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Collaborative Projects for Humans:
The Computer's Role as a Tool for Critical Thinking

Venette Cook

ESL Faculty City College of San Francisco

Begin with the end in mind.


Overview: Collaborative work provides a rich and motivating environment in which students actively construct their own ability to use language as a tool. The misunderstandings they encounter and the subsequent refinements they must make encourage them to enlarge and refine their communication skills and to be responsible for their own language learning. How can we bring the computer, as one element that allows our students to store, sort, and organize information, into this process? How can we help them use computers as creative, efficient tools?

Suggested collaborative projects:



  1. Musical computers: Students rotate from computer to computer after a short time to continue a story chain. Graphics help move the story along. Language tasks can be highly focused or not. This activity encourages students to appreciate context and continuity as they write.

  2. Poetic Memories: Students listen to a poem, then work together to cut and paste the poem (which I give them on a disk) back in order. To succeed, they need to use their shared aural memory, their sense of context, and their understanding of rhyming patterns.

  3. Jigsaw Compositions: A story is divided into three groups, the beginning, the middle, and the end. Each group of students receives one part of the story. Together they need to read, understand, and remember their text without taking notes. After a specified time, I collect the text.Then a roving reporter must travel and learn about the other parts of the total text, return to her original group, and help the group reconstruct the entire story. Finally, they open a document and enter the story, taking turns at the keyboard.

  4. Partner Quiz: As a follow up to a reading, students work in pairs to edit a summary or response paragraph. The editing tasks can focus and check their understanding of writing skills and word processing skills.

  5. Dicey Memories: Four students work in two teams at one computer, each working with one column in the same document. Using a grid to review vocabulary and work on (language) monitoring skills, students roll dice and choose a word. Teams compose a sentence in a column. Points given at end for sentences which are grammatically correct and show comprehension of vocabulary words.

  6. How Many Strawberries? All students have a set of questions to answer. Class is divided into A group and B group. The A group looks at a computer document on screen which displays an interoffice memo about ordering strawberries for a restaurant. The other half looks at an invoice for the strawberries (which is different from the amount ordered.) Next, without the documents, students compare the information they have gathered. The students pair up and puzzle out the problem. Finally, each individually writes a letter with a suggested remedy.

  7. What kind of employee are you? Using vocabulary to describe behaviors and characteristics of employees, students created a school wide survey about work attitudes. The class worked together to create the survey in a spreadsheet, to distribute the survey with an explanatory letter to various classes. After they gathered this data, they published the results in a visual report on a school bulletin board using text and spreadsheet pie charts.
    Finally, students used the data they had gathered to reflect on their own personal qualities as future employees. The data gathering, the publishing, and the reflection assisted them in writing thoughtful, effective cover letters and resumes.



References:



NC5 Conference
April 23, 1999


ESL Department
 City College of San Francisco
URL for this page: http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~vcook/compthnk.html
Last update: 11/10/06 by Venette Cook.