Spring 2005

Online teaching & learning

Online projects open new educational windows

What can you see through the window in your classroom? What kind of bugs live in your school yard? Let’s build a website! Internet-based projects allow students from different schools and different places to communicate with each other and to connect with the wider world, reports SALLY BLACKWELL.

Fundamental to the Internet is its ability to connect—to information and people. As teachers we have embraced the Internet as an information research tool for our students. Searching the web for facts and figures, expert opinions and the most current information is woven into many of our teaching resources and has thus become second nature to our students.

Ironically, the features that allow us to connect to people are the ones that seem to be most under-utilised in classrooms, yet they hold the promise of adding new dimensions to learning, particularly mainstream, class-based activities. Such activities include direct email contact between students and with others, participation in online discussions or mailing lists, participation in projects with students in other places and contribution to real-world activities. Structured learning uses of online communications often fall into the latter group, presented in the form of ‘online projects’.

Email as a learning tool

Using email to ‘ask an expert’ plays an important role in enhancing students’ learning experiences. Educators, business people, academics, artists, professionals, retired people, experts, parents and other students can provide valuable input, feedback, experience, expert professional advice and historical perspectives often not available in any textbook.

Email can also link students to other students across classes, schools and countries. The NSW Department of Education and Training has built on this aspect of communication by providing ‘Through my window’. This is an online student project that is simple in its implementation and engaging to students. It is designed to allow students to communicate to each other about their world through words and images. The project is managed through the Centre for Learning Innovation within the NSW DET and is designed to stimulate factual descriptive writing and visualisation skills. While the project has a strong literacy base, it can easily meet learning outcomes from several different curriculum areas.

In groups, students describe what they see through a window in their classroom. The description needs to be as accurate as possible and use vivid and precise language. They then email the description to the project coordinator who posts it onto a Departmental website. Students from other schools anywhere in the world can access and interpret the appearance of the described view. They then create a visual representation (drawing, printing, painting, collage or computer-generated image) of the unseen view that complements the written description and send the visual representation to the authoring school as either a digital image attached to an email or by regular post. It is also a great way to contact other schools and begin a learning relationship, as exemplified by the relationship developed by Meadow Flat Public School in rural NSW and Maesgwyn Special School in Wales.

Learning more about online projects

In her research investigating students’ experiences of online projects in NSW schools, Susan Harriman proposes that online projects are emerging as a new form of learning, building on non-computer problem-based approaches. Their aim is to create a learning environment that is student-centred and interdisciplinary, where students engage in longer-term, complex undertakings linked to the world outside the school. An excellent example of this is the Backyard Biodiversity Project, run by the Australian Museum in collaboration with the NSW DET. This study helps the Australian Museum to identify the diversity of invertebrates in local areas as students use scientific techniques to conduct research for the museum.

A high school teacher who has implemented this project with her students stated that:

One of the delights of this project is its simplicity to manage. We formed student groups to identify leaf litter and lawn areas within the school environs. Two students took photos of the whole process. The pits to capture the insects were built and camouflaged. The following day the pits were dug up and insects sorted, identified and counted.
After the process of counting was complete, the groups came together to collate the data. We identified and discussed trends. Data was then entered into a spreadsheet and graphed and the students presented the findings by email to the Australian Museum.

This project highlights that students don’t need to be constantly online to become involved—they gather the information they need online, complete their planning and implement their project offline, and then go online again to communicate their learning.

Using web design tools

Web design and creation is another way students can communicate online. The Annual Schools Web Design Awards www.schools.nsw.edu.au/events/statecompetitions/webawards/index.php  were created to help students become familiar with web design tools. Working in teams, they are encouraged to use words, drawings, music, video or still photography to create a website to share their thoughts, feelings and ideas for a worldwide audience. One teacher commented: ‘We’ve made so many mistakes and would do so many things differently next time. We’re also really proud of what we’ve done and have the confidence to start work on a school site next term’.

These are only a sample of the types of communicative and collaborative projects being undertaken by teachers and students across NSW. Student Internet projects involve many levels and ranges of processes, tasks, activities, outcomes and technologies. That’s what makes them so interesting and valuable.

References

Harriman, S (2004). ‘It was great, just not what I had expected: Online learning projects in action’, paper presented at the AARE International Educational Research Conference, Melbourne. Available at www.aare.edu.au/04pap/har04513.pdf

NSW Department of Education and Training, Backyard Biodiversity Project, available at www.curriculumsupport.nsw.edu.au/ learningtechnologies/index.cfm?u=2&i=2

NSW Department of Education and Training, ‘Through my Window’, available at www.curriculumsupport.nsw.edu.au/learningtechnologies/index.cfm?u=2&i=2

Sally Blackwell is a senior project officer in eLearning with the Centre for Learning Innovation in New South Wales.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au