. It is useful to create an e-group (ex: groups.yahoo.com/) or distribution list of all project participants so participants can communicate about the progress of their project. This tool can be used to send "cheerleader messages" and additional ideas of how to implement the project as well.
   
5. Just Do It! It is important to "unveil" the project in a way that will whet your students' appetites. At this time you will introduce your class to the "guts" of the project and students will begin to work through the activities.
   
6. Finishing Well. At the end of the "Just Do It!" stage, you begin to publish the students' work online: their writing, digital pictures of their artwork and activities, and maybe even some video footage. Connecting this work to your original project page will allow readers to see the beginning and the learning that resulted.

This stage also provides some closure to your telecollaborative project and allows others to celebrate the learning that has taken place in all the classrooms participating in the project.

As the student work goes live and your project comes to a close, how will you know if your efforts to extend your students' learning have been successful? You know you are successful when:

• Your project meets your curriculum goals
• Your students are motivated to work harder and discover a new-found confidence or passion as a result of the project
• Your project requires your students to use higher level thinking skills
• Students show signs of being more self-directed and intrinsically motivated
• Student skill levels improve as a result of working on the project
• Students move from just restating information to creating new information.

Judi Harris, leading education technology advocate sums it up well: "Will this use of the Internet enable students to do something that they could not do before? Will this use of the Internet enable students to do something now that they could do before but can do better now?"

Resources
Examples of Quality Telecollaborative Projects from MidLink Magazine : www.ncsu.edu/midlink/call2002.oct.htm
Dr. Judi Harris on Telecollaboration: ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/%7Ejbharris/ Virtual-Architecture/Foundation/index.html

Brenda A. Dyck is a teacher at Master's Academy and College, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is also a teacher-editor for MidLink Magazine. You can reach her at dyckba@shaw.ca.