Interesting article at Wired: NET EXPERIENCE IS BEST TEACHER

Instead of listening to a lecture about natural selection, for example, kids study the climate, food, and characteristics of a particular species. They research the species using software or the Internet. "They could have learned all of this by reading two paragraphs in a textbook,
but the fact that they have to figure it out for themselves is the real learning."
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,44869,00.html

That's inspiring, Linda! Thanks for letting us know.

Steve, I have started a forum at our school and invited a teacher from Australia to participate. So far, so good!

You're welcome, Linda. As I've mentioned education is the QT usage I like to see the most. I think it has great possibilities for creative use.
--
By the way, everyone who's interested here should be sure to click the Subscribe link to get email for new posts.

To Joe Cudd...

Science Experiments? Let me see what interest I can muster up at our school!

Hi Everyone! I lost this URL for a bit. I am getting my masters in teaching with Internet Technologies. We are looking at all different ways to implement new ideas on the Web. I like this one for postings. I looked into others, but this is the only one that doesn't employ tacky ads that could get our students into big time trouble!!
Thank you, Steve! Did you notice I started another forum, btw? Cow Island? They are loving it!

Hi All,
I'm the District Technology Coordinator for LakeShore Central Schools, (south of Buffalo, NY) I came to QuickTopic to see if this could help my High School teachers in developing discussion topics. Despite all their efforts, it is difficult to provide more activities which elicit student thoughts and discussion. Teachers just run out of time. But the key is students have time available after class to continue THINKING, and hopefully wondering about what they are learning. It often seems we have just enough time to teach the bare facts required for the end of the year state testing, and there isn't much time for the thinking part.

I created a sample to show teachers and get their feedback.
You're welcome to see my "pretend" discussion.
http://www.quicktopic.com/6/H/NcHwZKbnAyAiEd8qjV

Also Steve Yost answered a couple of my initial questions regarding inappropriate usage and Teacher control. [Thanks again, Steve] I've copied his response below.

> How could I as the instructor, remove inappropriate postings?

Click the Admin/Delete link on the topic page, and you'll see a place to
delete specific messages. If you created the topic while signed in, you
won't even have to supply the special "administrative password". Otherwise,
just have it send you an admin password.

> Also, if I
> could type
> Student 1, Student 2 then students could certainly post things
anonymously
> and I
> wouldn't be able to track them down.

That's true, and it's a direct tradeoff for simplicity. I can easily add a
feature that requires students to sign in, if you're interested. However,
there's still nothing preventing them from creating several sign-in names
and using them. That's true of any service. At least with this feature one
student couldn't impersonate another. But effective moderation of the
discussions is the best, I think, it being a human solution.

Why don't we select a science experiment that can be done easily and use Q-Topic as a vehicle for children to share their experiences ?

Perhaps dropping a slice of buttered bread 20 times and Murphy's Law i..e. landing buttered side first.. chnage height of test from a chair does this effect outcome. I teach 8-9 year olds. un th U.K.

Edited by author 03-02-2001 01:22 PM
Hi, folks. Judi Harris here, typing to you from the University of Texas at Austin. Steve was kind enough to email me and tell me that he had recommended some of my work to this new group. Hope that it's helpful to you. The site at which the more recent resources are located, "Virtual Architecture's Web Home," will be updated and expanded in about a month--a colleague and I are working on this now.

Anyway: Steve asked me to join in this discussion via Quick Topic, on an ongoing basis, but unfortunately my schedule will not permit this. So, I'm here just this once to say "hi" and to encourage you to use the resources that we've posted (and will soon post) at the Virtual Architecture site:
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~jbharris/Virtual-Architecture/ , including the updated articles that Steve just told you about today.

Also: the second edition of the book _Virtual Architecture: Designing and Directing Curriculum-Based Telecomputing_, which the Web site named above supports, will be released in late 2001. It is published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE): http://www.iste.org/, a nonprofit organization that supports teachers who use technology in their teaching.

Enjoy!

-Judi

Edited by author 03-02-2001 10:26 AM
Judi pointed me to more recent material at http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~jbharris/Virtua...undation/index.html. Great resources here, including links to other sites. I see that one paper, "Educational teleresearch is a means, not an end", mentions WebQuest.
---
But in my zeal about educational resources, I'm getting off the track... So please share your Quick Topic experiences! I'll make myself scarce for awhile.

Edited by author 03-01-2001 02:30 PM
Thanks for joining, Linda. One tip in response to your "erase the board" problem: just forget about the old one (or to be nice, delete it) and create a new one. If you set up a Shared Topics page and bookmark that, you can easily remove the old board (topic) from the Shared Topics page and add the new topic. If you try that, let me know how it works -- I might want to streamline that process more.

Hi there! Thanks for inviting me, Steve. We use Quick Topic to post the 5th grade teacher's Problem of the Week. Then the kids have a week to solve it, to respond to other's responses, to try again. They must show how they worked it out, also.
I think our message board is working out very well. The kids are enjoying it. We finally got the rules down about appropriateness of using such a thing...like, it isn't for personal messages!
The teacher is quite happy with it! Now if I could only teach the cyberphobe how to erase the board for the next week we would be all set!!

Another great resource about web-based classroom projects is Bernie Dodge's WebQuest:
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html

Edited by author 03-01-2001 11:30 AM
One interesting resource is an older but very applicable paper called Educational Telecomputing Projects: Interpersonal Exchanges, by Judi Harris.

Ideas listed include the following:

• Keypals: simple communication with other classrooms.
• Global Classrooms: two or more classrooms (located anywhere in the world, of course) study a common topic together.
• Electronic "Appearances": bulletin boards can also "host" special guests, with whom students can correspond.
• Electronic Mentoring: Internet-connected specialists can serve as electronic mentors to students wanting to explore specific topics in an interactive format on an ongoing basis.
• Question-and-Answer Services like "Ask a Geologist"
• Impersonations (this one is very inventive): any (or all) of the participants communicate with each other "in character", like Thomas Jefferson, for example.

The full paper is here, and I highly recommend it:
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/mining/March95-TCT.html
Judi Harris has other papers here:
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/mining/August-September94-TCT.html
and here:
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/%7Ejbharris/Virtual-Architecture/
---
footnote: I think I'll invite Judi Harris to this discussion.

Edited by author 03-01-2001 09:33 AM
Many educators are using Quick Topic, and some have asked me for ideas on using QT. I've invited several of you to share your experiences and ideas on using Quick Topic (and other online resources) here. This is a private discussion among about seven of us initially, but feel free to invite other educators too. I may invite others over time, but I won't make it publicly available unless you'd like to.

Please introduce yourselves briefly in your first post. As always, you can choose to get email every time a post is made or every day -- just click the Subscribe link above.
 
So, how have you used Quick Topic? Do you have other ideas or suggestions?

Thanks for your participation! I hope this is a rich discussion for everyone.