Communities Resolving Our Problems: the basic idea
[SUP: Sharing Problems] [THINK: Guidance] [LEAP: Solving Problems]

Question Ambassadors in the Classroom:
Using The  Wonder-Web


Concept:

The basic concept of the Wonder Web is to create places and systems for learners (Question Ambassadors) to share their questions with each other, sharing their wonder about topics of study and their progress in addressing that wonder. Question ambassadors are simply those that take responsibility for explaining and promoting the question. Such systems can be carried out with both with paper technology and with digital technology. Writing on many different surfaces played an important role in our advancement for thousands of years. Digital technologies have magnified that effort and created new ways to do even more. The tagboard wonder-web activity creates a microcosm of the role that education, computers and the Internet now play in world culture. To make this process more effective, each participant becomes the ambassador for his or her favorite questions, researching them and discussing them with others in order to encourage others to make better contributions to their problem.  These concepts are also part of the more general ideas for learning that go by the labels of authentic and experiential learning.
 

The Tagboard Wonder-Web

Ingredients:

Small pieces of note-paper (e.g., two packs of 3x5 cards; or Post-It notes, or cuts of scrap paper); standard tagboard ( 1 for each team of 4 to 5 members); if not using Post-It notes then have several scotch tape dispensers; pencils, 3x5 cards for each team that in very large font size say SUP and FAQ; a strip of paper in a large font saying Wonder-Web. For longer term use, laminate the tagboard, especially if scotch-tape is used.

 When possible, integrate access to even a single computer with Internet access somewhere in the building or the classroom using it for further research on their questions.
 

Procedure:

Distribute two pieces of the note-paper to each person. Ask each participant to write any question that they would like that is a genuine, real or authentic question emerging from their personal interests and/or study of a class topic. On the note-paper, write your name, date, keyword or very short subject of the question and the question. Only one question per note-paper. Participants can think of this card as a postcard, a record in a database or an email.

 While team members are writing, divide them into teams and seat them so that 3-6 are around the tagboard. Provide tape and a tape dispenser if necessary. Without taping, have them lay their questions on the left side of the tagboard when they finish writing. Each member must read the question that each places on the tagboard, then pick up the second note-paper and use it to write an answer or a contribution to any of the questions. Attach your answer note-paper to the bottom of the question note-paper. Attach the top card in this set to the right hand side of tagboard. Label this part, FAQ (Frequently Answered Questions). On the left side, unanswered questions will be labeled SUP (Still Unsolved Problems). Post the team's tagboard as posters in various places in the room. [You could also have one large tagboard as a whole class bulletin board.] Provide a stack of note-paper for the students to use when ever they wish to make further contributions of questions and answers.

Options for extension:

A. Rotate the tagboard sheets to different teams and let the next team make their contributions.
B. Continue to rotate the tagboard sheets among the teams.
C. If and when your students gain access to an Internet capable computer workstation, have them take an SUP question at your selection and move to the Internet workstation and research. Their research should be copied to a note-paper and attached on to the question card as another contribution. They might also use existing off-line library resources to work on the question.

 Instructional Decisions

Once students have completed this exercise for the first time, the teacher has some decisions to make. How many days, weeks or months will the poster be operation? Will this just be for just the duration of a particular unit of instruction? Are the questions to be focused on just one unit or lesson, or is it open to any kind of question on any topic? It would be important to label the poster with its timeline and its topic if it is to be focused. How many posters? The teacher must make a decision as to whether you will consolidate all work to one tagboard poster for the entire class, or continue with several team posters.
 

 Curriculum Integration Values

Open-Ended Grade Exams (language arts, social studies and math):

Invite your students to carry out this SUP process whenever their study leads to reflective moments, perhaps especially so towards the beginning and end of a unit plan or unit of study. Compare your student writings with the writing samples on state writing exams. Note that the use of such a process provides reinforcement and practice for meeting the higher order thinking skills curriculum objectives of many states, and the answering of open-ended writing competency questions. Critical thinking and writing skills represent major educational competencies that are also needed for the use effective implementation of state compter competencies across the curriculum matrix's grade levels in many states. There is also a close relationship between this activity and the types of thinking needed for higher-order thinking skill type exams.  But though the wonder-web provides incentive, specific forms of higher order thinking will still need to be taught and modeled as part of classroom instruction.

Teamwork

Wonder-Web work provides numerous opportunities for developing cooperation and collaboration, from small classroom teams, to larger problem solving groups that can span the globe. This form of community building can be scaled over an extensive range of possibility.

Better Room Posters

From your local home supply store, buy a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" or 1/2" foam insulation board and have the store cut it in half to make two sheets that are 4x4 feet in size. If you buy thinner than 1/2" it will not be stiff enough. Your school will have rolls of poster paper in four foot widths. Cover the 4x4 poster squares with your choice of color. Cut down the length of four pieces of tagboard to 24 inches. This enables you to place four sheets of tagboard on one side of a poster square with four inches of room at the top of the poster for an identifying label. If you use stick-on picture hangers from a photo-supply store you can mount and unmount the tagboard enabling class teams to take to their own workspace. These are extremely light and portable making them easy to hang or mount on a wall. Two of them can be hinged with duct tape to stand on the floor and once the hinge is closed, the two together protect attached papers when moving the display. Their light weight makes it easy to trade posters between different classrooms. The wonder-web becomes one poster space that your students, not you, can maintain all year long.
 
 

Though the poster or tagboard Wonder Web models are very useful designs, they are not perfect solutions. Eventually, the space becomes filled and questions may need to be removed before students are done considering them. If someone is not in the room, they cannot make a contribution. Handwriting can be hard to read. Notes fall to the floor and are lost. It is difficult to keep track of and evaluate the work of one student or a group of students over a long period of time. It is generally impossible for other classrooms elsewhere in the world to participate. The Internet age allows us to think of new ways to carry out similar activities, new ways that address these problems and create new opportunities. Further development depends on the technology available to a given school or classroom teacher.
 

 CROP: online Communities Resolving Our Problems

 A Web site called CROP provides an online version of the wonder-web poster concept, an online database of questions and contributions. In this system, the teacher would invite students to add their questions to the online database. This could also lead to participation from other users of the Internet. The information gathered during the tagboard poster activity could be re-used again online or the teacher and students could start new topics to create an online wonder-web. A major advantage of the web based system is that CROP also supplies tools, systems and training for further computer-based research, composition and sharing.

Procedure: link to a CROP feature, a database of Still Unsolved Problems, the SUP database [http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/Houghton/Learner/problemEngine.html].

Choose the link to add your own information. Enter one question per form page. For each form notice that the computer screen asks for an additional piece of information, your team name. Selecting and entering a team name will allow you to search for the contributions of everyone on your team, as long as they too enter the team name each time.

 The information you add might also be in response to someone else's question. Once the search is complete, click on the keyword. In the form that appears, enter your contribution for the question at the top of the web page.  If relevant, remember to enter your selected team name.

 Now go back to the previous screen and choose to search the database. First search by the keyword of a question or contribution that you entered and bring up the database record of the question you entered. Note how easy it is to make a contribution to your question. Now go back and search again, but this time use your team name. Note that you now see the questions from everyone at this workshop. You can form your teams in whatever way you like and retrieve your collective work as long as you can consistently use the same team name. Now go back and search after a particular date to see the work from many teams and individuals.

 In the long term, classes should engage in both the Poster internet and the SUP database while the number of computer workstations in the building increases. Once students gain significant access to Internet connected workstations, the Poster internet in the classroom will help keep the concept visible. That is, use the Poster internet in reverse of the previous process. Questions that emerge in the SUP database can be printed and added to the class Poster as a form of focused promotion or advertisement for their topic.

Finally, you can create a process by which your students become Community Question Ambassadors. Through this process encourage community members, content experts and parents to contribute real problems to the online database and encourage students to look for and bring to class problems provided by community members. Do workshops in your community or for parent night that explain the process. Of course, student note-paper added in the classroom should still be encouraged. Older note-papers from which has been added to the online database could be removed to make room for more on your class poster as necessary.
 

Assessment

How might one assess questioning activity? Questions could be categorized by type, for example using categories from Bloom's taxonomy, such as analysis, inference, comparison or evaluation. The continued absence of questions from a particular category would be evidence of a need for formal teaching and modeling of that type of question. Another perspective might be the degree of participation, as in a learner that may not be generating many questions, but serve as ambassador (promoter and researcher) for many questions. The table below provides another example of a system for evaluating a question's quality.
 
Criterion Possible Evidence
A question is a pinprick that starts the mind.  Questions or problems are written down in diary or notebook or shared space such as a bulletin board.
A good question is a pinprick that moves the mind to seek an answer.  The question is later followed with the sources of places looked for an answer.
A great question is a pinprick with which the mind perseveres until resolution. The sources of places looked for an answer are later followed by a recorded response that resolves the question for now.
A super question is the seed from which the "bandwagon effect" grows. The question is later followed by contributions of a number of different people. The more super the question, the more the number of different contributors and the longer these contributions continue.
A brilliant question is the pinprick from which the "bandwagon effect" becomes self-sustaining. Pursuit of the question leads to the formation of a self-sustaining team, organization, institution or business. As an interesting form of reverse question generation, try to determine the question or questions that sustain existing organizations and institutions.


 

Summary

Both paper and digital technology have a place in partnership with each other. No matter which is used, the SUP and FAQ concepts set up a tension between two poles that creates a kind of potential energy for every educator. The more authentic the question, the stronger the potential. The more digital technology is involved, the more dispersed and unique the community that can be involved. Just as the miller and other mechanical inventors early in the industrial age used the potential energy of water behind a dam to drive the industrial age forward, so can educators use the potential of questioning minds to generate activity with students in every subject of study in ways that drive the information age forward.

Bibliography

Authentic and Experiential Learning

  • The International Consortium for Experiential Learning.

  •  
  • Links to other Experiential Learning Organisations
  • Shelves (Book Resources)

    Brooks-Harris, Jeff E., Susan R. Stock-Ward (1999). Workshops : designing and facilitating experiential learning. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications, c1999. [ASU MAIN STACKS LC6519 .B76 1999]

    Burke, Kay (1998). How to Assess Authentic Learning: The Mindful School Series. Allyn & Bacon. [ISBN: 0205292658, Amazon.com, $31.00]

    Falk, John H., Lynn D. Dierking (2000). Learning from museums : visitor experiences and the making of meaning. Walnut Creek, CA : AltaMira Press. [ASU on order]

    Kaagan, Stephen S. (1999).  Leadership games : experiential learning for organizational development. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications. [WCU GENERAL HD57.7 .K3 1999]

    Kelly, Brendan (2000). Authentic Learning Activities in Middle School Mathematics: Data Analysis, Statistics, & Probability. Brendan Kelly Publisher. [ ISBN: 1895997194, Amazon.com, $16.95]

    Reid, Louann  & Jeffrey N. Golub (eds.) (1999). Reflective activities : helping students connect with texts. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English. [ASU MAIN STACKS PE65 .R44 1999]
     

    Hunter Library lists some 45 titles on experiential learning.
     

    Drives (Web Resources)

    Kelly, Curtis  David Kolb, The Theory of Experiential Learning and ESL

    Nicaise, Molly  Learning Through Authoring: A Student-Created Book on Authentic Learning.

    Saddington, Tony Experiential Learning.


    [1995. Updated 1.19.2002]  [Page Top.] [Pageauthor Houghton@wcu.edu]