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Intercultural Email Classroom Connections (IECC)
``` I've enclosed a message from Bruce Roberts about the very interesting Intercultural Email Classroom Connections (IECC) project for connecting students from different backgrounds. Although addressed to me, it should be of very wide interest -- I particularly commend to your attention the guidelines and reflections toward the end of the message.
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 1994 11:03:30 -0600
From: roberts@stolaf.edu
To: Phil Agre
Dear Phil,
I have been an avid reader of TNO and other postings on Red Rock Eater for some time now. It is the way I have chosen to keep up with issues that relate to the computer and the Internet. Our work here at St. Olaf College seems to fit Red Rock's "mission". You might want to consider passing on a portion of the message below--which have to do with the educational use of the Internet for Intercultural Classroom-to-classroom connections. Since Doug Walker, the moderator of the Schoolnet recently said, "IECC is the Internet [educational] resource par excellence..." (Inclass@schoolnet.carleton.ca: INCLASS digest 25; Thu, 27 Oct 1994), it seemed about time to share with you what the IECC is and a bit about how it works.
A year ago Craig Rice (St. Olaf College's Academic Computer Center Internet specialist), Howard Thorsheim and I (both Professors of Psychology at St. Olaf College) started an Intercultural Email Classroom Connection list (IECC) for teachers from K through Colleges and Universities who wish to find partner classrooms through other teachers around the world. For instance, a seventh grade teacher in Atlanta, Georgia might send a message to the IECC list asking about getting together with a classroom in Japan, and if a teacher in Japan sees the post, and is interested, she or he would write directly to the teacher in Atlanta and say, "let's explore a partnership together". There are now over 1,600 teachers at all levels who subscribe to this (free) list. The list grows by about 50-70 people a week. There are teachers from 30 countries involved.
Actually, over the course of the past year, we developed three lists. IECC@STOLAF.EDU IECC-PROJECTS@STOLAF.EDU and IECC-DISCUSSION@STOLAF.EDU
IECC stands for "Intercultural Email Classroom Connections". The first list, IECC, helps link teachers with other teachers who are seeking classroom email partnerships. Participants may be seeking any number of types of partner classrooms, including classrooms of native speakers of foreign languages.
The IECC-PROJECTS list contains submissions of email-related classroom projects.
The IECC-DISCUSSION is a general forum for discussing intercultural email in the classroom.
For example, instructions for access to the IECC are:
"IECC" is intended for teachers seeking partner classrooms for international and cross-cultural electronic mail exchanges. This list is not for discussion or for people seeking individual penpals.
To subscribe, send a message containing the word "subscribe" to:
iecc-request@stolaf.edu
Phil, a few weeks ago (10/7/94) my two colleagues here at St. Olaf and I sent the following summary to the members of the IECC-Discussion list identifying the ways that teachers seem to be using this classroom-to-classroom email.
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Hello iecc-discussion list members,
There seem to us to be three different uses of intercultural email classroom connections. Popular, especially among K-12 students classrooms, are email PROJECTS initiated by one school, in which many other schools are invited to participate. The second approach, and that which we are following in our college/university connections, are OPEN CONNECTION projects that begin with student partners making rather personal connections, and then moving to share or collaborate on more academic material. Finally, the MULTIPLE-USER DOMAIN (MUD) interactions in which people communicate with each other in real time within a specially programmed cross-cultural environment are increasing in popularity.
Special Note: As we begin it may be worth noting our U.S. biases?--Perhaps even our middle class culture biases? Other education systems might place different values on the role of teacher as facilitator or integrator, or on the learning of new educational skills. Some cultural systems value rote memorization and following the teacher with precision. So the processes we describe below seem to work for our U.S. students, and should be taken in that context.
Projects
Many of the interactions on email between classrooms are centered around very specific projects. The marvelous creativity of these focused projects range from a worldwide sampling of rainfall, or daily behaviors, to the complex cooperation of an international track meet, or urban ecological assessments, to informed small group discussions on the prevention of AIDS. Some of you are now building up a history of such projects, and it would be helpful to hear more from you about how these work for your students over time; what do you find are the benefits and the challenges?
We know that Ed Gragert of I*EARN has already asked for contributions for a book he is writing that will encourage the continuing development of world-wide project development. And of course, should any of you wish to browse the range of projects that others have proposed on IECC, you are encouraged to use Gopher to browse the IECC archives. St. Olaf's Gopher Server (gopher.stolaf.edu) is reachable by following your "Other Gophers and Information Servers" menu to: North America -- USA -- Minnesota -- St. Olaf College -- Internet Resources -- St. Olaf Sponsored archive.projects
-You may also search past IECC postings by keyword via Gopher. (The index is updated daily.)
-Also you may use FTP: ftp.stolaf.edu:pub/iecc/archive.projects
-You can also access via WWW URL: http://www.stolaf.edu/network/iecc.html
Multiple-User Domain (MUD) Connections
A Multiple-User Domain (MUD) is an interactive virtual space or domain where people have a chance to interact in real time in a text-based setting that mimics real life (or they can be quite surreal, depending on the whims of the builders). A MOO is a MUD that is object-oriented. The advantage of MOOs over other "talk" channels is that you are located in a hospitable virtual space, you can manipulate virtual objects, and you can express emotion, thoughts, and physical action. It makes for a very vivid and rewarding experience. (Thanks to Lonnie Turbee at Syracuse University for her help in identifying this area of intercultural classroom email use.)
Since we have not used MOO or MUD approaches to the email classroom connections, we are counting on some of you IECC-DISCUSSION members who have experience in this area to tell us what you do, how they work, and to describe the benefits, insights, and challenges for your students who connect across cultures.
Note: For those of you long time Net users, you may know the name of MUD as Multi-user Dungeon. However, the name, Multiple-User Domain is a better description given the expanding uses of the MUD computer environments.
Open Connections
Open connections begin with an open ended personal connections between students, and then flow into substantive academic discussions around the common ground that they discover together. Such an approach builds on the recognition that the social elaboration of learning can be a key component in our classrooms.
We have chosen an open connection approach for our classrooms because they serve nicely as a rehearsal for all types of positive and effective cross-cultural encounters with which our students may be engaged in the future.
Interacting informally in this electronic interspace seems to buy time for our students--time to become acquainted, time to know more about each other, time to find some common ground, time to grow trust. This is not a trivial process, for it can override the differences between people which serve as barriers when they meet face-to-face, or when they collaborate on projects.
We have found that it is within the personal connections between students that the most important personal and substantive material flows; email partners discover common interests that serve as a natural jumping off point for reflective "cross-cultural" conversations about such things as family traditions, health issues, religious values, political roles, historical diversity, and geographic connections.
Our experience suggests that even if students initially image a partner who is quite different from them, that on e-mail they act toward that partner as if in fact they are quite similar. This central feature of e-mail aids the global community-building process. It seems to foster a "psychological bypass" of the personal/social/cultural characteristics that usually signal differences between us that can frame our thinking about "other" persons in divisive ways. The students of course learn new information, but more importantly, they learn how to learn about others with an open mind.
Also, when personal connections come first, academic collaboration (e.g. joint writing of reports, editing a newspaper, composing position papers) often is more meaningful and pedagogically productive for the students.
*Below are some of the processes that we have found helpful for open connection* email links.
First, as teachers we make a commitment to keep in touch with our partner teachers and encourage our students to do the same with their email partners. Next we clarify the goals of the open email connections with our students. We have found that it is important for the classroom goals to be very clear, otherwise students may fail to understand the educational rationale for this activity.
We instruct to our students to:
1. Refer to their partners by name, not only as they begin but in the body of messages as appropriate.
2. Always refer to something their partner said in their last message. We tell our students that this is the only way that their email partners have of knowing that they were "heard". Also we ask them to respond in a manner that affirms the dignity of their email partner--for instance, we ask them to say such things as "Solveig, that was a helpful thought in your last message when you said, ...", "Juan, I liked your story about...", or "I have had a similar experience to your story about your nearly disastrous trip to the zoo, Michiko."
3. Generally keep messages relatively short. Also, short paragraphs fit in a screen better.
4. Give concrete examples. This is especially important with cross-cultural connections. It is often in the specific examples that students can really understand the meaning behind what their email partners are saying.
5. Keep collaborative projects simple at first; let the process develop in complexity over time
Some personal reflections as teachers:
These open connection email approaches give only modest control (at best) to the teacher over the substantive elements of the class once the email communications truly ignite. This new classroom calls for a significant revamping of how we conceptualize what we as teachers are doing. Some reflections:
(1) An e-mail "text" created by two intercultural e-mail partners is an extremely heterogeneous and unpredictable "textbook". The substantive material of this so-called "text" varies across e-mail pairs and is dependent on their interests, experiences, and language abilities.
(2) Since it is expected that teachers will have read and know the standard textbooks used in their classes, it follows then that a teacher must continue to know about the e-mail messages sent back and forth between student pairs in her/his classroom.
(3) The teacher becomes an organizer, facilitator, and integrator of information. If it was really ever possible to assume that the basic, underlying themes of a classroom were self-evident, it is certainly not possible when using e-mail for classroom-to-classroom open connections. An outcome from the substantive contributions generated independently by each e-mail pair is a tremendous growth in the volume of heterogeneous information that students are gathering. Without some sort of helpful organization and integration of this information across the classroom, the shear diversity of the new information will cause a foundering of the learning process.
(4) As an aside, the open connection model of intercultural email classroom links provides an excellent opportunity for the teacher to model assimilating and accommodating information--not merely as a classroom illustration using examples that worked "last year", but through the immediacy of grappling with new information in the "here and now"--just as students must do every day.
We have developed some classroom and homework processes for dealing with this new academic environment that we would be glad to share. But now we would really like to hear the thoughts and ideas from others.
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Well Phil, that's our message to you. Give a holler if you have questions.
Sincerely,
Bruce Roberts
Department of Psychology and Academic Computing Center St. Olaf College Northfield, MN 55057 ```
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