CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS: STUDENTS TEACHING OTHERS OVER A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

“To teach is to learn twice.” ~ Joseph Joubert

K-12 students from two schools, 1000 miles apart, researched and prepared lessons to teach each other about their different physical environments. To develop expertise about their locales, students spent several weeks planning and conducting research in the classroom and in the field. Connecting via Zoom (a conferencing format similar to Skype), they presented their lessons to audiences as far distant as Ithaca, NY. High school students in Michigan presented wetland research they had conducted at a local metropolitan park, while 7^th graders in Hoven, SD chose the Black Hills as a research venue. Each group described how natural factors, coupled with human modification, had shaped the landscape through time. Students completed the work in teams with instructors guiding them in research and data collection techniques.

Technological challenges accompanied the enactment of this reciprocal lesson, including the selection of appropriate and available tools for data collection and research, identifying suitable software for sharing photos and documents across sites, the implementation of hardware such as smart phones, cameras, probes, and laptop computers, and most importantly, a robust method of connecting the two classrooms.

As participants of the NSF-funded ReaL Earth Inquiry Project, Cody in SD and Zolynsky in MI met regularly online with Duggan-Haas in NY to identify project goals, and to create a list of expectations along with a timeline. Paramount among the expectations was that the presentations should inform an audience unfamiliar with the two environments. These parameters allowed the student groups to design their own products with minimal influence by the instructors. With excellence being the evaluative guidepost, the students made substantial content gains by becoming master teachers of their topics. The classroom interactions made possible through extensive collaboration and advances in technology provided for educational gains that would not have been possible only a few years ago.

The focus of this talk is to discuss the methodology of lesson preparation, the technology we used to connect distant classrooms, the obstacles of incorporating Zoom or Skype into the secondary classroom, and the strategies and benefits of overcoming them.