The other is the demo of the new Classroom Suite - a somewhat scary set of apps from IntelliTools. It is also a technology that can be used in an assistive classroom (on a PC, on a Mac the tools are not yet available). It does seem to make good simulations, and it comes with a large set of templates and tutorials. Almost too easy for the teacher, it seems to me. But I am interested in the speaking Word Provessor, which may be a solution for preK-1 teachers who want to use computers but are struggling with when and how.

The other free web page tool I have used is SchoolNotes. I access my pages by going to the Least Tern Workshop Page: http://www.schoolnotes.com/04548/esky.html. Note that the zip code is important. If a student wants to see the pages, he/she needs the zip code, goes to School Notes then picks Least Tern from the school list. Least Tern is not, of course, a school, but I make it a school of 2 teachers and 20 students, which it is for training sessions.

I did it - today I opened an acct. so that I could get my group mail transferred from one e-mail address to another. Then I got messages from the old address. Then I set up a My Yahoo! homepage, which was fine even though it gives me business news that I don't want. Then I tried to set up a chatroom. It was stunning to see how many chat room names would not be welcome in a k-12 school - hidden inside such topics as Teaching and Research. So I set up my own, private, by invite only. Which never got set up. So I set up up Public by invite only. Never appeared on the list. So I set up a Group - confirmed that it was set up, and then tried to invite participants - alas, I got a nice message that there was no such group. So I used the Help - Ask Us friendly feature to write a note. And it returned a page of advice about setting up a chat room.

So although I do feel that Yahoo has value for education, and I will persevere, I'm not finding it a teacher friendly tool. This is that URL (in case the group ever gets active):

Permissions

Collaborative Learning, and especially Answering and Attending Tasks, can not succeed unless an active and clear set of permissions is in place in the group (online, real-space, classroom, synchronous, asynchronous).

Those permissions are:
• permission to hold and express ideas,
• permission to raise questions,
• permission to apply criteria to the evaluation of another's product or learning task step,
• permission to be assessed,
• and permission to change direction or content as a result of assessment (permission to filter).

In a learning culture that is heavily weighted toward individual concrete comparison ("Is it right?") and away from of "I think that..." and "What do you think? this is a lot of permissions.

It is an essential Teacher Task to model and grant them.

These are the core skills developed by and necessary for Collaboration. I believe this skill set is essential to education in the 21st Century and to the effective use of technology. Teaching it must begin in Kindergarten, even though the higher order technology and thinking tasks themselves will not be tackled until much later.

I am not going to discuss in detail the Questioning Skill, for I feel that Jamie McKenzie has researched and written wonderfully, clearly and thoroughly on the subject (see links below). It will suffice to say that teachers should copy McKenzie's articles, examples, and lists and paste them in their plan books. And use them daily to construct, model and teach Questioning. The first step in a successful collaboration is a good question set; students must become confident questioners.

Jamie McKenzie on Questioning:
• Grazing the Net.
  
• Questioning as Technology
  
• A Questioning Toolkit

Answering Skills have not been the focus of ed tech literature or research lately. However, any experienced teacher recognizes that:

Questions come easily to children. Answers are hard work.

The collaboration process can by stymied by poor answers. Let's take a look at some Poor Answers and some Good Answers:

Poor Answers - the poorest answer is, of course, silence, but here are some categories to which the teacher should be alert:
• Avoidance : I don't know; I didn't do it; I don't want to think about that; I don't understand the question; You didn't teach us that yet; I don't see any pattern; I only know two of them.
  
• Lateral Arabesque : I agree with Robert; It's just what you said; It's the same as last time.
  
• Ask Back Guesses : The red one? 10?
  
• Hesitant Guesses : I think maybe...; It could be...
  
• Question Confusion : Which angle do you mean?
  
• Knowledge Confusion : What's an adjective again? How do I know if it's a growing pattern?
  
• Irrelevant : (laughter); a rude comment; a noise; an unrelated fact or observation; That's a dumb question.
  

Good Answers

• Review and Extend : If angle B is obtuse then segment AC must be the longest one; If it's a growing pattern then the next unit must be...; If the Mayor thought the Chinese were good merchants then...
  
• Agree/DisAgree with Reason : I agree with Robert because; Robert said that....but I think that...because.
  
• If...then 1-1 : If the pH is 7 then the water must be...; If the cloud has that shape then...
  
• Conclude Many-to-1: Based upon the evidence, I would say that...; All of these examples are the same in that they...; Betty's actions show that she is feeling...
  
  
• Extrapolate 1-to-Many : If this rock is limestone then the rocks at X are limestone; If the crayfish died because of the water temperature then lobsters die when the ocean temperature goes up; If more boys in our class wear sneakers then...
  
  
• Factual : The formula is...; The capital of Iran is...; The three types of Greek column are...
  
• Self-Directing Search : I don't know, but I can find the answer in...; I don't know but if I do X I can find out; I don't know but I will ask...
  
• Critical : I think we should be asking...; It would be better to ask...; That question is not relevant, how about this...

Both adults and children discern the difference between Good and Poor Answers. However, it is the adults who have the responsibility of guiding students toward the Good Answers. The best strategy in a cooperative setting is not to correct the answer and is not to redirect the question to another student. Instead, the teacher should:

• Restate the question for the student
  
• Review or guide students to necessary knowledge, even if this seems a side track (rarely is only one student confused or lacking knowledge)
  
• Say, Try it again; That doesn't answer the question, try again; There are many good answers - try again; There is no one right answer to this one - give it a try;
  
• Wait
  
• Reinforce Good Answers by asking students to repeat or build upon them (not to restate)

The teaching of Answering Skills requires that a set of what I call Permissions be in place in the classroom or learning area. This will be the topic of the next posting, then I will return to QAAFFA.