The
Distance in Distance Learning
by
John Slatin
The
University of Texas at Austin
Currents
in Electronic Literacy Spring 2000(3),
<http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/spr00/slatin.html>
TX2K:
The Texas 2000 Living Museum
The
project described here represents one of many preliminary steps toward
such a distributed model. TX2K is an Internet-based, interdisciplinary
project which embodies the constructivist principle that learning takes
place through focused social interaction about topics that participants
find personally engaging. TX2Kís activities are designed to
help students create a bridge between their evolving interest in
their own emerging identities as members of their local communities on
the one hand, and the seemingly abstract requirements of the curriculum
on the other -- that students develop research skills, learn how to acquire
information from a number of different sources and present it in a variety
of formats, write differently for different purposes and different audiences,
learn social studies, mathematics, science, and so on. As curators
of the living museum, students throughout Texas research and prepare three
online exhibits about their communitiesí past, present, and future.
Carefully structured research activities combine local materials with online
resources from the Universityís library and museum holdings as well
as other Internet resources. Each exhibit addresses five broad research
categories: Economy, Environment and Geography, Government, Infrastructure,
and People and Culture. Once exhibits have been completed and published
via the TX2K Web site, virtual field trips and online dialogues link participants
with peers in other communities. Summer workshops prepare teachers
for successful participation, launching collaborative relationships to
be sustained throughout the school year by email and other electronic means.
Target
Audience
TX2K
is designed for middle schools and high schools. Beginning in 2000-2001,
elementary schools will participate on a limited basis. In 1999-2000,
participants included approximately 1100 students and 185 teachers from
58 schools in 37 separate districts; 24% of participating schools are classified
as geographically isolated, and more than 50% of participating students
are economically disadvantaged.
Overview
of the TX2K Site
The
major components of the TX2K Web site are as follows: the Curatorís
Workshop, where participants find the tools they need to create and manage
their exhibits; the Gallery, where completed exhibits are on display; and
the Message Boards, where online dialogue takes place. The TX2K Library
provides links to a wide variety of Internet resources. The Museum
Office affords a comprehensive set of administrative tools as well as message-boards
reserved for teachers and a database of ideas for exhibits; teachers are
encouraged to contribute activities to the database and to share other
resources such as worksheets, templates, evaluation rubrics, and the like
via the Web site. The Information Desk provides online help; the
TX2K Lobby is a jumping-off point from which museum visitors can begin
their investigations.
TX2K
Exhibits
A
TX2K exhibit is a multimedia record that documents some aspect of a communityís
lifeóa specific incident, a period in its history, a place, and
so on. Each exhibit consists of at least five ìdigital artifacts,î
one for each of the five research categories (Economy, Environment and
Geography, Government, Infrastructure, People and Culture). Photographs
have been the most common artifacts so far, but TX2K can accommodate sound
files, video and animation sequences, and even other Web pages. Each
digital artifact is accompanied by descriptive and explanatory text.
Exhibits are framed by ìDay in the Life Narrativesî that represent
life in the community from the first-person perspective of a real or fictional
member of the community, and by ìDialogue Starter Questionsî
that prompt online discussion.
A
Monumental Decision
Past
Unit
Summary:
Students will design an exhibit that examines the most important structure
in their community. The Historical Commission has reported that many of
the city's monuments and public spaces have been neglected and are now
badly in need of repair and restoration. The City Council has agreed, but
funds are severely limited. There is only enough money to pay for the repair
of one monument. The Council members can't decide which monument to repair
and it's your job to help them choose one.
Create
an exhibit about the most important monument, building, or public space
that was established in your community before 1980. You'll need to persuade
people who view your exhibit that this really is [the] best thing to spend
the money on. Your exhibit should include artifacts and information about
the People and Culture, Government, Infrastructure, Environment and Geography,
and Economy.
Places
to Begin:
Take
a walk: Take a walk around your community and write down ideas for
the focus of your exhibit.
Historical
Commission: The Historical Commission should have information about
the histories of the important places in your community. This will help
you decide what is important and why.
Town
Library: Once you have picked a monument, building or public space
to focus on go to the library. You can research the background of the subject(s)
of the site you have chosen.
Like
several other TX2K activities, this one originated in a colleague's suggestion.
Professor Rosa Eberly of the University of Texas's Division
of Rhetoric and Composition, an expert on rhetoric and the public sphere,
contributed her suggestion in response to a request I sent via email to
some several dozen faculty members at UT Austin. In the email I explained
the TX2K project and invited respondents to send me a "research question"óthat
is, a question to which they did not know the answer and which K-12 students
could meaningfully (and safely!) pursue. The idea for this broadcast appeal
for research questions was inspired most immediately by a conversation
with Dr. Douglas Barnett, Managing Editor of the New Handbook of Texas,
exploring ways in which students might provide meaningful local details
to which authors of the 23,000 articles in the Handbook could not
possibly have had access. It may also have been informed by the work of
one of Ph.D. student Madelyn Starbuck, an artist who gathered material
for the first "cyberspace opera" (honoria in ciberspazio) by issuing
a call over the Internet for interested persons to send her rhyming couplets,
which she then transformed into a remarkably coherent libretto (see http://www.cyberopera.org).
TX2K
activities situate student research within a deliberately sketchy scenarioóin
this case a small civic drama. This is in keeping with the constructivist
principles to which I alluded earlier, and with the hallmarks of what Etienne
Wenger (1998) calls a ìcommunity of practiceî: (1) mutual
engagement in (2) a joint enterprise in which participants develop and
employ (3) a shared repertoire of activities, skills, artifacts, ideas,
etc. The community of practice is a learning community: indeed, Wenger
defines a ìpracticeî as a ìshared history of learningî
(p. 93). In TX2K, then, creating an exhibit can become a joint enterprise
in which students, working in groups, are mutually engaged in developing
the shared repertoire of knowledge, ideas, techniques, artifacts, and tools
they will need in order to construct their exhibit.
Students
at Bonham Middle School in Temple, Texasósome 60 miles north of
Austinóproduced an exhibit about their communityís early
years, from 1881 (when the town was laid out by engineers from three railroad
companies) to approximately 1930. Their exhibit begins at the Arcadia
Theater, Templeís first motion picture theater, and then moves on
to the municipal building, the hospital, and a number of other structures
representing the period. All of these items are presented on a single
page.
Exhibit by students at Bonham Middle School in Temple, Texas.
In Hendersonóa town of about 10,000 people
in northeast Texasógifted and talented fifth-graders worked with
high school seniors to create a structure to house all three of their exhibits.
They linked individual exhibits to the page shown below. The exhibit
about Hendersonís past consists of multiple Web pages.
The home page for Henderson 2000: TX2K Exhibit created by 5th and 12th-grade
students in Henderson Independent School District in northeast Texas
The
Comstock School is the only school in Comstock ISD, in Val Verde County,
about three hours west of San Angelo, Texas. There are 147 students
in the entire school, which includes grades K-12. The district serves
an area of some 2,000 square miles. A high school Web-authoring class
produced an exhibit about Val Verde County in the present:
The ìEconomyî page of Comstock Schoolís exhibit
about Val Verde County in the present day. This exhibit also includes
streaming audio.
Next:
Lessons
So Far
