School/University Collaboration Via E-Mail A Unique Approach to Teaching

Reading and Language Arts

By Rick Traw

W ?hen Sharon Smaldino, one of our department's educational computing experts made her suggestion, I viewed the matter with

some doubt. "Would you be interested," she asked, "in having students in your Teaching Reading and Language Arts course work with elementary school students over electronic mail?"

The trouble was, while I was proficient at word processing, I was a novice at electronic mail. If I knew nothing about e-mail or its possible value as an educa- tional tool, how could I use it with my students or show them its value? On the other hand, I was a new faculty member at the University of Northern Iowa, and increased use of educational technology was one of our goals--this might be something I should get involved with.

"Tell me about it," I said. By the time Sharon had explained how our computers were electronically linked by a telecommunications system to Black Hawk Elemen- tary School (our Partners in Education school) and some of the things we could do through that link, the germ of an idea had formed.

So began my initiation into the world of computer telecommunications, and the initiation of students enrolled in my Teaching of Reading and Language Arts course. By the end of the semester, these students, two classrooms of fifth grade students at Black Hawk Ele- mentary School in Waterloo, Iowa, their teachers and I would all know more about e-mail and its potential for bringing together disparate audiences into a reading/writ- ing community.

Getting Started Using e-mail, I wrote to two fifth grade teachers at

Black Hawk--Kathy Rech and Tom Nass. Kathy and Torn, adventurous experimenters in their classrooms,

Rick Traw teaches Reading and Language Arts at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

were enthusiastic about the idea I outlined for collabora- tion between their students and mine.

The culminating project in my Teaching of Read- ing and Language Arts class is the development of a unit centered around a theme of the students' choosing. This unit must include all the major content areas and be based on the reading of relevant quality children's lit- erature. Small groups of four or five students work together to create these units. While this had been a good project in the past, it had suffered from a lack of knowledge of how real kids in elementary schools would respond to the units.

In the previous semester, my students had devel- oped their units without any input from the elementary- aged audiences for whom the units were designed. Here, I thought, was an authentic opportunity for my students to collaborate with elementary students and to learn about them in the process.

Kathy and Tom saw the potential in the idea. The assignment evolved as we shaped it using several e-mail conversations. Finally we had a face-to-face meeting to hammer out the details (yes, it was still necessary to sit down together and talk).

My students would initiate the electronic conversa- tions, communicating their ideas for units and books to the Black Hawk students. They in turn would respond to the ideas and make suggestions for additional activities and books. Central to this project was the notion that the fifth graders would be the experts. They knew what worked for them in their studies and how they learned. They became consultants for my students, and Kathy and Tom let them know that this was to be their role.

The Assignment I instructed my students to form groups and select

broad themes and grade levels for their units, just as I had done in the past. However, I added the following steps. First, the students were briefed on the e-mail por- tion of the project, what e-mail was, and the various computing stations around the campus which gave them access to e-mail. One student from each group received training in the use of e-mail from our technical staff; this student then trained the rest of the group.

Once everyone was trained and the initial planning

28 TECH TRENDS MARCH 1994

Figure 1: Example of problems with use of e-mail and fifth graders' response.

stages for the unit were completed, each group was asked to send an initial message to Black Hawk. My groups were assigned to corresponding groups in Tom and Kathy's classes, passwords were assigned for each group, and a due date for the first message was estab- lished. My students were to introduce themselves, their themes, and their core books--the central texts around which they were building their units. They were also to ask the fifth graders for ideas about the theme and other books which might support it.

Within the small groups each student was responsi- ble for developing detailed plans for one of the core books. These plans were to be communicated to Tom and Kathy's students. Thus, each of my students would have opportunity to use e-mail on an individual basis. Ideas from the Black Hawk students were to be incorpo- rated into the final products whenever they were found to be valuable. We didn't know whether the fifth grad- ers would suggest good ideas or not; as shown in Figure 2, we need not have worried.

At the conclusion of the project, my students would complete a survey about the e-mail component. Was it useful? Did it contribute to the quality of their unit? More importantly, did they learn anything about elementary students and their reading, writing, and think- ing processes? The survey, plus input we would receive from the fifth graders, would help us determine whether the project was a worthwhile learning experience.

The Process Although a couple of students in my two sections

were experienced with electronic mail, most approached the project with the same initial anxiety I had experi- enced. Indeed, reducing computer anxiety and becoming fluent with e-mail turned out to be two of the great bene- fits of the enterprise. Sharon, our computer expert, had suspected this would happen and was delighted with the results, but in the beginning my students were tentative and easily frustrated by the somewhat awkward word processing capabilities of the system we were using.

This particular system does not lend itself to text editing. Any errors in text above the line on which one is typing can be corrected only by using an editing sub- routine, and the menu's directions are laborious and unclear. In addition, if one forgets this and attempts to edit without using the sub-routine, entire messages may be garbled or erased. Despite this problem, my students persisted and the messages began to flow. Kathy, Tom, and I overcame the system's shortcomings by telling the students that we were interested in content, not form, and that sending messages with some spelling errors in them was acceptable. We expected rough draft writing over e-mail; the proper place to perfect writing form would be in the final draft of the unit. Additionally, when messages were so badly garbled that they were unintelligible, the fifth graders informed my students, teaching a valuable lesson about the importance of using conventional forms when writing for an audience (see Figure 1). Thus, students were able to experience a little bit of the authentic writing process they had been hear- ing about in their classes.

The Black Hawk students were anxiously awaiting my students' messages. As messages were received, Kathy and Tom worked at the computer with small groups to keyboard the group-composed responses. Time constraints and the limitation of having only one computer per classroom precluded the students from key- boarding their own responses. A good portion of both the college and elementary messages were devoted to introductions and the required pleasantries. However, my students also began to find valuable input for their units and, perhaps most enjoyable, nuggets of the ele- mentary students' writing voices (see Figure 2). As the groups worked through the initial messages and follow- up information on specific books, more and more Black Hawk ideas made their way into the units, either as activities or books to be added to the units' reading lists.

Students communicated back and forth for approxi- mately two weeks. By this time, it was clear to Kathy, Tom, and me that we needed some kind of culminating experience for the project in which students from both

MARCH 1994 TECH TRENDS 29

Figure 2. Sample response from fifth graders and undergraduates' reply.

schools could share the final product. We planned a get- together for our classes, and my students car-pooled to Black Hawk on the last day of classes with copies of their units in hand. Gathering groups together in various rooms and hallways at Black Hawk, the students began to share ideas and activities from the units. My students came prepared with various activities and readings from the units; one group with a humor unit seemed to have a particularly riotous time sharing jokes with the fifth grad- ers and playing games that only fifth graders and college students (and perhaps their teachers) could enjoy. Other groups held discussions and shared their experiences on such topics as caring for our environment, the joys and pains of friendship, Native American experiences, and learning about foreign cultures.

The Benefits The assessments written by both the college stu-

dents and elementary students were nearly unanimous in finding great value in their collaboration. The comments dovetailed with the observations that Tom, Kathy, and I made regarding the project. On my end, at least three distinct benefits accrued. First, each of the small groups

was able to write better units than they would have been without the fifth graders' suggestions. Second, and prob- ably more important, was the experience of reading and writing with the fifth graders. My students learned about the developmental state of these children, their reading tastes and multiple levels of understanding, as well as their responses to literature and the kinds of activities which might give voice to those responses. Finally, all my students learned to use electronic mail and discov- ered that the computer offers many exciting applications with the potential to increase learning.

The fifth graders also benefited from the experi- ence. Many of them were introduced to new books of good quality. Like my students, they discovered more about the potential of computers. But Kathy and Tom agreed that the best element of the project for their stu- dents was the boost it gave to their confidence and self- esteem. Throughout the project, my students treated the Black Hawk students and their suggestions with great respect. The fifth graders were truly treated as expert consultants who knew what they were talking about. Kathy and Tom reported on the seriousness with which their students took the assignment and the resultant suc-

30 TECH TRENDS MARCH 1994

cess the students felt when their ideas were incorporated into the units. To be treated as experts by college stu- dents was exciting and rewarding for them, and they responded to the assumption of expertise with quality ideas.

Making it Better While we found this project to be highly success-

ful, we plan to make some changes the next time around, based on our observations and the assessments written by the students. First, we need more time. The project began in the month of April. Given the schedule conflicts that occur during the last month of the spring semester, and that our semester ended during the second week of May, we simply did not budget enough time for the students to develop ongoing communications. Most groups responded once to the introductory mes- sages and once to the messages on individual books. More time would provide more reading and writing.

Second, instead of training one member of the group and having that member train others, we will train all the undergraduates. Most of our student trainers were

not acquainted with e-mail before their training session, and a single thirty minute session was not sufficient for them. They knew well enough how to work through the system themselves but did not know it well enough to show all the details to their groups. As a result, many students spent time fumbling through the process, mak- ing mistakes that could have been avoided had they been trained by the technical staff.

Finally, at some point we would like to do more than just collaboratively write the units. We would like to implement them in the classrooms where the collabo- ration took place. This task seems rather daunting and dependent upon extremely close cooperation between school and university. However, it also seems to be the natural culmination of the project. Ideally, the undergrad- uates and elementary students who worked together to create the units should experience them together. This step may not take place on the second go-around, but it is a potential which lies out there ahead of us, a poten- tial which exists because computing technology has made it possible. �9

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MARCH1994 TECH TRENDS 31