In a standard fire drill, the competition is not about one student against another but the entire class or school against the clock to see how quickly they can get out of the building and to their designated rescue spot in a safe and orderly manner. With each additional fire drill the class and school work to beat their last time. In this course, we will give this concept a different twist. In this "digital fire drill" exercise, the competition is to see how quickly an entire class can complete the research and get the information out to a designated spot on the web in a clear and correct manner. The clock stops in the digital fire drill when the team printout or score card is handed to the instructor and the instructor displays the team's web report on the teacher workstation or sees the web report on a laptop or desktop computer if available to the team in a given event. The total of each team's time creates the class time, a time which the class tries to beat in the next fire drill. These activities are meant as models which in turn can be transformed and extended into numerous variations.

In general, each of these competitive events involves:

• a problem to solve,
• teams of students within a class,
• a handheld computer for each student on each team with the beaming function active,
• one wireless card for a team member's handheld computer, wireless ethernet access (e.g., 802.11b using Apple's Airport base station),
• some form of web email/messaging sharing
• and one or more desktop computers.

Digital Fire Drill 0 - Q & A at SUP

Steps

1. Reach the SUP page of the CROP web site. http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/Learner/problemEngine.html
2. Choose a Team Name. Competition Judge (fire marshall?) determines that each team has a unique name. Numbers can easily be added to a name to quickly make it unique.
3. Enter on the SUP entry page a higher order question of relevance to the team member.
4. Find questions entered by other team members and work as a team to see that each team member has a response or contribution to their question.
5. Copy and paste the entire thread of question and responses to a word processor document,
6. Each team member must add their name, a relevant clip art or related web image to the top of the document with a brief annotation as to its source (e.g., Microsoft Word clipart or web address).
7. and print it out.
8. Team captain staples or clips the sheets together for their team and hands the packet to the instructor which stops the clock for their team.
9. The Competition Judge writes the running time on the top sheet of the packet and subtracts it from the starting time to calculate the team's time.
10. All times are added from each team to create the class's digital fire drill time for this exercise.

Digital Fire Drill 1 - Building Interviews

This exercise presumes prior experience with handheld computers including some skill with the data input system (such as Graffiti), web site design knowledge and different forms of wireless communication hardware.

Steps

1. The Competition Judge enters a question into the SUP database for each team, and sets up the wireless base station, and distributes wireless ethernet cards to the teams
2. Teams reach the SUP page of the CROP web site. http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/Learner/problemEngine.html and
3. Choose a unique Team Name, which could be continued from prior events.
4. Each team must find their survey question or questions and ask another person for their answer. Different teams may have the same question or different questions. Questions might include: Which campus eating place do you eat at most often for lunch? For dinner? ; Do you live on campus or off? How many parking tickets have you received this year?
5. Each team member must research the answer by interviewing someone not part of the class, someone who is in or outside the building
6. Each team member must use the handheld computer to enter the response to the question in a Memo.
7. Beam this Memo to the handheld computer of the wireless captain (the person with the wireless ethernet card)
8. The wireless captain then copies the results of each team member's Research Memo into one large Master Memo and puts the question at the top of the Master Memo.
9. The wireless captain uses the wireless card to transmit the collective results of each team member to the SUP web site.
10. A team web captain then copies the information from the SUP site into a new web page at a computer workstation,
11. (Optional Media Integration- see directions from the Competition Judge at the start of the Fire Drill.) The web captain must insert a relevant clip art, related web image or other media to the top of the document with a brief annotation as to its source (e.g., Microsoft Word clipart, team member created or web address of public or copyright free image).
12. Uploads the master memo to his or her web site, displays the web page and prints it out with the web address on the print out.
13. The Competition Judge writes the running time on the top sheet of the packet and subtracts it from the starting time to calculate the team's time.
14. All times are added from each team to create the class's digital fire drill time for this exercise.

Digital Fire Drill 2 - Outside Building Measurement activity

This exercise presumes prior experience with handheld computers including some skill with the data input system (such as Graffiti), web site design knowledge, different forms of wireless communication hardware, one inch rulers, basic function calculator skills, and ready access to the outside.

Steps

1. The Competition Judge enters a question into the SUP database for each team and places the wireless base station in a location that can be reached from outside the school building,
2. Teams reach the SUP page of the CROP web sitehttp://www.ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/Learner/problemEngine.html and
3. Choose a unique Team Name, which could be continued from prior events.
4. Each team must find their question. The question for this drill will involve measuring or counting and using the measurement to do additional calculations using the PDA's calculator. Possible questions: based on the number of blades of grass in one square inch, how many blades of grass are in one square foot? one square yard? ; based on the number leaves in one cubic inch of a bush, how many leaves remain on the bush? ; based on the number of rocks in one cubic inch of soil, use the PDA's calculator to determine how many rocks are in a cubic foot and in a cubic yard.
5. Each team member must use the handheld computer to enter the response to the question in a Memo.
6. Beam this Memo to the handheld computer of the wireless captain (the person with the wireless ethernet card)
7. The wireless captain then copies the results of each team member's Research Memo into one large Master Memo and puts the question at the top of the Master Memo.
8. The wireless captain uses the wireless card to transmit the collective results of each team member to the SUP web site.
9. A team web captain then copies and pastes the information into an Excel spreadsheet  at a computer workstation, adds the first name of each team member, finds the average of the team's results, and then saves the results as a web page.
10. (Optional Media Integration- see directions from the Competition Judge at the start of the Fire Drill.) The web captain must insert a relevant clip art, computer generated chart or graph, related web image or other media to the top of the document with a brief annotation as to its source (e.g., Microsoft Word clipart, team member created or web address of public or copyright free image).
11. Uploads the master memo to his/her web site, displays the web page and prints it out with the web address on the print out and hands to the Competition Judget.
12. The Competition Judge writes the running time on the top sheet of the packet and subtracts it from the starting time to calculate the team's time.
13. All times are added from each team to create the class's digital fire drill time for this exercise.

 

Digital Fire Drill 3 - In the Local Library Doing Research

Steps

1. The Competition Judge enters a question or topic into the SUP database for each team and places the wireless base station in a location that can be reached from a large area with the school library,
2. Teams reach the SUP page of the CROP web site. http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/Learner/problemEngine.html and
3. Choose a unique Team Name, which could be continued from prior events.

Each team must find their research topic. The questions for this drill will involve the ethernet captain searching the library and finding a shelf of related books on given Library of Congress (or Dewey Decimal System) subject headings (or giving the team a catalog number for a subject heading), and selecting a relevant quotation in whole or part from one the books.  Subject headings to use include: career education (e.g.,  LC1037 .L53) ;  battles (e.g., D25 .C96 1918 ) ; biography (e.g., CT105 .H32  or PR6007.O738 C9) ; cognitive science (e.g., BD418.3 .C43 1996) ; environmental science (GE105 .G46 1995   ) ; astronomy ( QB45 .A14 1994 ) ; psychology (BF38 .R59 1985 ) ;
4. Each team member must use the handheld computer to enter the quotation and basic citation information (title, author, year, page number) for the book in a Research Memo on their PDA.
5. Beam this Research Memo to the handheld computer of the wireless captain (the person with the wireless ethernet card)
6. The wireless captain then copies the results of each team member's Research Memo into one large Master Memo and puts the topic at the top of the Master Memo.
7. The wireless captain uses the wireless card to transmit the collective results of each team member to the SUP web site.
8. A team web captain then copies the information into a new web page at a computer workstation, and adds the first name of each team member.
9. (Optional Media Integration- see directions from the Competition Judge at the start of the Fire Drill.) The web captain must insert a relevant clip art, related web image or other media to the top of the web page with a brief annotation as to its source (e.g., Microsoft Word clipart, team member created or web address of public or copyright free image).
10. Uploads the master memo (and optional media) to their web site, displays the web page and prints it out with the web address on the print out.
11. The Competition Judge writes the running time on the top sheet of the packet and subtracts it from the starting time to calculate the team's time.
12. All times are added from each team to create the class's digital fire drill time for this exercise.