Partially this was because I wanted to give them a chance to use telecommunication and the internet as a research tool. Partially it was to loosen my control over the curriculum, as it seemed to me that my adolescent students should at least occasionally be able to collaborate with me in terms of deciding what might be learned. At the time, although we had a pretty nice computer lab, most of our machines weren't connected to the internet. Only our individual classroom computers (one in each class) had such capability. On these single classroom computers we had the use of e-mail, Turbogopher and, through the California On-line Resources for Educators (CORE), we have availability of about 3000 Usenet conferences.

It was in the late fall, just before winter break that I introduced the "I Search For Science" project to my students. After choosing a science subject of their personal interest, they were to come up with an investigative question, along with several sub-questions they could research. Any reasonable topic of science was allowable. They would be expected to exhaust whatever meager resources we had in our own library (encyclopedias mostly) in order to gain a basic understanding of their subject matter. But I asked them to try to come up with at least a few questions for which they couldn't find answers immediately.

I wanted to have these "second level" or more critically sophisticated questions be presented on the internet in order to achieve better research information.

The topics which students chose ranged widely, from "How Do Carburetors Work Versus Fuel Injection?", to "How Can Mushrooms Be Used?" to "What Are Black Holes?" to "How Does The Brain Remember?" to "How Can Solar Sails Be Used For Space Travel?" to "What Is AIDS and How Can It Be Prevented?" to "What Are The Life Cycles Of Egg-Laying Mammals?" Of the more than 90 students, there were over 70 very unique topics chosen. Laura, a student who was worried about early-onset Diabetes due to its existence within her family chose that subject area. Anne decided to find out about edible seaweed. Nathan decided to compare two-cycle to four cycle engines in motorcycles. Nick really enjoyed owls, so he decided to find out about their life cycles. Meanwhile Nova, a young fisherman himself, decided to research salmon in other parts of the world. There were UFO questions. Questions about Magnetic Levitation. The subjects were as varied as the students. The last week before the winter break,a small number of my 90+ students reached the point where they had serious questions for which they hadn't been able to supply full answers.

Going into the computer lab, I had them write letters which introduced themselves and their project, discussed what they had already discovered in their research, then asked one or more pointed or open-ended questions. They included as part of the letter my school e-mail address. Then we went to the Usenet conference center, and searched for conferences on which it might be appropriate to place their "Requests For Information" (RFIs as we called them). Some of the letters seemed to be appropriate for "sci.bio" or one of the bionet conferences, such as "bionet.general". The owl project, found a home in "rec.birds". The mushroom project went onto "sci.mycology". "Sci.space" was a very useful conference for many students.

Fortunately for me, only a few students got their letters uploaded before the break. Since I also had internet access from home through our district as part of our involvement as a NASA K-12 Partnership school, I checked my mail over the vacation sporadically. By the time we returned to school in January, I had received almost a hundred letters in reply to student questions. It was almost overwhelming. One of the first letters was in reply to a student, Chris, who was researching Solar Sails. Now this was a subject I was also personally interested in, and I even had a book "Space: the Next 100 Years" which had a couple of pages on the subject. My first clue that we were on the right track was when this first letter came from an engineer from Cal Tech who worked on the Mars Observer Project: several pages of easy-to-read but sophisticated concepts and specific answers to Chris' Solar Sail questions followed. With other letters from equally remarkable sources arriving over the next few days, correspondences which included more detailed questions and answers began to be developed between this 8th grade student and a number of space science professionals, using my e-mail address as a filter.

With Chris as with two other students, Jenny and Elijah, who chose to study Black Holes, within a few weeks the student expertise in these subject areas far outstripped my own. By the time the project ended in early February, we had sent out letters for most all of our projects and received back in return over 450 correspondences, most of which were notable for their enthusiasm and care/consideration, as well as there obvious level of expertise. A few wrote, kindly, that maybe the student should look in the library for more help. Other gave bibliographies of related subjects or references. Many copied excerpts out of their own resources for the students to use. Most took a lot of time to explain their subjects with an amazing depth of detail at a level of sophistication which my students found easy to understand. Often, although the first questions the students asked were relatively shallow, these letters led to further correspondences which were much more thoughtful and specific. Moria asked about small animal injuries. A young veterinarian reponded warmly and this led to a very rewarding exchange of correspondences between a female student and a women who was very excited about her new field.

One very rewarding aspect of this project was that my students asked questions of people for whom the subject was a life long love. Imagine a student writing to a conference, sci.mycology which is specific to mushroom lovers around the world. Here was a chance for an afficionado of an esoteric subject to take a youngster who has a genuine interest in the subject under wing. Many of our sources became on-line mentors for students. Others became role models. When Nick asked folks about Owl experiences in their life, he received letters from all over the world from the bird lovers on rec.birds. All of a sudden, being a bird lover, something he probably wasn't all that thrilled about sharing with his teenage peers, became something that a whole lot of people all over the world feel very good about.

Some of the connections were humorous and surprising. We decided, with some trepidation, to use a special conference for the motorcycle and carburetor-related type questions. We found a conference called "rec.motorcycle.harleydavidson". The responses from this group were amazing in their helpfulness, surprising with their humor and gentleness. It turns out that there are an awful lot of electrical, aeronautical and space engineers who frequent that site. They had great information for my young turks/grease-monkeys, but what was particularly nice were their admonitions to the students to "stay in school, study and especially learn math!" Another student was interested in Robotics. One correspondent turned out to live about 100 miles away. He helped the student join a national robot club, sent loads of materials through the mail at his own cost, and invited the young scientist and his parents to come to a Robotics convention. The robotic hand that this student built was a hit at our science fair. A professor from Toronto sent us a book called "Fungi For Children" that he had written. Likewise, the student learning about Monotremes (egg-laying mammals, so I learned) received a personal letter from a Curator of a Natural History Museum in Canberra, Australia. The students working on Black Holes received considerable help from the Director of a Planetarium at the University of Kentucky in Louisville. Many of these folks offered to answer other student questions within their area of expertise as they came up.

The moderator from the CompuServes Diabetes Forum was sent a forwarded letter from Laura by somebody who was interested in helping her, and Laura received anamazing amount of information from CompuServe, which included not only Diabetes FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) but specific answers to her questions, which helped put her fears to rest. There are far too many such stories to recount here. But the overall experience was one not only I but my students won't soon forget. Some students received more than 10 valuable communications. Each morning students came in wanting to know what new information had come in the e-mail. Along the way, students learned how to upload their questions working with the difficult unix interface, and there were a number who learned pretty quickly how to do that, which helped keep me from overload. That also gave them a direct internet experience. Often, after using the conference for the original contact, students used our e-mail system to write more specific letters directly to the new mentors.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention some interesting glitches that occurred. One of the projects caused a veritable storm of controversy for us. The student who asked about egg-laying mammals first asked a relatively simplistic series of questions, some of which she might have found out in a good encyclopedia. When her letter was placed on bionet.general we received a couple of slightly stinging flames about wasting peoples time with questions which could be otherwise answered. Some writers felt that young students should simply stay off of these conferences, which afterall were meant for "professional" interchange and not for the use of children. But interestingly, other writers saw these remarks, were offended by the tone and closemindedness of some writers, and a whole discourse or thread was started around this issue of access that ran for severalweeks. As it turned out, one or more of the folks who originally were somewhat negative about this issue eventually not only got interested, but actually became allies once they realized what we were trying to do, and asked if we could send them a list of *all* the topics so they could help search for information for us. We also began discussing the need for a place on the internet for such discourse: where youngsters could ask serious questions of science professionals. We agreed for at least this time that we would start our title with the tag "student question" so that anybody who didn't want to answer would be alerted. Many more folks told us how wonderful they thought it was that students could go out on the internet to find such information.

Overall, for me this was an incredible experience. There is a thought to put some of the information we have found out at a gopher or mosaic site by subject area, so that other students can draw on our adventure. It hasn't happened yet, but perhaps soon we will be able to provide that service for students around the world: a "living", dynamic catalog of answers to questions students have asked about science-related topics. Sounds like a good idea to me!

Cory Wisnia
Mendocino Middle School

Click here to get Back To Wizard's World back to MMS home page

back to The Mendocino Community Network Home Page