asuvirtual01
VIRTUAL TRIPS
Asunción López-Varela Azcárate
Universidad
Keywords: Journey narrative, Virtual trips, New Technologies, Identity, Community, Intercultural awareness, Education
Contents
Summary
1. The Epistemology of the Journey: Narrating our Life Stories
2. Journeys, Representations and Technology
3. Embodied or Disembodied Communication, Identity and Intercultural Awareness
4. The Educational Dimension of Virtual Trips and Other Forms of Net Technologies
5. Conclusion
Bibliography
Biographical Sketch
Summary
We shall begin our chapter with a reflection on the epistemology of the journey, a device we use for narrating and representing our lives and the histories of our communities, to be continued by a brief analysis of the role that technological changes are playing in changing our perceptions of ourselves and others. We shall inquire into the nature of virtual trips as forms of disembodied communication and explore their possibilities as vehicles of intercultural awareness. Finally, we shall study the educational role that technological projects such as virtual trips and Webquests have and how they can contribute to help us share experiences across the world. This last section offers a comprehensive list of educational projects.
1. The Epistemology of the Journey: Narrating our Life Stories
Awareness of time in its three categories of past, present and future has decisively contributed to human success in the struggle for existence. It has enabled us to draw upon past experience in the present to anticipate future needs (teleology). Thus, from the making of the first stone tools to the complex structure of modern technological civilization, we have sought to improve the standard of living.
Our very memory patterns are shaped by the passing of time, with short term memory transforming itself into long lasting memory, in a process which also discards a lot of unneeded and disconnected information. Spatial metaphors have an important role in this information compressing. Thus, it is not by chance that we perceive our very existence as a spatial metaphor expressed in the figure of a journey narrative.
Narrative is a literary genre that reveals the passage from an instantaneous temporality (description) to a sequence of independent events constituting a story. Therefore it has a structural temporality which gradually links the different parts into an organized cohesion. Human beings use these narrative patterns to configure and order our temporal representation of the world, that is, the stories of our lives. The journey is, thus, a recurrent structural device, persistent in oral and written narratives in all cultures and virtually all theologies. The biblical myth of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise is a journey narrative, where a theological idea, man’s fall from God’s grace, appears in terms of spatial movement. Spiritual connotations of place and movement appear variously throughout the Bible contributing to form the history of humanity on a nomad basis. The Jewish and later Christian conception of historical-theological time is not only the very foundation of most western narratives, but of western metaphysics, as Heidegger, Derrida, Kristeva, among others, have pointed out. These patterns of journey narratives are also found in the classical tradition, with Homer’s Odyssey demonstrating the usefulness of journey motifs conveying non-spatial experiences. The hero’s descent into the underworld became a regular feature of “night journey narratives”, symbolizing the hero’s spiritual experience (from Dante’s Divine Comedy, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to modern works like Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, to name but a few). The journey can be used as a metaphor for the passage of time or for penetration into different levels of consciousness. It symbolizes mankind’s efforts toward intellectual and moral goals, and even the search for meaning itself. Yet, in some journey narratives, it is the journey itself, the endless process of traveling what matters, not some end goal. For some authors, such as Walt Whitman, the journey means ongoing life and future possibility.
The association of the west (sunset) with death is a major source of directional ambiguity. In American literature, the journey west may symbolize quest and progress, whereas James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist ends with Stephen’s intention of traveling eastward towards
We can experience the passing of time in two ways: one is to contemplate it as an external absolute entity flowing away from us while we stay fixed. In the second model we experience ourselves as changing phenomena, a situation that requires a higher level of abstraction, producing relative perceptions of time sometimes called subjective: time stretching or contracting, elastic time, etc. These dual perceptions of inner and outer dimensions make possible the existence of Bergsonian “inward journeys” or processes of introspection, the object of much modernist experimentation (Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, etc). Thus, the journey can become a quest for identity, whether individual or socio-cultural (as in historical narratives) (for a recent example of a "life journey", in German, including reflections on hybridity, see Tötösy de Zepetnek).
2. Journeys, Representations and Technology
Since our birth we are immersed in a world of messages and representations. Different narratives, emerging from oral and written literature, radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities: our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." Individual and social identity is a product of a dialogue between sometimes conflicting voices, for every subject negotiates the divide between me/not me in the process of organizing an identity. All identifications are thus technologized, that is, accomplished by some means designed to secure the subject in relation to something other than itself. Thus, virtualization is an essential mode of our being. (Lèvy 1995)
Net Technologies provide new means for organizing our knowledge and our communicative capacities. They redefine our mental geography; entail the production of life worlds and, thus, the creation of culture. Technological changes emerge out of particular cultural conditions and in turn help to create new social and cultural situations. Thus, new technologies have opened up a whole domain of speculation on disembodied rationality, tele-existence, the pleasures of the interface, cyborg identity, and so on. The technological systems that convert primary bodily presence into tele-presence appear to be changing the nature of interpersonal relationships. Thus, the appearance of computer-mediated communities or “virtual communities” is also a crucial area of research.
The rise of media communications in the 20th-century have produced a revolution in the way information is transmitted. The telegraph, for instance, marked a decisive separation between transportation and communication and symbols began to move independently of geography and independently of and faster than transport. Radio and television also changed our perception of the world, for distances apparently became narrower and things and people which were far from us, somehow seemed closer at hand, even if perceived passively. As the speed of communication over geographical space increased, space became decontextualized, deterritorialized, and more recently, with the introduction of Net technologies, it has been replaced by a kind of non-geographical space - cyberspace or hyperspace.
Another crucial difference between the old and the new media technologies is that towards the second half of the 20th-century communication media experienced a decisive turn towards more interactive forms of communication. The use of mobile telephony allowed viewers to send their messages to television studios almost instantly. Spectators could see their messages displayed on the screen, which produced an immediate feedback and a sense of participation and involvement where hierarchical structures and distances could dissolve.
The Internet has also propitiated the creation of virtual communities through mediated conversation, abolishing physical (and social/hierarchical) distance between communicators. Its different uses (hypertext, chats, discussion forums, videoconferencing, etc.) enable information to be moved, transformed and manipulated, bringing into question the issues of authorship and authenticity of material. Thus, the Net has been depicted as a liberating technology for its information is accessible to many users and it is interactive in form.
A growing number of writers present the Internet as an exciting technology offering new forms of exploring self-identities and forming virtual communities. Kerckhove (1997), for instance, has noted that web technologies are producing an effect of loss of our own personal and concrete limits. He explains that the Net is helping us to project ourselves digitally outwards, so that we are loosing our sense of physical separation and gaining power of action at a distance. Because subject and body are neither separable nor coterminous, using an unfamiliar means of communicating one’s self can produce a powerful sense of disembodiment, heightening the subjective awareness of the lack of congruity, what Kerckhove has termed ‘webness’.
3. Embodied and Disembodied Communication, Identity and Intercultural Awareness
Research in Cognitive Linguistics has shown that the body functions as a symbol, a metaphor which locates us both in space and time. Our perceptions of a certain situation and context determine meaning. But meaning is also negotiated and, as Michel Foucault theorized, identity is a power construct. Individuals do not have fixed, stable identities but assume changing subject positions determined by language, gender, and other social and cultural institutions.
If the body is the metaphor for our situation in time, space, language and culture, then, how is that situation discursively produced and maintained through the flesh? How are identifications technologized? This is the problem Judith Butler addresses with the concept of ‘materialization’, her term for the processes through which gender, race, and other shaping discourses actively locate the body.
It has not been adequately theorized, however, the extent to which these discourses ground themselves in the flesh through the field of vision. How do we to orient ourselves and make sense of our interactions with others on the Internet, for example, where the visual realm is absent and we have no clues about the person’s sex or race? Do certain discourses, like sex or race, which operate through the visual performativity of the flesh, cease to matter in the new media domains, or do they just signify differently. How might flesh signify when it is not visually performative? The problem lies in trying to conceptualize where the “I” stops and “my” communicative tools start. Nowadays it is increasingly necessary to think in terms not of ‘body and technology’ but ‘body as technology’ (Lèvy 1995). McLuhan (1964) also noted that a technological instrument can be thought as an extension of our physical body.
Some theorists -Derrick de Kerkhove or Sherry Turkle among others- argue that communication mediated through new technologies can produce a powerful sense of disembodiment, heightening the subjective awareness of the lack of congruity, since the body is no longer visually perceived and we have the sensation that we can have power of action at a distance, with just the click of the mouse. They also suggest that the dream of the ability to be everywhere can help to shape new forms of identity, to unseat one’s historically and culturally specific mode of subjectivity from its position of privilege and explore, mobile, multiple positions of subjectivity. When someone changes identities in the Net, she or he leaves part of herself/himself behind, a fragment of her/his life to be resumed later. The hypertext Patchwork Girl, published by Eastgate Systems in 1995, is a good example of the asynchronous quality characteristic of contemporary cyborg existence, short-lived selves that exist only in certain contexts.
Researching the subjective effects of the discourses and practices enabled through technological applications, particularly behavior in multi-user domains (MUDs), Turkle has noted that certain experiences on-line, such as chats, role-games, etc., allow the development of virtual identities, so that identity becomes more flexible and interactions result in the experience of multiple subjectivities. Net technologies would, thus, contribute to liberate the individual from the social constraints of embodied identity and from the restrictions of geographically embodied space, providing new forms of experiencing otherness. Furthermore, the interactivity inherent to the Internet is felt as a process of interchange, of cooperation, a dialogue which can promote a sense of connectedness or fraternity.
These technologies offer the possibility of access to huge amounts of information, producing an exhilarating sense of freedom described by some as liberating. As a paradox of connectivity, access to unlimited information may also mean more control and it can also disconnect the individual from embodied interactions surrounding her/him. This tendency towards a withdrawal from the active political sphere of real space, or the withdrawal from attempts to realize an embodied form of community, is mirrored in the works of some contemporary community theorists. Michele Willson, for instance, explains that liberatory claims about virtual communities are precisely based on the promotion of an anonymity which enables flexible, multiple and anonymous identity construction, and the alteration of spatial and time experiences. She suggests that the dissolution or fragmentation of the subject and the instantaneous, transient nature of all communication disconnect or abstract the individual from physical action and a sense of social and personal responsibility to others (Willson 2000: 650).
4. The Educational Dimension of Virtual Trips and Other Forms of Net Technologies
While this debate goes on the number of educational technological projects continues to grow, thanks to recent research on compressing video and audio systems for transmitting information via the Internet more quickly and cheaper. E-libraries, videoconferencing, virtual trips, Webquests, etc., offer new possibilities to educational institutions, not only in the form of on-line instruction (courses, lessons, tutoring, etc.) but also multi-institutional project collaboration, professional activities on-line (meetings, interviews, connection with guest speakers and experts, etc.).
Educators have found that the use of these technologies can heighten motivation because students are free to interact with other students and find their own resources in the Internet. Some uses, like slides or videoconferencing, can improve their presentation and communication skills. In the case of virtual trips and video-conferring[A1] , they offer the possibility of visiting places and not only seeing but interacting with people that are far away from us and can have very different cultural customs and habits.
A virtual trip or Information Search Process is a guided exploration through a collection of Web pages. The experience can also become a structured online learning experience (Foley, 2003). In the last few years educators have realized the education potential of such experiences, particularly for primary and secondary education. A virtual field trip is more than just giving students time to browse and surf the Internet for sites related to a specific topic. It should be a guided tour, arranged by the educator but allowing students sufficient freedom to chose their own path and therefore to acquire a learning experience that is unique and different for each of them. They also grant access to information that is not generally available to students, like a visit to a specific museum, a field trip abroad, etc. In terms of cost effectiveness, it saves time and resources and students bring back facts and information in several forms of media. A well-planned virtual trip can help students assimilate a specific experience and discovery and transform the material into knowledge (Kawka & Burguess 2001: 4-5). They can also become important intercultural tools for they lend themselves to viewing multiple perspectives on an issue, helping in-depth knowledge and cooperative learning experiences. They provide the opportunity of seeing authentic situations, the real-world and can help to boost up motivation levels in the classroom.
Modern education should help students to learn in dynamic situations where information constantly changes. It should help them reflect how net technologies can change the idea we have of ourselves and of others, and even our sense of community participation. They need to learn to manage information excess and select pertinent resources. They also need to find meaning for themselves, among the diverse and numerous informational resources that do not fit in prepared, pre-digested and ordered texts. Finally, they should be able to construct a personal comprehension from contradictory informational sources.
Judi Harris (http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/) offers a division of virtual instructional strategies that can help in the acquisition of informational competence: problem solving, information collection and analysis and interpersonal exchange. These strategies transform the learning experience into a form of research. Students need to construct their own learning dimension from a variety of sources. They learn to question and think away from predetermined formulas and solutions. The learning experience follows a constructivist approach rather than the traditional transmission of knowledge and abilities. Students learn by constructing their own comprehension and experiences of the world in an active and permanent process. Social interaction is also an important element in the learning process. The constructivist approach based on a research process helps students to develop techniques to transfer abilities to different learning situations. It requires students to think and reflect about the process of information research and the purpose of the information found, so that the process of information management can be transmitted to other situations.
According to Carol C. Kuhlthau (1993) an Information Search Process should follow the following steps: initiation (analysis of the task or project and identification of themes and questions involved); selection of the theme or question to be explored; exploration (this process should identify inconsistencies or incompatibilities in the information); formulation (that is, to conform a perspective centered around the information found); recollection (recompilation and documentation of the information around the central theme or problem); presentation to the rest of students (bringing forward possible connections with other themes and information); evaluation (reflection about the whole learning process and learning contents). The main strategies for this kind of learning experience are: selecting, remembering, organized summarizing and paraphrasing with the students’ own words. The strategies required for the process of information research are the following: group collaboration and conversation, selection and composition.
Numerous projects on Information Search Processes have been developed in the last ten years. Some of the most important ones are:
Big6: www.big6.com An information literacy model or an information problem solving strategy, developed by Mike Eisenberg and Bob Berkowitz. It is the most widely-known and widely-used approach to teaching information and technology skills in the world. It follows a non-linear process that is applicable to a variety of problem-solving situations. It follows six steps: Task definition (knowledge), Information-seeking strategies (comprehension), Location and access (application), Information usage, Synthesis and Evaluation. These steps relate to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: pre-operational, concrete-operational and formal-operational.
InfoZone: http://www.assd.winnipeg.mb.ca/infozone/ in Canada This was one of the first websites that incorporated an information process model and made use of Web resources. (This Webpage are no longer in operation and needs to be accessed through the WaybackMachine http://www.archive.org/web/web.php and http://www.bibalex.org/)
Pathways of Knowledge: http://www.pathwaysmodel.com/
See also http://www.sparkfactor.com/clients/follett/home.html. Sponsored by Follett and developed by Marjorie L. Pappas and Ann E. Tepe (2002), this model is designed for children and young adults and focuses on a nonlinear processes, not only on the steps in the research process but also on constructing knowledge from findings. The model follows these steps: Appreciation (students explores topics about which they are curious as an introduction to information seeking through sensing, viewing, listening, reading), Presearch (students explore what they already know and what they want to know about a topic and establish a focus –develop an overview and explore relationships), Search (students seek appropriate sources and plan and implement a search strategy –identify information providers, select information resources and tools and seek relevant information), Interpretation (students assess usefulness and reflect on research results to develop personal meaning and interpret information), Communication (students organize and apply their research in an appropriate format), Evaluation (thinking about product and process and evaluate them).
The Research Cycle: http://www.questioning.org/rcycle.html and http://www.fromnowon.org This project developed by Jamie McKenzie in 1995 places emphasis on question and rejects topical research because it argues it is only information gathering and puts students in the role of information consumers. The Research Cycle puts students in the role of information producers, requiring them to create their own answers and show independence of judgment. Because students are actively revising and rethinking their research questions and plans throughout the process, they are forced to cycle back repeatedly through the stages listed below so that the more skill they develop, the less linear the process. The seven stages are: Questioning, Planning, Gathering, Sorting and Sifting, Synthesizing, Evaluating, and Reporting. McKenzie recognizes that students need to refine, revise, and revisit sources repeatedly before a research project yields optimum results. He notes that questioning is an essential skill in the research process and that a question may not be refined until a student begins to research and revise the search repeatedly to maximize results. McKenzie’s model helps students to become independent users of information as it requires more intensive research efforts and more critical evaluation of results before the product is finalized (See McKenzie, J. “From Now On. The Educational Technology Journal at http://fno.org and McKenzie (2000).
.8Ws. This model was developed by Annette Lamb in the early 1990s and published in the book Surfin' the Web: Project Ideas from A to Z by Annette Lamb, Larry Johnson, and Nancy Smith in 1997 and in an article called “Wondering Wiggling, and Weaving: A New Model for Project and Community Based Learning on the Web”, Learning and Leading With Technology, 1997, 24(7), 6-13.
Information Seeking Process. Carol Kuhlthau's library research process was published in her 1985 book Teaching the Library Research Process which was updated in 1994. Her research stresses the attitudinal and emotional aspects of the inquiry process. Thus, the model focuses on students’ feeling throughout the research process. It is a constructivist model based on building knowledge by activating prior learning. Website: http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/
Kuhlthau's Model of the Stages of the Information Process can be found at
I-Search. It is a type of inquiry-based research process frequently used in middle and high school classrooms in the
A version of the I-Search project was developed by the Education Development Center (http://main.edc.org/) which also holds other 325 projects such as the After School Science Learning Project “ScienceQuest” (http://www2.edc.org/sciencequest/; also described at
http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=zorfass/index.html. More information on the I-Search project can be found at: http://www.literacymatters.org/content/isearch/intro.htm
Especially appropriate for students who find research intimidating or who have learning difficulties, the model is motivating to students who select a topic in which they have a strong interest. The final product is less threatening because students are encouraged to include their own thoughts and feelings along with their research. Designed to promote interest in research and support a student’s choice of a compelling topic, this model requires students to describe their search process in first person. The final product requires meshing student’s own thoughts and ideas with research and includes student reflection on process. It follows five steps: Let a topic choose you, Search for information, Test the information, Write the paper in first person, including the following: What I want to know about my topic, Why the topic is important to me, The story of my search for information, How I applied the information I found to answer my question, Edit the paper. See Macrorie (1988) and Joyce, M. and Tallman, J. (1997).
The Thoughtful Learning Cycle (TLC). This was one of the earlier models developed by Barbara Stripling and Judy Pitt (1988). It focuses on critical thinking in the research process and develops strategies for ensuring high level thinking and resulting quality products. If students research at a low level, they're likely to react at a low level. In other words, if students spend their time collecting facts, they'll probably create a low-level recall-type report. However if they spend their time in the research process integrating, concluding, and conceptualizing, then their final product will be reflect transformation and synthesis of information. The authors also believe that new learning occurs when connected to previous learning. The project is at:
http://witloof.sjsu.edu/courses/250.loertscher/modelstrip.html
Christine Irving Project (
http://www.learningservices.gcal.ac.uk/ils/index.html
OSLA. A project by Ontario School Library Association Canadá that seeks to develop comprehensive information literacy skills, according to the following graphic:
http://www.accessola.com/action/positions/info_studies/html/toc.html
Information Literacy Blueprint is a project developed in 1994 by Christine Susan Bruce at the Division of Information Services,
· complementing the University's teaching and research programs
· contributing to the development of core competency training for students
· impacting positively on the University's quality advancement programs
· providing a cohesive, conceptual framework for development of information literacy initiatives
· serving as a guide to stakeholders concerned with information literacy
Information on the project can be found at: http://www.gu.edu.au/ins/training/computing/web/blueprint/content_blueprint.html
Infoquest Interchange http://www.infoquestline.net, a project developed by Peggy Milam. This inquiry-based model is designed to ignite curiosity and develop research skills in all ages. Is a process oriented model that seeks to promote the achievement of independent research skills and it is based in real-life situations. It follows four steps: Inquiring (determine keywords and related topics within the research question), Searching (select and utilize specific resources to gather information), Organizing (logically organize results, discarding unrelated information and retaining pertinent data), Sharing (communicate results of the searchà formal presentation; because this is a process-based model not product-based, sharing does not need to be always formal). The model is designed around four levels of researchers: preliminary, beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
Besides these projects, there are many other minor online projects and activities. Judi Harris’ page Virtual Architecture offers one of the most comprehensive indexes of projects and resources for educators.
http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/Projects+Resources/index.html
Harris’ (http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/) division of strategies (mentioned above) describes “problem solving” as structures that promote critical thinking, collaboration and problem-based learning. She lists the following examples in this area:
· Information Searches: Caldecott Clues http://www.sags.k12.il.us/Library/Caldecott_project.htm (St. Anne Illinois) and Geo-Mystery Project at http://kalama.doe.hawaii.edu/hern96/pt053/GEOMYstery/geomys.html
· Peer Feedback Activities: How Far Does Light Go? At http://kie.berkeley.edu/KIE/web/hf-description.html
· Parallel Problem Solving: Beyond Kites at http://members.tripod.com/~candio/index.html and Sink or Float at http://www.geocities.com/sinkorfloat/
· Sequential Creations: Around the World Christmas Story at http://www.gigglepotz.com/aroundstory.htm and Flat Stanley Project at http://www.pleasanton.k12.ca.us/valley_view/second/wolfe/stanley.html
· Telepresent Problem Solving: KidCast for Peace at http://www.creativity.net/KidCast/ and NASA K-12 Virtual Conferences at http://quest.nasa.gov/activities/webcasts/index.html
· Simulations: Beyond Wild Justice at http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/Justice/ and The Charter Challenge at http://lawday.enoreo.on.ca/
· Social Action Projects: Be a Consumer Hero at http://www3.sympatico.ca/dalia/buy0/buy0day.htm and Give Water a Hand at http://www.uwex.edu/erc/gwah/http://www.uwex.edu/erc/gwah/
Strategies of “Information Collection and Analysis” involve the collection, compilation, and comparing of different types of information. Harris lists five structures that support this type of tele-collaborative activity:
· Information Exchange: Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble: The International Boiling Point Project now at http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/boilproj/ and City Quest at http://145.75.88.235/cityquest/
· Database Creation: Genre! Genre! Who Knows Which Genre! At http://www.tlt.ab.ca/projects/Div2/Grade5/genre/ and Square of Life: Studies in Local and Global Environments now at http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/squareproj/
· Electronic Publishing: Amelia's Adventures at http://comsewogue.k12.ny.us/~csinger/projects/amelia/amelia.htm and @rt Room at http://www.arts.ufl.edu/art/rt_room/index.html
· Telefieldtrips: Museum Connections at http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/ict/2learn/mmspeight/museumconnections/index.htm and River Adventure at http://www.msdwc.k12.in.us/ses/2001memphis/rivindex.htm
· Pooled Data Analysis: Taming the Tube at http://www3.sympatico.ca/dalia/tametube/intro.htm and Stream Monitoring at http://kancrn.org/stream/
Strategies of “Interpersonal exchange” are activities where individuals talk electronically individual to individual, or among groups. The author lists six activity structures associated with interpersonal exchange processes:
· Keypals: Charlotte's WebFun at http://www.holyspirit.ab.ca/assumption/sreily9.htm and How People Live in Europe and the Middle East at http://www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/Euro/
· Global Classrooms: Interlink at http://www.interlink.org.nz/index.html
and Voices of Youth at http://www.unicef.org/voy/
· Electronic appearances: Ask the Space Scientist at http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/askmag.html and Timewitnesses at http://timewitnesses.org/
· Telementoring: Electronic Emissary Project at http://emissary.wm.edu/
and Letters on Spanish Texas at http://www.rice.edu/armadillo/Projects/letters.html
· Question-and-answer activities: Pitsco's Ask an Expert at http://www.askanexpert.com/ and How Stuff Works at http://www.howstuffworks.com/
· Impersonations: Ask Thomas Jefferson at http://www.monticello.org/education/asktj/instructions.html
and Hamlet: A Visual and Virtual Reality "to be" Experienced at http://www.2learn.ca/Projects/TLProj/Hamlet/index.html
Another type of virtual trips is that of Webquests, developed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March. "A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet…" (Dodge, 1995). The main critical attribute of a WebQuest is to facilitate this transformation of information into a newly constructed, assimilated understanding. The Webquest Page Best Webquests offers information on what WebQuests are and provides links to some good topically listed Webquests in English. They are indexed following school grading –early, middle, high, adult-. The main strategies that WebQuests prompt are:
· Motivation Theory
· Questioning - Schema Theory
· Constructivism
· Differentiated Learning
· Situated Learning
· Thematic Instruction
· Authentic Assessment
· Overt Metacognition
· Learner-centered psychological principles
Information of Webquests in other languages can be found for example at: http://platea.pntic.mec.es/~erodri1/BIBLIOTECA.htm http://www.aula21.net/tercera/listado.htm and http://www.eduteka.org/webquest.php3
(Webquest libraries in Spanish). You can find Webquests in German at http://www.webquests.de/. Webquests in French can be found at http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/idecours.htm and http://station05.qc.ca/css/cybersite/webquest/workshop/francais/francais.htm
The European Schoolnet http://www.eun.org/portal/index.htm offers Webquests that can be explored in the languages of the EU. One example is “Spring Day” at
http://www.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/en/SpringSite_Resources/sub_area.cfm?sa=3276, an activity that helps students to gain insight into the notion of tolerance, prejudice and racism. Other Webquests listed are: What is
5. Conclusion
This chapter began with an inquiry into the epistemological value of the journey narrative, a metaphor that helps us make sense of our changing position in the course of our lives and in the history of our social communities. We stressed the importance of encounters with others, in this process of interchange that contributes to our intercultural awareness. We also mentioned the important role of technologically supported means of communication, artificers of new forms of disembodied communication. The last part of the chapter was devoted to analyzing different technologically supported educational models based, precisely, on the narrative structure of the journey or trip. Virtual trips or Webquests are powerful information research instruments that stress not only the attitudinal and emotional aspects of inquiry processes but, what is even more important, they help to share acquired knowledge, thus contributing to the process of global memory creation that we can now achieve thanks to Net technologies.
Glossary
Constructivism: Constructivism is a set of assumptions about the nature of human learning. The formalized theory is generally attributed to Jean Piaget who suggested that individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences following two basic processes: accommodation and assimilation. Assimilation occurs when new experiences fit into already existing mental frameworks (schemas). Accommodation is the process of reframing one's mental representation of the external world to fit new experiences. This process helps learning because it means that our previous pre-existing schemas have failed (for comprehensive data on constructivism, see Riegler)...
Cross-cultural or Intercultural communication: Its objective is to understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other. It also seeks to produce guidelines for better intercultural communication. The field of study involves a combination of several research areas such as anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, communication, etc. The growing extension of Net Technologies (Internet) opens new lines of communication.
Interpersonal relationships: They are social associations, connections, or affiliations between two or more people and imply the discovery or establishment of common and shared interests. The study of these relationships is of concern to sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication and cultural studies.
Metacognition: Metacognition refers to a higher level of thinking about cognition (perception, building schemas, memory, etc.) and involves explicit conscious knowledge (factual) and implicit unconscious knowledge. In educational environments it may refer to active control over the process of thinking involved in the learning situation (planning a task, monitoring comprehension, evaluation of the process, etc.) Metacognition is used to help students learn how to learn. Cognitive strategies are used to help achieve a particular goal while metacognitive strategies are used to ensure that a goal has been reached. Awareness and self-awareness of the learning process can maximize one’s potential to think and learn.
Motivation Theory: Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state producing a desire and willingness to do something. As opposed to motivation, emotion refers to temporal states that do not immediately link to behavior. Motivation is of particular interest to educational psychologists because of the crucial role it plays in student learning: it can direct behavior toward particular goals, enhance cognitive processing, lead to increased effort and energy, lead to improve performance, etc. There are two kinds of motivation: intrinsic motivation occurs when people are internally motivated to do something because it either brings them pleasure, they think it is important, or they feel that what they are learning is morally significant. Extrinsic motivation comes into play when a student is compelled to do something or act a certain way because of external factors (good grades, money, approval, etc.).
Net Technologies: Net refers to a knotted structure comprising fibers woven together. By extension it refers to the Internet which is a worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks, linked by wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc., that transmit information (coded as data by means of a standard Internet Protocol or IP). It is also known as the World Wide Web and it can provide information as services such as electronic mail, online chats, file transfer systems and interconnected documents (Web pages) linked by hyperlinks constituting hypertexts.
Schema Theory: The word schema comes from the Greek meaning shape and plan. It refers to a mental structure that represents some aspect of the world. New perceptions are organized into schemas (assimilation), often related to one another. Schema selections depend on varied factors such as current activation, accessibility, etc. When new information does not fit a schema several things can happen: the most common reaction is to simply ignore this information. However, when this is not possible existing schemas must be changed and new learning takes place (accommodation). Cultural stereotypes and prejudices can be among this last type of information.
Virtual Community: It is a group of people that primarily communicate and interact using Net Technologies. The term is attributed to the book of the same title by Howard Rheingold, published in 1993 where he discussed computer-mediated communication. A "Computer-mediated community" (CMC) can use special tools of communication (social software) to work collaboratively. In many case they use open source software that can be accessed by all participants.
Situated Learning: This model was first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger and it suggests that learning is contextual and embedded in a social and physical environment. Knowledge is acquired while participating in frameworks that have a social structure. The building of ethical relationships and collaborative learning between participants is an essential part of situated learning theories. More recently the IEEE (International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies) has adopted situated and interactive environments and Computer Mediated Communication as a way to standardize the use and implementation of learning objects. Virtual trips, webquests, miniquests have a huge potential for situated learning.
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Foley, K. (2003). The Big Pocket Guide to Using & Creating Virtual Field Trips Tramline.com. [Standard text that offers advice on how to create your virtual trip].
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Joyce, M. and Tallman, J. (1997). Making the writing and research connection with the I-Search process: A how-to-do-it manual.
Kawka, B., Burgess, B. (2001). V-Trip Travel Guide: Classroom Strategies for Virtual Field Trips. ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) [Standard text that offers advice on how to develop virtual trips].
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Kuhlthau, C. C. (1994). Teaching the library research process (2nd ed.).
Lévy, P. (1995). Qu'est-ce que le virtuel? Paris, La Découverte, 1995 [Standard text for exploring the notion of the “ virtual”].
Macrorie, K. (1988). The I-Search paper.
McKenzie, J. (2000). Beyond technology: Questioning, research and the information literate school.
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of
Milam, P. 2002. InfoQuest: A new twist on information literacy.
Pappas, M. & Tepe, A., (2002). Pathways to Knowledge : an inquiry learning.
Riegler, Alex (1996-). Radical Constructivism http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism
Rankin, V. (1999). The Thoughtful Researcher: Teaching the Research Process to Middle School Students.
Stripling, B. & Pitts, J. (1988). Brainstorms and Blueprints: Teaching Research as a Thinking Process.
Tötösy de Zepetnek, S. (2005). "gebindestricht in einer hybriden welt." Auf der Suche nach hybriden Lebensgeschichten. Ed. Elka Tschernokoshewa and Marija Juric-Pahor. Münster: Waxmann. 263-79.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York: Simon & Schuster.[Written by a clinical psychologist and professor of the sociology of science at MIT, this book is an amalgam of postmodernist theory and observations of people’s lives online, especially in those peculiar parts of Cyberspace known as MUDs (Multiple-User Dungeons, Domains, or Dimensions)].
Willson, M. (2000). “Community in the abstract: a political and ethical dilemma?” In David Bell and Barbara Kennedy, eds., 237-254.[This is one of the articles included in The Cybercultures Reader listed above].
Biographical Sketch
Asunción López-Varela comes from
[A1]Conferencing / also video-conference
