Project Description

Legend has it that Madog, son of Prince Owain of Gwynedd, sailed toward Ireland in 1180 in an effort to escape warfare, but took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere in America. He so much liked the people there and lived there so happily in peace with them for a time that he returned to Wales and encouraged many people to go back to America with him. They sailed back in thirteen ships. Unfortunately they were never heard from again and no evidence of any settlement has ever been found. In 2001 when living in peace in our world still eludes us, we salute Madog's initiative and embark upon a project to bring learners in Wisconsin and Wales together via electronic communication to explore science, mathematics, and technology.

1. Needs Identification:
The project seeks to improve
1. teacher education students'(preservice teachers') preparation in inquiry-based elementary (K-5) science, mathematics, and technology,
2. classroom teachers' acceptance of inquiry-based teaching methods and ability to use them,
3. use of interactive technology for sharing of children's ideas and investigations while building intercultural understanding, and
4. opportunities for experienced teachers to share their expertise with colleagues.
We have identified the needs of preservice teachers and classroom teachers (inservice teachers) by discussion and individual surveys in teaching-methods classes and in discussion before, during, and after our Goals 2000 project at Ripon College. Other needs of inservice teachers were also identified in those discussions and by surveys of principals and superintendents in the participating LEA's (Berlin, Green Lake, Oakfield, and Ripon). The enthusiasm for the mentoring component of the Goals 2000 project, the children's interest generated by our first two target content focus projects (on rainbows and everyday uses of mathematics, respectively), and the possibility of expanding international contacts inspired this project.
Following are examples of how the project will meet the professional development needs of the participating LEA's.
· The project will provide an excellent way to integrate interactive technology standards with the rest of curriculum in Green Lake School and improve web-page design skills of teachers in Berlin,
· offer new opportunities to promote the use of everyday math in Berlin,
· offer ways for teachers at Belle Reynolds School in Oakfield to share the excitement of their new outdoor classroom and nature study area, and
· target content areas in physical science (e.g. matter and simple machines) or earth and space science (e.g. solar system) where testing shows needs for better understanding the in the Ripon schools.
2. The objectives of this program are these:
· The preservice teachers will become more comfortable with investigation (inquiry)-based teaching methods in elementary science, mathematics, and technology in the context of content standards. They will be applying these methods in a target content area chosen from content standards in collaboration with an experienced mentor teacher in the mentor's classroom. At the introduction of a new target area each semester, teachers will ascertain the children's ideas and current knowledge in that area.
· The project will support the mentor teachers' own development of inquiry-based teaching through collaboration with colleagues via electronic communication, monthly meetings, and workshops. Teachers will be chosen to help lead workshops and at present at professional meetings such as WESTfest.
· All teachers in participating districts as well as all preservice teachers in the third and fourth years of their programs will be encouraged by their districts to participate in two workshops each semester. Workshops will address content-area knowledge, inquiry-based teaching strategies and the interdisciplinary teaching and learning opportunities available using electronic communication.
· Three classrooms at similar grade level-two in different participating Wisconsin LEA's and one is Wales (United Kingdom)-will be teamed as a triad to share ideas and results of investigations in the target content area via electronic communication (e-mail and linked web pages). Preservice teachers will be responsible for managing the communication process and making sure that regular communication occurs. This aspect of the project will reinforce and motivate good communication skills and develop interactive technology as a means to support intercultural learning and friendship.
Classroom instruction will change as this program proceeds by
· emphasizing understanding children's ideas as part of an inquiry-based learning process,
· doing more learning by investigation and student-designed projects,
· communicating ideas and the results of investigations projects with other classrooms, and
· using interactive technology for ongoing communication to learn content and expand intercultural understanding.
The target population will become more aware of the investigative nature of science, mathematics, and technology as well as the opportunities it provides to share with others and learn about them. This is a culturally based science, mathematics, and technology learning initiative.
3. Program Design
Before each semester begins, the project directors, their colleagues in the School of Education at the University of Wales Bangor, teachers in the LEA's, and teachers in Wales will choose the target content area that will provide the semester's project focus. The activity of choosing target content will help us appreciate each other's common educational goals and the overlap of Wisconsin Standards and the Welsh National Curriculum. This will be accomplished as described below.
Developing the core: The core of preservice teacher participants at Ripon College each year will come from the group taking Educational Studies 337 (Elementary Teaching: Science) followed by Educational Studies 338 (Elementary Teaching: Mathematics). Additional students will be added to the group up to a total of 20 based on their interests and performance in course work. Each preservice teacher will be paired with a mentor teacher from one of the LEA's. Mentor teachers recommended by administrators in their schools before the beginning of the school year will be invited to join the project until we have enough to work with each student and cover the LEA area in a balanced way to allow pairings of classrooms at similar grade levels across district lines. We expect the majority of project time to be spent as the preservice teacher and mentor work with children in the classroom. Each preservice teacher must visit his or her mentor's classroom no less than twice per month to remain in the project, but will be strongly encouraged to visit weekly. In the classroom, the preservice teacher-mentor team will collect and analyze children's ideas, discuss, choose, lead, and evaluate exploratory activities, help children design and carry out investigations, and facilitate regular communication with the partner schools in Wisconsin and Wales. So that the project directors can keep track of the communication process and the concomitant progress of the project, all electronic communication must be copied to them.
Monthly Meetings and Workshops: Preservice teachers, their mentors, and the project directors will meet monthly (except for busy December, February, when WESTfest occurs, and May when these meetings will be replaced by classroom-pair gatherings in the schools) to discuss progress, problems, and new ideas. These meetings will be held either at Ripon College or at one of the LEA schools. We shall hold two workshops each semester. Locations will vary depending on the topic and facilities available (e.g. nature study at Oakfield). Each workshop will be held on a weekday afternoon and evening and repeated on a Saturday to accommodate teachers' schedules. We shall affect 20 preservice teachers and 20 inservice mentors directly each year through ongoing classroom work plus at least 20 more of each through one or more workshops. To the extent that results of investigations are shared within schools, most of the rest of the teachers in the LEA's will be indirectly affected. The participating LEA's have a total of 83 teachers in grades K-5 and approximately 1850 pupils.
4. Evaluation and followup:
At the beginning of each year all participants (Welsh teachers included) will complete a survey of attitudes toward inquiry-based science mathematics, and technology and school-to-school communication. We shall survey them again at the end of the year and compare responses. Preservice teachers will begin or add to their teaching portfolios which will contain observations and reflections in a journal format, pictures, and students work. Inservice teachers will keep a journal documenting the quality and quantity of preservice teacher participation, goals for future work, and reflections at the end of each semester's target study to share with the project directors. At monthly meetings we shall evaluate progress on target area learning and discuss solutions to any problems that arise. We shall evaluate each workshop in terms of perceived quality of instruction and usefulness to participants by survey at the end of the workshop. Presenters and the project directors will review the evaluations and use them to improve future workshops. At the end of the first year, mentor teachers and project directors and our teacher-education colleagues at Ripon and in Bangor will review the evaluations and activities of the year and set specific goals for the next year's project. At the end of the second year, they will draft plans to continue communication as part of their normal classroom routine. Continuing communication with Welsh schools will be facilitated by colleagues at the University of Wales Bangor with the assistance of Mary Williams-Norton, adviser of Ripon College's study-abroad program in Bangor for preservice teachers. All participants will be asked to share any new contacts or particularly interesting investigations with all project participants on a continuing basis. Project directors will have participants join them in presentations or help them prepare to present on their own at professional conferences such as WESTfest and contribute to publications based on the successes of the project. Science Teacher Education, the journal of the British Association for Science Education, is especially interested in such cooperative projects involving schools in the United Kingdom and has already published the account of Ripon College's first student to study at Bangor (Kevin Kitslaar."An American in Bangor." Science Teacher Education (31, August, 2001) pp.2-3.). Aspects of the project might also be published on the state level in WESTword, the newsletter of Wisconsin Elementary and Middle-Level Science Teachers, or nationally in Science and Children, one of the journals of the National Science Teachers' Association..
5. Diversity
Minority populations range from less than 1% in Green Lake to about 13% in Berlin with Hispanic populations making up the greatest parts of these populations. Some Native American, Asian (predominantly Hmong), and African American children are also present. Approximately 9% of these children are speaking English as a second language and receiving special ESL instruction. Close to 15% of children in the LEA's have been identified as having special educational needs. We have found that collecting children's ideas and asking them to explain them increases the children's confidence and interest in the subject matter. The collection and interview process persuades children that their teachers are interested in what they think. It has also been our experience that hands-on group work and investigation in science, mathematics, and technology broadens the appeal in those areas to include more girls, minority children, children with disabilities, and children with limited command of English. As do preservice teachers in college classes, children contribute to the group process of investigation through their particular talents, and the group achieves success commensurate with its members' ability to cooperate. Diverse ideas and experiences are an advantage in an investigation because they contribute novel procedures or explanations. Since many of the children in Wales with whom classes in Wisconsin will be communicating are learning English as a second language, we anticipate that language issues will be an interesting and important aspect of the project. Wisconsin children learning English as their second language will be encouraged by communicating with other children also who are also functioning in a bilingual environment in school and at home. All the children will have a chance to learn that bilingualism is the norm is many countries around the world. We shall include some introductory instruction in Welsh for the children in participating Wisconsin classrooms. All of our target content areas will concentrate on areas of science, mathematics, and technology that are accessible to and enjoyable for all children and their teachers because the activities will use familiar materials and investigate systems chosen from everyday life. Preservice and inservice teachers will help children pursue their own investigation questions within the context of the target content. They will learn by doing the investigations themselves and telling others about the results. If everyone is having fun, learning about things that they all encounter in daily life, and being able to pursue questions they wonder about, no one should be excluded from the learning process.
6. Credits:
The program will not offer credits, although work on the project will be linked with assignments in courses taken by the preservice teachers.
7. Other projects:
Although Mary Williams-Norton directed several Eisenhower projects from 1992-1997, these were focussed on professional development for inservice teachers through workshops and sharing groups. This project is fundamentally different because it (a) concentrates on cooperative work among preservice and inservice teachers and (b) includes a major effort to connect classrooms in Wisconsin and Wales via electronic communication even though it will include participants from some of the same LEA's.
8. Dates and Times:
Timetable Year 1 (with participants having a minimum of 27 days of contact):
May-July: Contact LEA's and Welsh colleagues for
· recommendations for mentor and contact teachers, and
· suggestions for target content areas and their importance within standards and curriculum.
August:
· Contact Wisconsin teachers to assign mentors and classroom pairs,
· assign preservice teachers to mentors,
· assign Wales contact teachers to triad groups,
· survey all teachers concerning attitudes (see section 4), and
· choose target content area with appropriate question about it to elicit children's ideas.
September:
· Hold workshop #1 on target content on weekday 1:30-8:00 p.m. and repeat on Saturday 8:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m. to accommodate teacher and leader preferences and schedules.
· Arrange web-page design workshop for preservice teachers.
· Collect and analyze children's ideas and begin activities, investigations, and communication among classrooms.
· Late in month hold first meeting of all mentors, preservice teachers, and project directors to share children's ideas, progress, and problems.
October: Hold another mentor/preservice teacher meeting, continue classroom work.
November:
· Hold workshop #2 (on weekday and repeat on Saturday) to concentrate on communication issues, Welsh culture and language, expansion activities in target content, etc. as progress of project dictates.
· Hold mentor/preservice meeting, continue classroom work, collect target area suggestions for next semester (in consultation with Welsh colleagues, all teachers, directors).
December: Conclude classroom work on semester target area with appropriate evaluation of children's learning (project, original investigation, etc.) including review of children's current ideas
January: Choose new target content area with appropriate question about it to elicit children's ideas.
February-April continue as September-November with these exceptions:
1. No teacher meeting in February. All will be encouraged to attend WESTfest.
2. If funding for teacher exchange, which is being sought by Ripon College through its own resources, is in place, first Wales to Wisconsin delegation would visit during the British Easter break period. Workshop #2 would occur during that visit as well as many special gatherings. Delegation members will visit all participating LEA's.
May:
· Paired classrooms will meet to "celebrate investigation" at one of the pair's schools. The gatherings will involve social time and learning with group activities related to the year's target content areas. At each gathering the children will prepare something (crafts, messages, etc.) to send to their contact school in Wales.
· Inservice teachers and project directors will meet to review the year, set goals for the next year, and contribute suggestions for the next target content area to be investigated.
June-August:
· Project directors will set up mentor, preservice, and Welsh contact teachers for the next year and,
· if teacher exchange has begun, we shall choose the first Wisconsin to Wales delegation so they can begin preparation for travel in October (during College fall break).
Year 2 from September on: same as Year 1 with the following exceptions:
· A new group of preservice teachers will be working in classrooms.
· Target content and workshops will all be different.
· Mentor teachers and/or Welsh contact teachers may change to allow different interested teachers to participate.
· If teacher exchange is ongoing, two different Wisconsin to Wales delegations will travel in October and June and another Wales to Wisconsin delegation during the British school Easter break.
At the end of the project, the directors and representatives from the group of mentor teachers will formulate a plan to continue communication among schools, including the schools in Wales. We shall set up a List-Serve to help those teachers who plan to continue communicating with other classrooms. This connection will allow us to keep track of continuing collaborations and allow other schools in Wisconsin and Wales to join.
10. Personnel:
Project Director will be Mary Williams-Norton from Ripon College. She has had extensive experience working with teachers in Eisenhower Professional Development Program workshops and the Goals 2000 project at Ripon. Her contacts in Wales, understanding of the British National Curriculum and Initial Teacher Training Curriculum in primary science, and command of the Welsh language make the Wisconsin-Wales connection viable. She teaches Ripon College's Elementary Teaching: Science course as well as a course entitled Investigations in Natural Science and Mathematics, so she has a good command of inquiry-based teaching strategies. She often visits elementary-school classrooms or conducts planetarium shows for classes in the College's planetarium classroom. She also advises Ripon College's Society of Physics Students educational outreach project, the Physics FUN Force that has begun visiting area elementary schools. For more information about this, go to the group's web site: http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/nortonm/funforce.html . She has served as president of Wisconsin Elementary and Middle-Level Science Teachers (WEST) and chairs its Grants Committee. Click here to see her resume.

Assistant Project Director will be Keri Simacek. She began working with Mary during Eisenhower Professional Development Program workshops at Ripon College several years ago. She has been expanding her contributions to elementary science, mathematics, reading, and other areas throughout her teaching career. As experienced elementary teacher, college-level teaching-methods instructor and inservice-teacher workshop leader in many different areas, she has extensive experiences with K-12 teachers, pupils, as well as preservice teachers. During the planning process for this proposal, she served as liaison between teachers and administrators in her district and other project planners.Click here to see Keri's resume.

Both Mary and Keri have discussed the aspects of the project extensively with teachers and administrators in the participating LEA's and provided them with outlines of the proposed project. Mary has pursued the contacts with Wales with the encouragement and assistance of colleagues in the School of Education at the University of Wales Bangor. The project is being enthusiastically supported by Bangor's School of Education as an expansion of Ripon College's educational partnership with them. As a pilot project, both Mary's preservice teacher class and Keri's fourth grade class are working with the Potato Trap Project originating at Ysgol San Sior (San Sior Primary School) in Llandudno, (North Wales) with the help of headteacher Ian Jones. Go to http://www.santsior.conwy.sch.uk/contents.htm and click on potato trap to find out more about the project. It's been fun so far and this is just our first foray into organized international collaboration! This is what the project can bring to our preservice teachers, teachers in area LEA's, and pupils in their schools.

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