When Will I Ever Use This

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When Will I Ever Use This?

• Jan Hackman and Ruth Shunick
• McHenry Middle School, McHenry
• jhackman_at_d15.org
• rshunick_at_d15.org

Collaboratory Project Symposium
Northwestern University, Evanston IL May
4, 2007
07/12/99
1
Northwestern University
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Provide Tools for the Future

• Students used Collaboratory resources to
• 1. Gather information
• 2. Analyze
• 3. Synthesize
• 4. Reflect about a career choice paper
• Students connected careers to their studies
• 1. Core Subjects
• 2. Art
• 3. Technology
• 4. Foreign Language
• 5. Physical Education

07/12/99
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Northwestern University
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Accomplishments

• Students
• Read with understanding and fluency
• Wrote to communicate for a purpose
• Used language arts to acquire, assess and
  communicate information
• Used telecommunication tools to collaborate,
  publish and interact with peers
• Evaluated and selected new information resources
  based the appropriateness of specific tasks

4
Student accomplishments

• Middle school students were engaged in learning
• Immersed in problem-solving scenarios and
• decision making beginning with the first
• activity
• Published career information for peers,
• teachers and the community

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• Successfully gathered information from
• online resources and published
• information online
• 4. Communicated with peers about their
• work

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Survey Studio

• So, what will you do with your life survey
• In this first activity all students made a
  decision about a career. This information was
  used to build resources in the Career Cybrary.
• Students looked at the survey results to find out
  what their classmates chose as a career.
• Students began to realize the connection between
  middle school curriculum and their future.

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Career Cybrary

• Students investigated information to build
• Career description
• Classes/training needed
• Advantages/disadvantages
• Salary
• Outlook for the future

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Calendar

• Students navigated successfully to activities
  using the calendar.

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Career Nexus

• Collection of published student papers
• Respones to peer publications
• Media documentation

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Peer to Peer Comments
Students experienced real audiences and a
classroom context of shared learning.
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Tools for the future

• Students learned how to read, analyze and
• gather information online.
• Students learned how to use word processing
• programs to synthesize information before
  publishing online a tool that will be valuable
  in online courses in their future.

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Middle school classes makesense

• Students made valuable connections between the
  information they are learning now and their
  future life work.

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Students experienced success

• While many students participate in online chats
  and in social networking sites, they have not
  experienced online learning problem solving
• experiences.
• The Collaboratory Project is a vehicle
• through which each McHenry Middle School
• student had positive online learning experiences.
  

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In the future

• It is clear that middle school students are
  capable of successfully participating in online
  learning environments.
• The Collaboratory Project has the resources to
  connect the community to the learner and the
  learner to the community.
• A future hope is to connect the passion and
  energy of middle school students to community
  mentors through investigation of any number of
  activities.

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When Will I Ever Use This?

• Its not a question any more.
• The students at McHenry Middle School know.

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When Will I Ever Use This?

• Jan Hackman and Ruth Shunick
• McHenry Middle School, McHenry
• jhackman_at_d15.org
• rshunick_at_d15.org

Collaboratory Project Symposium
Northwestern University, Evanston IL May
4, 2007
07/12/99
1
Northwestern University