Margaret Riel

The Effect of Distant Audiences on Students’ Writing

Audience considerations play an important role in the development of text by experienced writers but are often nonexistent in the writing of school-age children. The lack of audience awareness found in school writing may index the slow development of the social-cognitive skills necessary to conceptualize different audiences or it may result from the decontextual approach to writing that is prevalent in classrooms. This study examined the quality of students’ writing in two audience conditions: to their teacher for a term assessment and to a distant peer audience to share ideas. Seventh-grade students wrote two compositions on the same topic, one addressed to peers in other countries via a computer network and the other to their teacher for their semester grade, counterbalanced for order effects. In both conditions, there was significantly higher ratings of the papers written to communicate with peers than those written to demonstrate skill in writing. The findings suggest that the development of functional writing environments to contextualize students’ work can lead to improvements in the quality of students’ classroom writing.

Building electronic communities: success and failure in computer networking

This paper is about networking failures as well as networking successes. A research strategy for comparing educational activities conducted across electronic networks was employed to examine the critical features of successes as well as failures in designing electronic communities. The analysis provides a set of guidelines for those who plan to use telecommunications as a tool for creating global communities.

The Alignment of the Informal and Formal Organizational Supports for Reform: Implications for Improving Teaching in Schools

Previous qualitative studies show that when the formal organization of a school and patterns of informal interaction are aligned, faculty and leaders in a school are better able to coordinate instructional change. This article combines social network analysis with interview data to analyze how well the formal and informal aspects of a school’s social context are aligned. The focus is on two elementary schools engaged in initiatives aimed to use data to inform instructional decision making. The multimethod case study integrated findings from questionnaire and interview data. Data were collected over two years from case study schools. By fitting multilevel social selection models to longitudinal social network data collected from surveys, the authors estimated the relative influence of formal and informal processes on patterns of advice giving in each school. They used interview data to contextualize and corroborate findings. The social selection models they fit revealed distinct patterns in each school that helped explain why one school had been successful in developing a shared vision for change and a second school had been unsuccessful. The authors’ research shows that efforts to promote formal collaboration can and do vary in their success in ways that are evident from social network analyses. These case studies imply directions for future analyses of the social context of teaching and schools.

Cooperative Learning across Classrooms in Electronic Learning Circles.

This paper discusses electronic Learning Circles on the AT&T Learning Network1 in the light of cooperative learning theory. Findings reported for students in cooperative learning settings were also found for teachers who participated in Learning Circles on the Learning Network. Teachers acquired knowledge, developed new instructional strategies, increased their self-esteem and developed professional and personal relationships with their peers. Computer networking provides a mechanism for developing cooperative learning among students in distant locations and at the same time provides a vehicle for the professional development of teachers within the classroom environment.

Educational Change in a Technology-Rich Environment

AbstractThis article examines the visions that have been created for the redesign of schools and the ways in which computer and communication technology have provided the means for people to work toward these visions. It presents an integrated view of school reform ideas and describes the ways in which our current technology has provided the platform to support these changes in three areas, (a) instructional practices, (b) school design, and (c) school organization. It presents examples of how collaborative technology—tools that help individuals produce shared knowledge—and technological settings for new collaborative designs are continuing to change the process of education.

Education on the Electronic Frontier: Teleapprentices in Globally Distributed Educational Contexts

The instructional media created by microcomputers interconnected by modems to form long-distance networks present some powerful new opportunities for education. While other uses of computers in education have been built on conventional instructional models of classroom interaction, instructional electronic networks facilitate a wider use of apprenticeship education, in which students learn skills and acquire knowledge in contexts similar to those in which they will be used. To investigate these possibilities, we have created an instructional electronic network interconnecting students and teachers in the United States, Mexico, Japan, and Israel. In this paper, we analyze one project conducted in this Inter-Cultural Network. Students tackled a problem in their own community, the problem of the shortage of water. By addressing a problem shared across the different locations, students learned to transfer solutions used elsewhere to their own problems, which is one strategy for dealing with the difficulty people have with transferring knowledge from one domain to another. They also acquired science concepts in an instructional setting that provided dynamic support for the acquisition of problem solving skills. This study raises a challenge to education: that the dominant form of instruction could become “teleapprenticeships.” In this form of instruction, students would participate in globally distributed electronic problem solving networks, jointly tackling problems with other students, with teachers, and with adults outside the school.

CHARACTERISTICS OF TEACHER LEADERS FOR INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

This chapter presents a typology of four dimensions of teacher leadership-a disposition to continually learn from and improve practice, collaboration with peers through critical examination and evolution of each others collaboration around technology; interpersonal networking in technology-active communities; and contributions through organizations to share knowledge about how technology is best used in teaching. The chapter concludes by pointing to several ways that technology leadership might be fostered.

Cross‐classroom collaboration in global Learning Circles

Computer-mediated-communication makes it possible for teachers and students to work cooperatively with their peers around the world. This process helps students realize the diversity of world views and the role of language in organizing experience. It provides for teachers an extensive educational resource. This chapter describes one form of network learning—cross-classroom collaboration and a specific model for accomplishing this activity—Learning Circles.

The Impact of Computers in Classrooms

AbstractDo computers change education? This is the underlying question of the work that is reported in this paper. Data collected from four classrooms are used to assess the impact of computers on: (a) classroom organization, (b) interactive patterns between teachers and students, and (c) student learning. Computers by themselves did not lead to the restructuring of education but computer technology in the hands of good teachers was an extremely effective tool for reshaping the educational process.

A Functional Analysis of Educational Telecomputing: A Case Study of Learning Circles

Abstract Educational change involves changing teachers as well as changing students. Computer‐facilitated telecommunications (telecomputing) provides a way to change students’ learning from the autonomous memorization of information to the collaborative production and analysis of information. It also provides a means to change the role of the teacher from an isolated authority to a learning partner working with a team of teachers. This article provides a functional analysis of a number of electronic global communities called “Learning Circles” that worked together on educational projects designed by the participants. The data used in this functional analysis are drawn from interactions of over 100 classes that participated on the AT&T Learning Network.