Using different tools in an international collaborative project
This article is intended to be a report on a project called Mosaic and to encourage and give some hints to other colleagues who would like to develop their students’ critical thinking skills and who would like to spice their collaborative project work with some new exciting features.
Mosaic project is an international collaborative project between European and Asian high school students which was conceived at the Fifth Asia-Europe Classroom International Teachers' Conference in Beijing, China (25-29 September, 2005). I have been lucky enough to attend this great conference as an invited plenary speaker on the theme of: “Information Literacy: Bridging the Digital Divide”.
The AEC (Asia-Europe Classroom) conference always gives the opportunity to high school teachers from EU countries and Asian countries to start or continue working on an Internet-based collaborative project throughout the school year. The best three projects are awarded at such events.
Mosaic project’s main goal is to enable European and Asian students to share information, experience, views and cultural bits and pieces with each other. It also aims to make good use of some tools with promising educational potentials.
As the webmaster of the project I have set up an intro site at http://www.eltandict.com/project/ and have created the soul and heart of the collaborative project at http://www.eltandict.com/mosaic/ . I have installed a MOODLE platform (Open Source software package) which is user-friendly and highly suitable for collaborative project work. There are several built-in functions that can be exploited in the project.
Without the intention to enumerate all these features let me mention just a few of them. There is a chat tool, which automatically records all the text-based conversation that is carried out at the site. It automatically archives the chat scripts. There is a calendar, teachers can assign homework easily, they can create different forums and there is a „Latest News” section as well as an „Upcoming events” section.
Teachers who are involved in the project come from Brunei, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Indonesia, have all editing privileges at the site. Teachers can keep track of each of their students’ online work, and students can send personal messages to their peers. We have encouraged them to do so, and it is good to see that there is a lot of private chit-chat going on at the site.
My students were absolutely thrilled by the opportunity of exchanging views, ideas and information with Asian and other European peers. Students have already got the ball rolling and have written about themselves in the profile section, they have also written about their families and about their homes, and have designed and voted for logos that will represent the project later on.
A Mosaic newspaper has been also launched which makes good use of Textalk’s (http://webnews.textalk.com/en/) excellent Newspaper Content Management system.
What other tools have been used or are planned to be used, and why?
A tool for creating online petitions
At the beginning of the project, an emphasis has been put on the code of conduct on the Internet. Students were encouraged to read the Code of Conduct for Individual Members of the Internet Society and the IFLA Internet Manifesto.
The Global Voices Manifesto was also highlighted for them and I have created an online petition for students to sign actually the manifesto in question (http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/mosaic/). This way students could pledge to it. I think by calling their attention to this important document we could show students that they can actively take part in shaping the world, that they can make their voice heard freely and that anybody is able to lead a campaign for good causes for there are different free online tools which make this possible.
Blog
Using blogs was a great solution for us for two very good reasons: we wanted students to publish their writings about their homes with ease, supplementing them with photos, and we also asked students to keep a diary for one week during the school year just to enable students to have an insight into the ordinary lives of their peers coming from diverse cultural backgrounds. And since web logs, or in other word blogs are online publishing tools that enable people to easily publish their thoughts and insights to a wide community and can be set up free of charge (e.g. at http://blogger.com) we definitely went for it. See some works at the mosaic site: http://www.eltandict..com/mosaic. One can log in as a guest. We have made a point to put an emphasis on transparency.
Podcast
As it is defined by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting) „A podcast is a web feed of audio or video files placed on the Internet for anyone to subscribe to. Podcasters' websites also may offer direct download of their files, but the subscription feed of automatically delivered new content is what distinguishes a podcast from a simple streaming.”
I have chosen to create the Mosaic podcast (http://mosaic.podomatic.com/) at PodOmatic, Inc. (http://www.podomatic.com/) which is the leading provider of free, web-based tools and services that enable anyone to easily find, create, distribute, promote and listen to podcasts and videocasts. The site makes it really easy to create, promote, and track our podcast. The Mosaic podcast will focus mainly on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) and will try to promote tolerance, solidarity and active citizenship among students participating in the project. We will have small presentations and interviews carried out on this particular topic and students as well as teachers can easily leave written or audio comments at the site.
Mindmaps
Mindmaps can be used by teams to easily capture ideas, sort, structure and present various information as clear visual maps. The free IHMC CmapTools we are planning to use will help our students to express and discuss values like peace, human dignity, freedom, solidarity, etc. and the tools will enable students to share important resources relevant to the specific „value mindmap”. (http://cmap.ihmc.us/) In order to help collaboration between such „value mindmaps” I have set up a Cmap server for the project, called Mosaic.
This way students can work together on creating their concept maps and can comment on each other’s contribution. The Cmap tools are thought to be very powerful tools in teaching citizenship and developing critical thinking skills as well as enhancing collaboration between the different student groups involved in our project.
Frappr Map
The Mosaic Frappr Map (http://www.frappr.com/mosaic) helps us to map our existing project partners. It is a great way to see where our partners come from and since the Frappr maps are powered by Google maps one can get a very clear picture of where the others live. One can even see satellite photos of the different regions.
As a conclusion, I would like to point out that the tools mentioned here will be soon put or are already put into good use in order to support pedagogically well-planned tasks. As a general rule it is worth highlighting that it is always the overall aim of the project that should be explored and just then to choose the best tools for carrying out the individual tasks rather than having it done vice versa. One should never put the cart before the horse.
In this brief report I intended to show that in a rather eclectic project such as the Mosaic one, the above mentioned tools can be smoothly integrated and will definitely enhance the learning experience and collaboration between the project partners.
