More and more schools are being wired for computers that will be connected to the Internet. Recent studies show connectivity up from 32% in 1995 to 73% in 1996. Once these computers are in place the challenge for teachers becomes, how to best use this tool. One of the easiest ways to see immediate benefits is to use the computer for e-mail. Electronic mail composers are very easy to learn to use. This minimal investment time can produce a wide variety of benefits to a teacher and his/her students. These benefits fall into five major categories: communication, motivation, opportunities for cooperative learning, improvement of writing skills, and attitude change.
One of the most exciting ways to use e-mail in the classroom is for two classrooms of students from different geographical regions to develop a regular correspondence. Usually this communication will revolve around a particular project. If students are studying the Civil War, they might exchange information that they found most interesting, or books about the Civil War that they especially liked, or World Wide Web (WWW) addresses where they found helpful information. Students could then put together multimedia presentations on the Civil War and e-mail them to each other. Another idea -- if students are studying other languages, an English-speaking class could write to a Spanish-speaking class in Spanish, and the Spanish-speaking class could write back in English (or vice-versa). Information (words and pictures) could be exchanged on the current cultural likes of each class (favorite movies, songs, TV shows, food, actors, books, sports, etc.). In the above examples the communication is informational in nature, but projects are not limited to this type of communication. Projects could take on a persuasive or evaluative tone as well.
These types of projects are ideal for motivating students. When students have a 'real' task to do, one that others (besides their teacher) will see motivation to do their best almost comes naturally.
Projects such as the Civil War example above provide a chance for students to work cooperatively. There are many advantages for students in cooperative learning. Students must become active constructors of knowledge. They are the ones who must research and decide what ideas are important about their topic. They must learn to work in a group, to divide tasks, and to organize the project. Students have the opportunity to use higher level thinking skills in putting together the mulitmedia presentation that they will show to their class and e-mail to the other class. They must research, evaluate that research, put together ideas in a logical fashion, write, edit, draw conclusions, and artistically arrange the presentation.
This, of course, does not happen in a vacuum. The teacher is an always present influence to help structure, coach, guide, and advise. But the students are 'in charge', indeed, it is this fact that encourages them to be active constructors of their own knowledge. Cooperative learning situations give teachers a chance to stress Gardner's idea of multiple intelligence. Howard Gardner lists the following seven areas of intelligence: linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, artistic, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. When students feel that they have some strength to contribute they are usually more than willing to do so. This adds to their confidence as learners. Encouraging students to be life-long learners is one of the major challenges that schools face today.
Because the nature of e-mail is primarily a written form of communication, it is a wonderful vehicle for improving the writing skills of students. Speaking from my own experience as a teacher, students don't have much motivation to review and edit their work. But when the work they produce is going to be shared with others, students do focus more on the clarity of their writing and work to check for grammatical and spelling errors.
Another benefit to students communicating class to class is the opportunity to break down some prejudices that students might have. When communicating via e-mail, there is limited access some knowledge about the other class - questions of race, age, gender and looks blur. Teachers can use this blurring to spark a discussion about communicating with the other class and how not knowing what they look like makes (or doesn't make) a difference.
Having one class communicate with another class then offers the advantages of increased communication, motivation for students to do their best, opportunities for cooperative learning, improvement of writing skills, and an opportunity for a creative teacher to use this to break down prejudice. Other forms of e-mail can offer the advantages listed above as well.
Having students communicate with other students individually is another way of using e-mail to our students' advantage. These activities are called establishing KeyPals, reminiscent of Pen Pals of my youth. The exchanges here are usually more on a personal level, as opposed to a thematic idea. But certainly a creative teacher can encourage her/his students to exchange poems or short stories or interesting research with their KeyPals. As with my first examples, the advantages fall into the same categories. It is a great way for students to communicate their ideas and feelings to another student, hopefully forming a friendship - a connection. More and more we hear of technology isolating us, here is a way for us to use technology to form warm human connections. It is also a good motivator for students to improve their writing skills. Here would be a great opportunity for peer editing. Students get to help their classmates and get to know each other a little better. It is also a wonderful way to encourage students to become more open minded - can you enjoy communicating with someone even though you don't know what they look like? Here is a good example of this type of project.
Pam Scott, a teacher in Washington State, was chosen as one the of 1997 National Award Winners in the Time Magazine/Apple Computer On-Line Lesson Plan Contest. Her online project, "From Sea to Shining Sea," connected first grade students from Kennewick, Washington with first graders in North Carolina. Using the Internet and email they asked one another questions and based on the answers designed life size paper dolls of one another. Their project culminated with a 'virtual' picnic using CU SeeMe.
Another form that e-mail can use is the communication between teacher and student. Everyone likes to get mail. This is a excellent opportunity for teachers to communicate routine (this is your homework for tonight) and well as special (I was really impressed by the way you helped Joey clean up the paint that he accidentally spilled) messages. Some children are embarrassed by praise given in front of the whole class. In this form of communication a teacher can give specific praise to a student, then the student can choose to share that praise with others or keep it as a special moment to him/herself. Some students are embarrassed by asking for help or receiving help - they don't want the other children to think that they are dumb and need help. For those students e-mail is a way for them to seek the teacher's help that is viable for them. The teacher e-mails a response and for that moment the student has undivided attention, free of the possibility of scorn from others. Teachers can help this process along by encouraging/requiring that students send them e-mail regularly. This regular sending of e-mail helps to communicate students ideas and understanding, increases writing practice, and gives the teacher the chance to encourage and motivate.
Many of these same ideas apply to the parent to teacher and teacher to parent e-mail communication that can occur. Teachers can also send routine (this is your child's homework tonight) or special (Jane gave an excellent oral report on "The Care and Feeding of Goldfish" today) messages. Parents can communicate concerns, special family occurrences (births, divorce, deaths, upcoming vacations, etc.), and (hopefully) positive feedback to the teacher. This may sound a little overwhelming to teachers, an elementary teacher may have 30 parents to e-mail a middle or upper school teacher may have over 100! Most e-mail composers allow a list to be created and then one command will send the same e-mail message to all on the list. Communication certainly doesn't need to occur on a daily basis, but it would be beneficial for the e-mail to take some regular format so that parents get used to this communication.
Students can help strengthen school-home communication also. It is a sad fact that many children don't see their parents much during the work week. With parents working late, dinner to prepare, sports practice to attend, homework to do, etc. there is not much time for quality communication. Students can, as a regular activity, write letters to parents telling them of their school day, what they're learning, how they feel about trying out for the play, should they run for student government office? They could share a poem they wrote, or a story, or some interesting research, etc. Here we see the major advantages of e-mail being repeated again - communication, writing practice, motivation, and perhaps a change of attitude toward sharing their school life with parents. (As opposed to the standard teenage response to "What did you learn in school today?" "Nothing.")
The last two categories of e-mail communication involve the teacher-administrator and the teacher-teacher connection. The teacher-administrator dialogue is especially important in strengthening communication. Teachers and administrators in K-12 schools need to keep each other informed concerning a number of issues, student progress, interpretation of policy, and upcoming deadlines. An important area where teachers and administrators can really enrich each other is in the area of scholarship and research. If a teacher or administrator discovers an informative or interesting article on an educational topic that can benefit all, e-mail is an easy way to distribute a summary of the ideas that the article contains. Others can then read the article and respond to the group or individual via e-mail, or enliven faculty or lunch room conversation.
Strengthening teacher to teacher communication via e-mail has many benefits. The nature of teaching, one teacher in one classroom with 30 students, can lead to a feeling of teacher isolation. There is a danger for teachers to over focus on what they are teaching, and how they have always done it. Considering the amount of time grading student's work and planning lessons takes, many teachers feel that time to plan and carry out new ideas and use new technology is almost non-existent. E-mail can give teachers a chance to explore new ideas in a minimum of time. By joining any number of listserves teachers can be connected with other teachers and participate in a variety of discussions. The listserv LM-Net is designed for school librarians and media specialists. Discussion can include new hardware and software to benefit students use of the library, new websites that support quality research, or new trends in library construction. The listserv WWWEDU is focused on issues of educational technology use. Some common discussion topics are establishing on-line collaborations and projects, how to incorporate World Wide Web use and e-mail in existing curricula, and using authoring tools to create WWW pages. To subscribe a teacher simply sends a 'SUBSCRIBE' e-mail message to the listserv address, usually a computer. The new subscribers e-mail address is added to the listserv's list of recipients. Any mail sent to the listserv is now sent to the new subscriber as well. Teachers can read this e-mail at their leisure. When one responds to an e-mail message on a topic the choice is given to respond to everyone on the list or only the person who sent the original message. This ability to respond individually or to the group and on one's own time seems to fit the needs of teachers very well.
There are many websites that are devoted to connecting teachers. One such place is the Learning Space. Their goal is to create an on-line learning community that improves education in Washington State. As a first step, this project will train teachers and administrators to be skilled in the usage of telecommunication technologies. It strives to improve collaboration and communication for the support of instruction. For example, teachers can e-mail ideas to share, lesson plans, and trouble-shooting tips. It is developed by teachers for teachers.
In conclusion, the use of e-mail opportunities has many advantages. It strengthens communication of ideas between teachers, administrators, parents, and students. It can improve the motivation of students to put forth their best effort by providing a 'real' audience. It can help students improve their writing skills by giving them ways to practice and reasons for writing. It can provide opportunities for cooperation and collaboration for both teachers and students. Finally, it can be the vehicle for broadening students' horizons and breaking down prejudicial attitudes.
Arends, R.I. (1994) Learning to Teach. (Third Ed.) New York, New York: McGraw Hill, Inc. (Chapter 11).
Hofstetter, F. (1997) Multimedia Literacy. (Second ed.) New York, New York: McGraw Hill, Inc.
Morris, Joyce (1996) Ten Ways to Use Technology in Your Teaching. [On-line]. Available: http://www.uvm.edu/~jmorris
Roblyer, M.D., Edwards, Jack, Havriluk, Mary Ann. (1997) Integrating Educational Technology Into Teaching Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ( Chapters 3, 4, 5).
Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C., et al. (1992). Educational applications of a networked communal database. Interactive Learning Environments, 2, 45-71.
Related sites on-line
Cathy Schrock's page for Educators: http://www.capecod.net/schrockguide/
Classroom Connect: http://www.classroom.net
Comcast Online Schoolyard: http://www.onlineschoolyard.com/default.asp
CuCme technology: http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/itcentre/
Cyberbee page for Educators: http://www.cyberbee.com
Global Schoolhouse for Educators: http://k12.cnidr.org/gsh/
Global School Net: http://www.gsn.org
K-12 projects and activities: http://www.useekufind.com/tproject.htm
The Learning Space: http://www.learningspace.org