Contents

Trial Program of Interschool Network Communications

? Online Debate ?

Home economics class for eleventh graders
Akiko Ueno, Seisen Jr. and Sr. High School

Purpose of Using the Internet

We developed debating lessons based on several themes that are related to our students’ future lives?things like running a household and nurturing. Students debated a number of different topics, including the following: is it more advantageous to be a man or a woman; should women retain their maiden name after marriage; should abortion be legal; and should a woman continue to work after she has given birth to a child. However, since there are only girls at our school, the students’ opinions tended to be quite similar. Our students were very interested about the opinions of boys their age and people who live in an environment different from their own. They realized that family issues almost always involve men and women, so they really wanted to hear what boys had to say. Therefore, we exchanged tapes and manuscripts of some of our debates with a school that debated the same issues. As a result, our students realized that different people have different opinions about the same issue. However, because they communicated indirectly with teachers serving as mediators, they were unable to experience real debates face to face.

To make this possible, we thought of a method so that students from different schools could debate more directly, and came up with the idea of having an online debate using the Internet.

It is very important for students to hear various opinions and establish their own ideas about life and sex during their youth, because this is when they develop their fundamental views about their future lives. We used the Internet as an effective educational tool to create an opportunity for students to exchange opinions with students from various schools located in different areas.

• One’s youth is an important time to learn about oneself and choose a course in life. We wanted to teach students about the importance of having their own opinions and how to choose a path in life.
• We wanted to teach students about modern problems concerning sex and the preciousness of life.
• We also sought to cultivate the students’ ability to listen, learn from others, and summerize the collected information through group projects.
• Finally, the project sought to teach students that students from other schools may have different opinions than their own.

We used the 100-School Networking Project’s mailing list to gather schools for our project. We didn’t receive any responses for a while, but Tohokugakuin High School contacted us when Phase II of the 100-School Networking Project got underway. However, carrying out a lesson together proved to be impossible for a number of reasons concerning the schools’ curriculums, subjects, timetables, school events, and computing environments. Nevertheless, teachers often exchanged e-mail, met in person when a teacher from Tohokugakuin High School visited Tokyo, and we decided to start the project anyway.

Tohokugakuin High School had already conducted debates with other schools using the Internet mainly as part of the “Tohoku Internet Association” in the Tohoku area. Teachers of Tohokugakuin approached high schools in the Sendai area and as a result, Izumi High School, Miyagi also participated in our project. Fukushima Prefectural School for the Blind, Matsuyama Shinonome High School, and individual students who saw our web site also participated.

We invited schools to participate in our project via the Kanagawa Internet Conference on Educational Purposes (KICE) and received a significant amount of help from graduate students of Keio University who had participated in the WIDE project.

We conducted an online debate about the following case.

The argument

A. Affirming side: she should have the baby

B. Negating side: she shouldn’t have the baby

The groups consisted of seven to eight students working on the project together. Although collaboration didn’t work very well in some groups, students generally worked on the project enthusiastically. I felt that their interest in the new trial and the pleasure of communicating with students from different schools motivated them. Students who didn’t participate in the online debate also said that it was a fresh project that was unlike their regular classes. The project is still going on so I cannot make a final evaluation yet. I will briefly quote some students’ impressions about the project so far.

I felt like we were really having a conversation because I could read what they wrote directly.

We can thoroughly understand group members’ ideas because there are no time limits.

Everything is recorded. We can think over what we want to say while reading the opinions of the opposite party.

We can exchange opinions with students from different schools.

We can talk honestly because we do not know the people in the opposite party very well.

We can reconfirm our own opinions while writing them. We do not miss the opposite party’s argument when debating online.

We can refer to other students’ opinions because different groups debate the same theme simultaneously.

We cannot get a true feel for the excitement of debates because we do not hear the opposite party members’ voices.

It takes a while to get to know the opposite party’s opinions, and sometimes I often forget my own thoughts while waiting.

An argument loses some of its subtle nuance when it is written.

We cannot respond on the spot.

Online debates requires certain writing skills to convince the opposite party. Reading ability is also required.

An ability to type fast is necessary for chatting.

It is very interesting that people have different ideas about the same issue according to their sex and educational environment.

We can think about the problem more in-depth by talking with people who have different values from our own.

We could think about the problem from a wider perspective by listening to boys’ opinions. I thought boys sometimes had very unique ideas.

It was very interesting that students from different schools sometimes had different opinions and sometimes similar ones.

I would like to talk about three things. First I’d like to talk about the scheduling of our online debate. The first online debate was conducted for two weeks just prior to summer vacation and had the students on a pretty tight schedule. The second online debate was conducted over a two-month period that included winter vacation. There was plenty time, but students felt that the debate progressed too slowly. I think about a month, with no long-term vacations in between, is ideal.

Secondly, I would like to talk about how different schools dealt with the online debate. In this project, all the teachers from the participating schools taught different subjects, and the debate was conducted in various ways at each school. Some made it a part of a regular lesson, some as part of a club activity, and others as an after-school activity. If the project is conducted as part of a regular lesson on the same subject, students can think about the problem more in-depth, and as a result, the project can be more educationally beneficial.

Thirdly, debate is a means of study. When we prioritize debating tactics, the goal of debate becomes to beat the opposing team. In the lesson of home economics, we aimed to teach the students to think more deeply in an attempt to understand the diversified thoughts of other people.

English Study with Publishing Information on the Internet

English classes for eleventh and twelfth graders in an international curriculum
Naomi Omori, Reitaku High School

Purpose of Using the Internet

It is been six years since our school established a system where students can choose a major. Students in international studies are required to write a number of reports and use the Internet during class time to do research for them.

Although the students study English, there are unfortunately few opportunities to use it. The Internet creates an opportunity for them to use English to collect and send information overseas. I hope our studetns will fully utilize the Internet and become more a part of international society.

Our school installed a computer network system throughout the whole school when a new building was constructed on the school grounds in FY 1996. Via a private line, we can now access the Internet from two computer rooms (computer room A: 41 client machines, and computer room B: 37 client machines,) all classrooms, and the teachers’ room.

In a basic computing class (one unit) in tenth grade, students learn about basic skills and etiquette needed when using computer networks. They then use computers as an everyday study tool in other subjects. Students write a report using a word processor and send it using e-mail, study using CD-ROMs (such as for the English step test), and search for information using the Internet.

In classes in international studies, we actively use the Internet to both collect and send information.

At our school, students are separated into four subjects when they reach the eleventh grade: liberal arts, science and mathematics, humanities and science, and international studies. The goals of international studies are to educate students so they understand Japanese culture, respect different cultures, and contribute to international society while also teaching them how to read, write, and think in English.

In international studies there are 14 English units in the eleventh grade and 15 in the twelfth grade. Native English speakers teach many of the lessons. Eleventh graders study in Australia for seven weeks every fall. We also often let students write essays and reports in English on word processors. Until the two computer rooms were established, students used to write reports by hand or use a notebook type word processor, and they did research only in libraries. Now students can access the Internet from the computer rooms and even their own classroom.

Computers have been used effectively in many lessons, especially in the lessons by native English teachers (Michael Kerns and Mark Jolliff) in OCA (3 units in eleventh grade), OCB (5 units in eleventh grade), and OCC (6 units in twelfth grade.) These lessons are conducted in computer room B. (Picture 1 and 2)

Students use Microsoft Word and do research looking at web sites to write various kinds of reports. They enthusiastically use them during the lesson and after school as well.

Among the above activities, items with a n mark signify that the Internet is used during the activity. The following are some examples:

Students did research about the history, nature, geographical features, and culture of Australia. They looked at web pages to study about the indigenous animals. Students didn’t know how to search for information at this point, so they acquired it from home pages that their teacher showed them.

Students chose a story and memorized it. They learned to express themselves by using body language. Sometimes they used home pages to look for materials.

Students reported about current events in English. They collected the necessary articles from a number of foreign newspaper’s home pages.

Students did research about a pre-given theme and then held a discussion. Some of the themes were the American army’s base in Okinawa, teaching English to young children, organ transplants, women retaining their maiden name, nuclear weapons, divorce, and a five-day workweek. Students used the Internet to do their research.

Students wrote a letter to a newspaper, magazine, or company. They also sent e-mail directly to some home pages and sometimes found a company’s address on them. A student read a magazine article and contacted its writer using e-mail. The author then sent a letter to the student in response.

The reader’s column of The Daily Yomiuri published three letters from our students. The published letters are available on our home page.

(http://www.hs.reitaku-u.ac.jp/ENGLISH/5BusinessLetters.htm)

This is the fourth year that students will grauduate in international curriculum. Since the second year of the curriculum inception, we have required twelfth graders to write a research paper. It is similar to a graduation thesis, and students write about Japan or another place in the world in English. This is the most important task assigned in international curriculum. Students choose a theme that they are interested in at the end of eleventh grade, start their research, and complete it by the fall of the twelfth grade. The goal of the activity is for students to learn about the culture of Japan or another country and explain the culture in English. It is also a summary of the two-year language study given in international curriculum.

Students do research about the history, culture, literature, and society of a country, and summarize their results in about seven pages using Microsoft Word. During the process, students learn how to do research and how to compose an introduction, write an outline, the body, footnotes, and a bibliography. They use books and the Internet to do research. We publish the best reports on our home page. (Pictures 3 and 4)

We had to write a thesis in English on something about Japan in twelfth grade, and we had a whole year to do it. We had to collect a lot of materials to learn as much as possible about the theme we chose. For this, the Internet proved to be very helpful.

I chose sumo as my topic. When I typed “sumo” into a search engine and clicked the search button, a list of home pages about sumo in Japan and all over the world appeared. I could look at various home pages ranging from the Japan Sumo Wrestling Association’s to one for general fans. Some home pages carried a lot of pictures and even a video so I could visually enjoy studying about sumo. Most home pages have a form to send e-mail at the end of the home page so that people can send opinions and questions.

By using the Internet, we can easily collect an enormous amount of information that we could not find at a library. We can also ask questions to specialists. Using the computers at school, I was able to complete my research paper in a way that made me feel satisfied with my work. The Internet is such a convenient tool that I hope high school students will utilize it more in the future. (Graduate of 1996)

Looking at home pages is not the only way to do research. For some themes, books have more information than the Internet. However, the Internet has the following advantages as compared to books:

• We can quickly search for information.
• We can get the latest information (information in encyclopedias is sometimes very outdated.)
• We can do research on the spot without going to the library.
• We can look at a number of web sites and pick ones that seem to be the best. Although it depends on the topic, we can normally gather information from a number of different home pages.
• We can use e-mail to contact people who wrote an article on their home page.

Students often use the Internet only for personal interests, such as looking at the home pages of teenage idols or listening to new music

They also use e-mail, yet often what they write has no educational value whatsoever. Home pages and e-mail are very convenient tools for collecting useful information. However, it seems as though many students use the Internet without really knowing how much and what kind of information is available. Yahoo! Japan is a very well known search engine in Japan, but it is not the only one. When we cannot find the information we want on a particular search engine, a different search engine can be used instead.

It is a waste to only use the Internet for one’s personal interests. We want to teach students they can use the Internet for a variety of other purposes as well. In fact, we can publish our students’ research results on our home page so people from all over the world can read it. We plan to diversify our use of the Internet continuously.

URLs we used

• Animals in Australia

• Search engine

• Other home pages we used for our research projects and debating

Inter-School Communication by Online Debate

General study for high school students
Iwao Iguchi and Yukio Nakoshi, Tohokugakuin High School

Purpose of Using the Internet

We wanted the students to learn how to use the Internet and teach them how to exchange and write e-mail. We also wanted to improve their writing ability for the “Online Debate” project. (reference 1.) Debating on the Internet gives students an opportunity to improve their communication skills by interacting with people on a networking system. We believe that an experience such as this will make it easier for students to use the Internet for different purposes in the future.

In an online debate, the entire debate process is carried out on a network. A specific course to teach the skills necessary for debate will be added to the teaching guidelines in the future, but currently teachers teach these skills in our existing subjects at their own discretion. Debates are held mainly in Japanese, social studies, and English classes, and sometimes in science, ethics, and homeroom classes.

Therefore, once a format for the online debate has been established, provided that there is an appropriate theme and the cooperation of the teachers who will run the project has been obtained, any school can hold a debate on any subject with any school. Online debates can also be tailored to any range of purposes. It can be held within a class or also between schools.

The 22nd national conference of the Japan Association for Educational Technology Research was held in Sendai City on October 24 and 25, 1996. For an example lesson, five schools from the Tohoku region participated in a debate (reference 2) using the Internet as part of the high school sectional meeting.

We hadn’t communicated with other schools during our lessons until this time. Tohokugakuin High School and Morioka Shirayuri Gakuen Senior High School, participants of the 100-School Networking Project, Akita Wayo Girls’ High School, Nishitaga High School for the mentally retarded, and Sendai High School all participated in the project. Students from different kinds of schools (an all boys school, an all girls school, a co-educational school, and a school for the handicapped) participated in the debate, including students with muscular dystrophy. We separated the students into affirming and negating groups, trying to avoid a school vs. school competition and took into consideration the features and geographic location of each school. Many students participated from Sendai and Tohokugakuin High schools, so both these schools had affirming and negating groups. Akita Wayo Girls’ High School was on the affirming side and Morioka Shirayuri Gakuen Senior High School and Nishitaga High School for the mentally retarded were on the negating side.

To prepare for the debate, participants of each school conducted surveys and then exchanged their results as well as research materials and information from a newspaper’s database using a mailing list. In the actual debate, representatives from both the affirming and negating sides gathered at the Sendai science museum. The debate was transmitted by a teleconferencing system to students at each school, and they also participated by assisting the actual debaters using CU-SeeMe.

While conducting the “Debate Using Communications Equipment,” students from different schools collaborated in their preparations and exchanged opinions about the chosen topic. Regular students communicated with handicapped students using e-mail by exchanging materials and asking questions. However, school curricula do not include debate per se, so each school works the skill in differently. Some employ debate in Japanese class or in optional lessons, and others offer it as a club activity, homeroom activity, or after-school activity. The timetable for each school was also different, so we couldn’t have real-time communication like chatting or using CU-SeeMe during regular lessons. Students from Nishitaga High School for the mentally retarded couldn’t participate in the chat during the debate, yet they participated in the project using e-mail as it could be used anytime.

We learned that debate should be done using mainly e-mail so that any school, including schools for the deaf and blind or schools in a hospital, can participate without interfering with the other schools’ timetables.

The “Online Debate” program was set up to replace the “Debate Using Communication Equipment” program and to improve on its weak points. The online debate program has the following features and project objectives.

• First online debate: Tuesday July 8?Thursday July 17 (see Fig. 1 for details)

This debate was between teachers and a technical expert who supported our project to allow teachers to experience what an online debate is really like, so that they can pass that knowledge on to their students.

Topic: The Japanese education system should allow students to skip grades and should advance students as it sees fit (for example, from eleventh grade to university). Seven teachers from five schools and one technical expert participated.

• Participants

• The topic was about abortion, which Seisen Jr. and Sr. High Schools studied in their home economics classes.
• Both affirming and negating groups sent their arguments to staff members at the same time. The staff then transferred the arguments to the opposing party the following day. We did this to shorten the time spent on the project. (Fig. 3)

We talked about the project after the first debate. Students’ impressions were as follows: (Reference 4)

• Difficulty

• About the debate

Students from Fukushima Prefectural School for the Blind participated in the second online debate, which was mostly carried out using e-mail. and took advantage of what online debating has to offer. The number of participants increased in the second online debate, and nine debate sessions were conducted simultaneously. Students used different approaches to debate their side, and were able to communicate with many people. This took longer than expected, so we got behind schedule.

Akita Wayo Girls’ High School intends to participate in the next online debate. If you are interested in our project, please contact us. Ideas and opinions from people who have experience debating would also be appreciated. Online debates create opportunities for students to communicate with other schools and think about a particular topic in depth. I hope online debates will help to improve various aspects of education, the networking environment, and future projects, thus benefitting students and teachers alike.

References and home pages used

Promoting Cross-Cultural Education Using the Internet

Foreign language classes and special activities
Tatsuya Saito, Iwai High School

Purpose of Using the Internet

It is said that students should study about other countries and the diverse values of the people who live in them. It is important to learn about the differences and similarities between different countries by communicating with the people who live in them. It is also important for students to learn about their own country, region, and school in order teach other people about them. Cross-cultural education should be taught in various subjects, and should also be a part of special activities. There are few chances for students to talk with people from other countries in person. However, they can regularly correspond with people from all over the world using the Internet.

At Iwai High School, we have promoted cross-cultural education using the Internet. Because we didn’t have so many client computers that were connected to the Internet, we started doing this as an extracurricular activity with students from the English club and a few students who were interested in international exchange. We later improved the situation by connecting 45 computers in the CAI room to the Internet. We issued every student and teacher an e-mail account so they could use e-mail and started using the Internet in classes. We also started to participate in international exchange projects via the Internet as a part of homeroom activities. Moreover, we participated in the community’s exchange project with a sister city and established a deeper relationship with the community.

I would like to report on what we did in terms of cross-cultural education in our extracurricular activities, English lessons, and the projects we participated in as part of our homeroom activities.

When our school was appointed as a participating school of the 100-School Networking Project, students of the English club started to participate in international exchange activities using the Internet in April 1995. They corresponded with high schools in Michigan and Virginia in the U.S. and used a teacher’s private e-mail address to send and receive e-mail.

• We had only two months to carry out the activity during the first school term be cause of a difference in our school calendars. It took longer to exchange e-mail than we thought so we corresponded only two or three times during the first term .
• During the activity, computers were installed in the CAI room and students started typing their e-mail by themselves, to create a file to send to the partner school. We therefore had to teach them basic computer skills and give them typing lessons.
• Because teachers always sent the responses, we were able to make sure students actually replied and check the quality of their responses. On the other hand, this really was an invasion of the students’ privacy.
• Although the project created a lot of work for teachers, students worked on it enthusiastically.

Our school was connected to the Internet by the end of June 1995. We started with only one server machine and one client machine. We needed to increase the number of client machines by inserting LAN cards to computers in the CAI room so students could send e-mail by themselves. We increased the number of client computers to nine in July. We issued e-mail accounts and gave every student and teacher an e-mail address during summer vacation so students could exchange e-mail freely. We chose e-mail software that allows each student to manage e-mail they receive using their own floppy disk to protect their privacy.

We continued to correspond with two schools. However, the second term of Japanese schools is the beginning of the new school year in the U.S. Therefore, some students had a different key pal. As time went on, students started to communicate with people other than from these two schools alone. For example, we received e-mail from schools that wanted to correspond with us. Some students participated in a key pal project set up by Nara Prefectural Takatori Senior High School, a participant in the 100-School Networking Project, and corresponded with students in Hawaii. Some students also looked for key pals overseas by themselves and then started to correspond with them.

• Students exchanged e-mail using their own e-mail address. This was effective in protecting their privacy, but it made it more difficult to check the contents of their e-mail in advance and make sure the students replied. Therefore, we had students send a cc to teachers when they sent e-mail.
• Students started using e-mail independently.
• Monitoring students’ activities became difficult.
• Students who didn’t like English at first became more interested in it as a result of this activity and learned how to send e-mail in English without their teacher’s help.
• We exchanged photo albums with a school in Michigan to introduce our respective schools and communities. Students thought about their own school and community while making the album.

We connected all the computers in the CAI room to the Internet in March 1996. We also improved the computers’ performance by adding memory and hard disks and updating their OS from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.

We held an introductory lesson for new students in April to teach them how to use the CAI room so they would be able to use the Internet while at school. We briefly taught them some basic computer skills, how to practice typing, and how to use the Internet (WWW, e-mail, netiquette, etc.) for three hours.

Now, students from the English club and other students who are interested gather in the CAI room and independently use the Internet after school. Computer activities conducted by teachers are now a part of the regular curriculum.

We participated in an exchange program between Iwai City, where our school is located, and its sister city Pine Bluff, Arkansas, USA. Every summer, there is a student exchange and our students participate in the welcoming party for the students that come every year. Students participated in the welcoming party for members of Pine Bluff’s Sister City Committee when they visited Iwai City to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the relationship. Some members who were interested in education visited our school, observed our environment for using the Internet, and promised to help establish a relationship between our school and a school in Pine Bluff using the Internet. We still exchange e-mail with several members of the committee on a regular basis. Students exchanged e-mail with exchange students from Pine Bluff before they came to Japan and were able to meet them in person at our school because we offered to let them use our computers to send e-mail.

We connected 45 computers in the CAI room to the Internet in April 1996 and started using the Internet in lessons. Our English teachers conducted exchange activities using the Internet in their lessons. The goal was to motivate students to study English by using it practically as a communications tool.

We held a one-time exchange program for a class that was further ahead in the English curriculum.

• We evaluated the contents of the e-mail that students wrote.
• Some students were disappointed because they didn’t get a reply.
• We couldn’t know the respondents’ ages or if they were suitable people to correspond with.

In FY 1995, we participated in an international exchange project that Prince of Wales Collegiate in Canada also participated in. In April 1996, we contacted the school and asked if we could correspond with them as part of our English lessons. We held discussions with their teachers regarding the number of students who could participate and the term for the project. One class (40 students) of tenth graders corresponded with their students from April to June. Schools in Canada start their new school year in September, so forty students from the tenth grade, forty students from the twelfth grade, and twenty students from the English club corresponded with different students from Prince of Wales starting in September. Students exchanged e-mail twice at most between April and June because the term was short, but they corresponded about five times starting in September.

We conducted an international correspondence lesson in a class that consisted of eleventh graders. In the lesson, students chose a partner to correspond with from a list of students who were interested in international correspondence from an educational home page on international exchange. A teacher in charge of the lesson instructed the students to use e-mail on a regular basis using the class’s mailing list.

• Students were more enthusiastic because they were able to choose a partner, as opposed to being assigned a parther by the teacher. Many students became more interested in studying English.
• A list of students who are interested in correspondence is available to anyone. In some cases, students probably didn’t receive a reply because students on the list had already chosen a partner. Some of our students had to choose a new partner several times.
• We spent some time after school as to not hinder the progress of the regular English curriculum.
• As compared with example 1, which was controlled by teachers, the frequency of e-mail exchanges differed from student to student.

We have been corresponding with students overseas by mainly using e-mail so far. In the future, we plan to add real-time correspondence using a teleconferencing system such as CU-SeeMe.

An English ALT works at our school. With the ALT we plan to correspond with people who live in the ALT’s hometown. England will hold Festival UK 98 this year. We plan to conduct some type of activity to take advantage of this opportunity.

Students participated in the Virtual Classroom ’97. In this project, three schools from Japan and two different countries form a team, chose a theme, work on it together, and then make a home page.

Tenth graders from my class and eleventh graders from the English club participated in the project. Students from my class teamed up with schools from England and Canada, and students from the English club teamed up with schools from Belgium and India. The project started in September and ended in January. We learned a lot about joint study by participating in this project, but the following problems remained to be solved:

• Educational strategies must be developed that motivate students to work independently without their teachers’ direct supervision
• High-level English skills are required when collaborating in English. Conversely, this kind of collaboration cultivates students’ practical communication skills.
• It is difficult to find the time to participate in projects like this.
• To make projects like this work, constant communication between teachers from both schools is necessary.

Starting correspondence is very easy. You choose a suitable school from home pages on correspondence for educational purposes or lists of schools available on the link collection and send e-mail to the school. You can also advertise on home pages or register your school on a list such as WEB66 (Global School Registry (http://web66.coled.umn.edu/schools.html)) and you will soon receive e-mail from other schools requesting a correspondence with your school.

With dialup access, you can only use one e-mail address. However, you can still conduct correspondence. Many of the schools that we corresponded with had the same limitations. By using the students’ names for the titles of the e-mail, one-to-one correspondence can be realized, though admittedly privacy then becomes an issue.

When the correspondence is carried out as a part of an educational activity, we have to check to see if students’ correspondence goes smoothly. We can keep records of the students’ e-mail by having students send carbon copies to their teachers when they use their own e-mail address and having them send carbon copies to the source address when they share one e-mail address.

Study on Etiquette in Using Networks

Information processing class for high schools
Kunio Takahashi, Togane Girls’ High School

Purpose of Using the Internet

To be a member of today’s computerized society, it is important to learn about computer ethics and manners when communicating, and to know how to find and select information that is suitable for your needs. We teach students what they should be aware of when using communication networks by using educational materials on the Internet and conducting classes where students can learn through real experience.

At our school, we teach students information communication literacy in special courses such as “information processing” so students can use a computer in their regular classes when necessary.

We teach “information processing” (two credit hours) as a required subject at our general high school and prepare units where students learn how to use the Internet and other computer applications, word processing (“document processing”) for tenth graders, spreadsheet program (“information processing”) for eleventh graders, and computer graphics for both eleventh and twelfth graders. In these units, students learn about basic Internet skills so they can use it in regular classes. In this lesson, students gain experience in the use of home pages, come to appreciate computer ethics, and finally learn to communicate with others.

We teach about manners and etiquette because students should be aware of these issues when communicating with others via an information networking system. Computer ethics should be occasionally taught when students are actually communicating with others. In the lesson, we first introduce general matters and then encourage them to apply what they have already learned when they actually use the Internet later.

We used computers and the Internet in the following situations in this unit:

Students learn that it is important to know about proper etiquette in order to have good communication with others and avoid the negative aspects of using a network. Students also learn that netiquette is basically the same as etiquette and understand that they should respect people’s ethics and values in everyday life as well.

Students can be directly involved with society using the Internet instead of being separated from the real world. This means they need manners and common sense to avoid taking senseless risks. Therefore, we prioritized teaching about morals, manner, and etiquette. We think that the Internet is a good teaching medium for improving students’ self-control because on networks they can virtually learn about the kinds of societal rules they will have to follow after they graduate from school.

Activities concerning computer ethics education can be divided into three categories: training teachers, developing teaching materials, and teaching students. Teaching materials are needed to teach students, so teachers need to be trained in order to carry out lessons and develop materials. Many teachers are not computer-literate and have no experience using the Internet. Actually, using the Internet and experiencing various kinds of communication is the best training for remedying this problem. The more time a teacher spends using the Internet and tries to communicate with other people by using networks, the quicker he or she will become computer-literate. Exchanging opinions with teachers who are interested in the same issues via mailing lists is also very effective.

We have been teaching students about computer ethics using the above materials. We first teach them about the kind of attitude they should adopt and points to be aware of when using the Internet. We then teach etiquette for things like e-mail and home pages. The general rules we want them to remember are the four points stated in 3. (See references for detailed information.) We repeatedly hammer home these points using examples so students constantly become more conscious about netiquette.

References

URLs we used

Using the Internet as a Tool

? How to use the Internet as a tool ?

Information management classes for twelfth graders
Takashi Baba, Nobeoka Commercial High School

Purpose of Using the Internet

Using computers and the Internet is becoming more and more common. In schools, teachers sometimes have no choice but to use it in lessons, so learning to use the Internet becomes a goal in itself. The Internet and computers are truly tools of the people. Therefore, we created opportunities where students can use the Internet and computers to cultivate their computer literacy.

We planned a lesson plan that creates opportunities to use the Internet and computers as a tool as follows:

Students analyze problems and figure out how to solve them.

Students collect a lot of data using search engines and other Internet functions.

Students select the information they need from the large amounts of data available on the Internet and download it without infringing on any copyrights.

Students process data using software application such as spreadsheets so they can use the data effectively.

Students draw an inference from the information they have collected and then form their conclusions.

We taught students how to use a search engine while pointing out that the selection of key words to input is very important when using it. We also taught them how to use e-mail so they could exchange information with other students.

We sent students e-mail and gave them problems to work on using a search engine. Students did research about the problems, summarized their results, and sent them to us using e-mail. The main activity during this stage was gathering information, so we instructed students to select information that is appropriate and determine how helpful it is to solve the problems. We used the Internet as much as possible along with school textbooks on other subjects and supplementary materials when necessary.

Students made a graph from the information they downloaded from the Internet using a spreadsheet (Lotus 1-2-3, Excel, etc.) We let them start with an easy graph and gradually moved to more difficult ones. We told students that the purpose of this activity was not to process data itself but to make materials that would help them to make conclusions at a later date. Data available on the Internet is protected by copyright. Therefore, we needed to teach students about information literacy. We also taught them how to convert data and files to use them in software application so they could use the information more efficiently. We let students choose software application according to their personal interests and skills. We needed to prepare an environment where students could learn how to use software application by themselves by reading their instruction manuals or help files.

In this stage, students drew a conclusion from the information they had collected and processed. Students’ conclusions were not necessarily the same, so we had to evaluate the process they followed in forming their conclusions. We explained to the students that the process is important and had them hand in the materials they used to reach their conclusions. Teachers should evaluate the materials according to a pre-determined grading system.

A student’s answer (an excerpt)

As the number of children continues to decrease, the number of high school students is also decreasing. According to records, the number of high school students rapidly increased from 1964 and 1965, and gradually started to decrease after 1965. It thereafter once again started to gradually increase. Maybe there will be another time when the population increases in the future. The number of elementary school students decreased significantly. The approximate number of senior high school students in 2010 is estimated as follows, based on the national census of 1995.

Twelfth graders: 1,209,340 (children who are now four or five years old)

Total: 3,602,668

The number of senior high school students will decrease by 944,829 from the current total of 4,547,497. This number is only an estimate because each child will take a different course in life. Whatever happens, I hope they will succeed in making their own dreams come true.

The lesson plan is published at the end.

We let students use various software application programs according to the features of the information. Because the students were twelfth graders of the information processing course and half of them were supposed to start working after graduation, we thought that letting them study by themselves using instruction manuals and help files would be better than us deciding everything they learned. We helped each student according to his or her progress, skills, and personal interests. As a result, students started to work on the problems independently as the lesson developed. Some students’ impressions were as follows:

“I didn’t know what to do at the beginning. Now using the Internet and a computer is my favorite activity.”

“I wish I could use the Internet after school as well, because there is something I want to research.”

“I liked the Internet lesson most of all.”

Students learned that a great deal of useful information is available on the Internet by conducting searches and utilizing the information they obtained. They also acquired skills for using the Internet more effectively through the practice of selecting and processing necessary data. We think that each student has become more information-literate as a result of the course.

There are two points we have to improve on in the future. First, we wonder if the problems we chose for the students to work on were appropriate. We have to improve the contents of the problems and how we develop them in the future. Secondly, we regret that we did not create an opportunity for students to publish their research results on the Internet. The students’ results were not all the same. They could have learned more if there had been an opportunity to exchange their opinions with other students.

We also have to establish detailed evaluation standards for the resources and data (URL etc.) the students use. The students’ answers were different, so evaluations took longer than we expected. Even so, the lesson was excellent in that students worked enthusiastically the entire time.

URL we used (an excerpt)

Cultivating Students’ Communication Skills and Ability to Express Themselves

Business classes for twelfth graders
Takayoshi Ogura, YONAGO SOUTH COMMERCIAL HIGH SCHOOL

Purpose of Using the Internet

Up until several years ago, the most important theme at commercial high schools used to be specialized training. Recently, the cultivating of students’ communication skills and management ability is becoming more important. In today’s modern society, people with these skills are in demand. We believe that they should be taught in various subjects, not only in commercial schools but also in general high schools as well.

However, it is very difficult to teach these skills in traditional classes, where a teacher lectures students and uses a textbook. Therefore, we used the Internet to increase the opportunity for students to communicate and cultivate their ability to express themselves.

Our commercial course offers special courses on commercial activities and information processing. These courses therefore differ from what’s offered in the general course. We thought that our experiences using the Internet in these special subjects wouldn’t be a very good example for other schools. Instead we’d like to talk about some of the activities we did to cultivate students’ communication skills and ability to express themselves, which are also offered in the general course. This lesson is part of the information management class and is required knowledge for the qualifying examination for system administrators given by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The goal of the unit is to cultivate students’ communication skills and ability to express themselves, and also to promote EUC (End-User Computing). In the unit, we select ordinary themes (i.e. welfare activities and human rights) so students can will have an easier time when writing about them.

• Smart board x 1
• Liquid crystal projector x 2

• WWW and mail server 1inux x 1
• ML server 1inux x 1
• Proxy server 1inux x 2

• Microsoft PowerPoint 97
• Netscape Navigator

We conducted the lesson six times in the information management class (5 units) when we had time. It is difficult to make a precise lesson plan for the theme because the class was continued from the previous year. Therefore, I will talk about two types of lesson plans: a lesson plan to be used as an introduction, and a lesson plan to cultivate students’ ability to express themselves.

Basic skills for using the Internet (introduction)

Lesson plan to cultivate students’ ability to express themselves

Students look at each other’s home pages about welfare and send comments and opinions to the class’s mailing list. Students also send comments about the opinions of students having opposing viewpoints.

Lesson plan to cultivate students’ ability to express themselves (exchanging opinions using e-mail)

We have been conducting this lesson continuously from last year. We are confident that students’ communication skills and ability to express themselves improved as a result of the lesson. They couldn’t express themselves or make an argument so clearly at the beginning, yet the points they made while constructively arguing became clearer with practice. This is a valuable lesson for students, as it gives them the opportunity to present their own opinions. However, we do not have definitive answers for questions like, “Do we really have to use the Internet?” or “Is the Internet as effective as compared to traditional methods?” (library skills, presentations using an OHP, etc.) Students continuously worked on activities that tend to become stereotyped, such as doing research, exchanging opinions, and expressing their thoughts. The students were very motivated because they could use the Internet, which is new, interactive, and offers enormous amounts of information. During the course they also learned that there are always people behind a computer and the importance of netiquette.

Current search engines cannot organize information well enough to gather information effectively. Information on the Internet is a mixture of good and bad even when you use a search engine. Some people are dissatisfied with this situation, but others consider it a good way to teach students how to select useful information. I personally think it is the best study material that students can use to learn how to find accurate information.

Students’ impressions varied widely, as can be seen from the following quotes: “It is more fun compared to our current exercises;” “I feel embarrassed because other people read what I write.” One student said, “I thought I really knew a lot about a particular topic, but after doing research through networks, I realized that I didn’t know as much as I thought.” These impressions indicate that the students fully took advantage of what networks have to offer and learned a lot from the lesson.

References

URLs we used

Researching Themes Using the Internet

Theme study for twelfth graders in the technical curriculum
Keiji Zuiki, Tsukumi High School

Purpose of Using the Internet

Theme study is classified into three categories.

We learned that the Internet is very useful for research and creation. Continuing education is a major feature of modern day society, and people need to learn how to study by themselves and gather information efficiently. Our goal was to cultivate these skills in a lesson where students selected their own theme, worked on it independently, and complete their work using the Internet.

We frequently used the Internet during the theme study so students could get as much practice as possible.

• Students hand in their reports as a text or image file created on a computer.
• Students use the Internet to collect materials and download or print them by themselves.
• When problems occur, we ask teachers from other schools for help by using a virtual classroom or sending e-mail.
• We organize data collected from the Internet, make a home page, and then prepare a presentation for a conference to present the research results.

We didn’t interfere with what the students were doing in order to cultivate their ability to solve the problems independently according to what was required of them. However, we did help the students and gave them advice when they were lost or suffered a setback.

The following is an outline of the process that students experienced, and the impressions they gained during the theme study. Students greatly improved their ability to use the Internet as a result of much trial and error according to the following process:

During the project, teachers interfered only at the beginning and when students needed instructions. For example, if we prepared materials about VRML, we would have to do an enormous amount of work and spend a lot of time selecting information. However, students collected their own information using the Internet, studied, and gave presentations all by themselves. They really exceeded our expectations for the theme study.

We have been doing research on the Internet with students in the theme study course for three years since our school began participating in the 100-School Networking Project. Letting students choose their own themes to work on and using the Internet for educational purposes have many points in common. Students do joint research with students from all over the world. They can ask questions to teachers from other schools, exchange e-mail with students from other prefectures or overseas, and make home pages together. Students can collect and use the latest information that is pertinent in today’s world and even publish things that only the mass media could do before.

Students didn’t even know about the Internet before we started participating in the 100-School Networking Project. We only had one computer that was connected to the Internet and had no software that easily converts sentences to HTML. When I think back, working so hard to make home pages with the students was a great experience. The home pages that the students worked so hard to make will be a precious memory even after they graduate, not unlike a plant they have carefully cultivated. Students worked continuously on the theme research and thoroughly mastered how to use the Internet.

A teacher’s satisfaction from conducting a theme study using the Internet comes from learning with the students. When I saw the students give their presentations using the Internet at the theme study presentation meeting, I was very moved and remembered all our hard work over the past three years.

As compared to Japanese sites, sites from abroad carry the most up-to-date information. For example, you’d think there would be ample information about Japanese computer equipment in Japan. However, many times you can find better information about Japanese products abroad.

The site where freeware with the most useful programs are available only has help files written in English. To make the most out of these programs you could translate them by yourself or use some type of translation software, and in the process, allow students to study about English.

2. Using freeware and shareware

There are all kinds of high-quality educational software available on the Internet, besides the expensive software sold on the market. Especially on “WINDOWS FOREST” software is classified by genre and is constantly updated so the latest information is always available to you. Moreover, the software is evaluated so you can use it without any worries.

URLs we used