Responses from Conference Participants

The following are ways that projects/teachers have answered the questions listed below:

1. Brief Description of your work:
If you are a teacher, what project have been working with and for how long?
If you are a project organizer or curriculum writer, please describe briefly your project and its goals.

2. What are the key issues that you (your project) is working on (focusing on, struggling with) now?

3. What issues do you anticipate your project (or other Network Science projects) will have to address in the future?

Click on names below to view participant's responses

1. Description:

1.Classroom FeederWatch (CFW), an interdisciplinary science curriculum developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO) and TERC with funding from the National Science Foundation, gives students in upper elementary and middle grades the opportunity to experience the excitement of scientific research in their classrooms. The project has four underlying principles:

a. Students are amateur ornithologists.

b. Students contribute data to a research database.

c. Professional ornithologists use student-generated data in their studies.

d. Students share their data with other student ornithologists, analyze those data, and use their findings to describe how the natural world works.

As Classroom FeederWatchers, students set up feeders in their schoolyards, learn to identify and count the kinds and numbers of birds that visit, and share their data on a network with scientists at CLO and with other students across the country. They analyze their data, share their findings with CLO and other Classroom FeederWatchers, and publish their results in a newsletter of their own design. CLO scientists assist the students by answering questions, sharing information, and publishing selections from classroom newsletters in a national newsletter, Classroom Birdscope. Interdisciplinary connections include math, art, geography, language arts, social studies, and computer science.

2.

• Publication issues--fitting electronic and print materials together

• Internet--developing interactive Internet activities that allow teachers and students to deepen understandings in ways that go beyond hands-on.

• Teacher Enhancement--incorporating implementation strategies and content and process skills into the curriculum flow.

1. Global Lab Curriculum is a project to develop a year-long curriculum for 8th or 9th graders that takes them through the process of conducting scientific investigations, step by step. They start out together, using inexpensive instrumentation to conduct a common set of investigations on their "study site," a plot of ground near their school that they select. These common investigations explore quite a few factors that effect the ecology of the site, such as light intensity, terrain, vegetation, atmospheric conditions, and so on. At the end of the year, classrooms begin to conduct their own independent investigations on their site. Throughout the year, the classrooms are comparing their experiences and sharing their data using a Web space designed for the project. Data analysis is a central feature of this shared work. At the end of the year, they also use this Web page to create a Web page that describes their independent project, including the data they have collected.

2. There are a number of issues that we are addressing with this project. The primary one is how to get students engaged in genuine research, without giving them too much guidance (so that the investigation is actually that of the curriculum writer) and without giving them too little guidance (so that they never learn how to work independently). The materials address this by starting in a more structured way and slowly becoming more independent. Research with 100 pilot schools this year will help us understand if this approach works.

With respect to the conference, however, we also are concerned about how to help classrooms develop effective data analysis skills. The low-cost instrumentation that comes with the materials ensure that lots of data will be collected; the Web page ensures that those data will be shared with others; but the print materials cannot similarly ensure that these shared results will be analyzed. This tehn is a second key issue and one that the GLC materials address periodically.

3. This project, and other NS projects, must eventually bite the bullet and figure out ways to makes these investigations more appealing to a larger number of classrooms. How are they published? How do a larger number of teachers figure out how to use them?

Second, NS projects must find more effective techniques for assessing student learning. Of course, this is true for all innovative inquiry-oriented science and mathematics curricula. Related to this, the projects must also find ways of demonstrating that learning to parents, administrators and others interested in education. Test scores are the current means of reporting, but these are generally inadequate for inquiry-based curricula.

Third, we must all figure out how to get data analysis to play a more prominent role in the classroom. To some degree, this is a professional development issue. But it also touches on issues of how coursework is organized and how science courses are defined. Colleges could play a significant role here. Unfortunately, they tend to see pre-college education as little more than a diagnostic test that is used to help them choose applicants rather than as a preparation. As evidence, consider the prominent roles of SAT scores and class rank in the college admission formulae. Unfortunately, there is little reason to think this will change.

1. We have developed a Web-page authoring tools, called CLEO, for Collaborative Learning Environments On-line, that is a space on the Web where teachers and students design and publish inquiry projects in science and mathematics. It has three areas: BROWSE the Library CLEO is the home for a library of data-rich inquiry projects from classrooms across the country. In this Browse area, viewers can read each project, review its experimental data and contribute to a discussion of the findings of that project. PARTICIPATE in a Collaborative Project Classrooms review a list of collaborative projects that are looking for participants. After they enroll, they conduct that experiment in their classroom and contribute their data to the shared database. Later they work with the project's other collaborators to develop the analysis of the findings. AUTHOR a Project CLEO provides participants with the tools they need to create a new data-rich project. These can involve collaborations among classrooms or they can be designed and implemented by a single classroom. Authors define a database on the CLEO server, describe the data collection procedures, enter and analyze the data, and moderate a discussion of the results. Any individual or classroom with a Web browser can be an author. Authors create CLEO projects by simply filling out forms that describe the project and construct the table that will hold the data. Visitors navigate the project on a series of friendly Web pages that include the research question, materials and procedures, the data of the study, and the authors' analysis and conclusions about their findings.

Data from any CLEO project can be analyzed locally by downloading it into a spreadsheet or graphing program on your hard drive. CLEO does not require any special software other than an Internet browser. Authors and participants in CLEO projects need no special skills in Web page design.

2. We would like to see a lot of classrooms used CLEO, both for independent projects and collaborative ones. So, one concern is to see its use become widespread. However, once that happens, we will have to address a second issue, that of quality control -- what do we do about CLEO projects that are very good, that are inaccurate, or that fail to analyze their data correctly? We have ideas about using a peer review process to gain high quality projects, but we have not implemented it.

3. In the future, we would like to see CLEO be more "visual" so that it can include pictures from projects. Also, we woujld ike to have a larger array of Java applets attached for data analysis purposes. Finally, as with all NS projects, we continue to be concerned that all this technology does not improve the prominence or effectiveness of data analysis in the classroom.

1. I have been working on Youth CaN for the last 5 years. Youth CaN is designed as a student developed and presented project/conference that spins around environmental and environmental telecommunications projects. I have been the chairperson for this collaborative project which involves I*EARN, the American Museum of Natural History, New York University's International and Environmental Education Programs as well as several local schools.

The point of the project is to connect students through telecommunications (in what ever way applicable for the various situations/countries involved) and assist them in their efforts to pursue environmental projects. These projects are then presented at an annual conference hosted by the Museum for the last 4 years.

2. Maintaining connections and participation of students involved. One very important issue is teacher training and technical support.

3. I feel that many of the successful projects are maintained through strongly motivated individual teachers. When one of these teachers drops out for any number of reasons the connections can be lost.

Issues that MUST be delt with are involvement of multiple teachers at each site ro the developement of "depth" on these teacher teams. If everything rides on the back of one individual all will be lost if that person drops out.

Technical support must be available for the instructors. Prompt answers to questions and guidance through all of the tech maze are a necessity.

There are also issues of student direct and frequent access to personal communication with other students involved in the project.

2. Our analyses will focus in particular on three issues:

• the extent to which students in telecollaborative projects regard various task as authentic and thus treat seriously the data they have collected and the analysis methods they are using;

• the tractability of the data they are analyzing, both from the perspective of an expert in data analysis and from the perspective of students who are relative novices (Rolf Biehler, Institut fur Didaktik der Mathematik, University of Bielefeld, will analyze project data sets);

• the concepts students bring to bear in their analyses which may act as barriers to perceiving and understanding statistical properties of the data and to interpreting these vis-a-vis the real-world questions they are investigating.

3. Telecollaborative data-sharing projects seem an ideal vehicle for promoting cross-disciplinary education and the use of real data in the teaching of science and data analysis. However, teachers will need far more support regarding the handling of real data then they are currently getting. Following the completion of this study phase, we will submit a follow-up proposal to NSF for the design and research of methods for supporting rudimentary data analysis in such projects.

1. Leveraging Learning: As an evaluator for the NGS KIDS NETWORK Supplements, I am conducting classroom observations in local sites and comparing the effectiveness of test and control versions of the curriculum by developing and scoring test rubrics for pre-test and post-test questionnaires. These rubrics also match gains in students' understanding to the elements of the National Science Education Standards emphasized in the curriculum.

Student Ornithology Resource Project (SORP) SORP's is designed is to support teachers doing Classroom Feeder Watch and other inquiry-based citizen science projects in science content content and process.

In particular, I will be working on the development of a teacher resource kit, related Web pages, and teacher training workshops.

2. It is hard for me to say because I have been associated with the projects for only two months..

3. I anticipate ongoing issues with technology as key issues:

• How can developers support teachers in the use of technology?

• What can we do to assist teachers when the technology doesn't work?

• What are teachers to do when the technology teacher can't help them?

• What strategies can we recommend when the dollars are not there?

• How can we assist teachers by using the Web's to support classroom instruction for teachers?

• How can we organize information on the Web organized to make it acessible?

• How can the use of time more efficiently?

EnergyNet challenges students to operate in teams to solve problems, evaluate solutions and influence change. Students are given a real problem-- "Is your school wasting energy?" -- and the technical tools and leadership guidance to solve that problem. A variety of workplace skills (Teamwork, Collaboration, Research, Analysis, etc) and disciplines (Math, Science, Language Arts, Industrial Technology, etc) are employed within the project.

Project goals are:

• Provide students with the problem-solving, technology and team-building skills they need in today's workplace.

• Introduce problem-based learning using a real-world issue - saving energy and the reduction of energy expenses.

• Establish new roles for teachers, students, administrators and the community.

• Provide a reason and a process for integrating technology into the classroom.

• Establish a network for teachers and students to work online with their peers.

• Encourage cross-curricular activities.

• Build a database of school energy use.

2.Current Issues:

National Expansion: EnergyNet has been active in Illinois since 1994. We have completed our 3-year pilot phase and are ready to expand the project via a Licensing Agreement to organizations around the country.

Data Issues: The online database has been recently revised to be more user-friendly and more powerful. Encouraging the use of the data for decision making is a major focus in this current school year.

Communication/Networking: Schools tend to view themselves as self-contained. Providing the tools, access and reasons for teachers and students to communicate with project management, the community and their peers continues to be a challenge.

3. Future Issues:

EnergyNet's goals represent a cultural change for education. Achieving these goals will result in a new way of doing business where "Network Learning" will be a more descriptive term. Dealing with the cultural bias toward change and collaboration will remain our toughest challenge.

As we work toward our goal of "changing others" it's important to remember that our projects should also evolve to encompass the needs of the participants. Therefore, new challenges, new elements and new audiences should be incorporated into our projects on a regular basis. An interest in change and risk taking should be fostered.

2. GREEN is a decentralized network. Members share basic educational goals and approaches, but each local program has unique objectives, strategies and partnerships. Our challenge is to design tools that do not depend on a project management team, do not specify a pre-defined set of educational objectives, and do not create a specific topical framework for inquiry-based science investigation. Another challenge we face is the question of data quality or reliability. GREEN represents an action-oriented approach to education, yet the possibility of local action must be based on the acquisition of reliable environmental data. Networked science in GREEN has been most powerful when data is shared locally -- when diverse groups from throughout a watershed conduct investigations and share data to provide a full picture of the state of their watershed. Quality assurance/quality control cannot be emphasized enough when conclusions are to be drawn from a combination of one's own data as well as the data of others.

3. Access--

Hardware and Web access are real constraints for many, many schools today. How will this picture change in the immediate and long-term futures?

Data sharing--

• Independently-operated projects across the country and around the world may have different research protocols or different data formats. How can these differences be bridged?
• What is the purpose of sharing data across vast distances? Is it meaningful to compare the results of water quality testing (for example) in Michigan with results from Florida? How about from Australia?