Fermilab LInC Online

Scenario for Learning Center / Computer Labs

The First Week in the Language Arts class:

Students arrive in the Language Arts class knowing that they are about to begin the Guild Hall project. Their teacher introduces the project and leads discussions on what the expectations are for both students and teachers overall during the course of the project. During this week the learning center director and language arts teacher will review internet search strategies, copyright issues, and citing of resources using a computer connected to the internet and to a TV-Monitor to display the computer screen to the whole class. This review will cover the following as needed:

How to Take Notes on the Computer

Instructions for using SimpleText to take notes on the computer.

 

Search Engines on the Web

This listing of search engines called "Jump-Off Points" is from Twin Groves Junior High School. Use the back arrow of your browser to return to Guild Hall.

 

Copyright Sites on the Web

This listing of cites on the internet dealing with copyright issues is called "Copyright and the Law" and is from Twin Groves Junior High School. Use the back arrow of your browser to return to Guild Hall.

 

Citing Resources

This listing of cites on the internet dealing with citing resources is called "Style Manuals" and is from Twin Groves Junior High School. Specifically for use by Twin Groves students is the "Twin Groves Junior High Works Cited Sheet," more commonly refered to by students as "The Green Sheet". Use the back arrow of your browser to return to Guild Hall.

 

The use of a Student Project Planner will be demonstrated for keeping track of where they have been on the internet and what they find. The remainder of the week will be spent in the computer lab of 15 computers connected to the internet, with the students exploring the school's Virtual Renaissance website in order to gain an overall feel for the Renaissance period.  

The Second Week in the Language Arts class / Learning Center / Computer Labs:

The students arrive from their social studies class and sit at the tables in the Learning Center. They have come armed with the knowledge of what they are expected to accomplish: Gaining background information about guilds within the Renaissance period. Renaissance books and materials are laid out on the learning center tables. The Learning Center director gives a brief overview of where to find print materials (books, vertical files, reference materials, maps, etc.), as well as accessing relavent CD-ROMs from the CD-Tower on the eight available computers in the Learning Center. Students are instructed on how to use the Secondary Resource Log tool to keep track of their findings.    

 

Weeks 3-5 in the Learning Center / Computer Labs:

The students arrive armed with their apprenticeship cards from their selected guild signed by the master of that particular guild, or intern cards from their selected college signed by the master teacher of that college. They are now ready to spend the next three weeks in the computer lab and learning center investigating the skills and various aspects of their chosen guild or liberal art through use of the school website, searching the internet, utilizing material in the learning center, and investigating appropriate CD-ROMs. They will also utilize the other resources available to them within the school such as the art lab, the home economics facilities, the science labs, etc.  

Special e-mail accounts have been set up for each guild team in order for them to correspond with other masters of their guilds in remote locations. These "remote masters" have been pre-selected and arrangements have been made for the students to ask questions through e-mail correspondence. If students are able to arrange for a CU-SeeMe conference with their remote master, the learning center director will help them set up a time and guide them through the process utilizing a computer set aside and configured for this purpose.  

Students will also have room to work on their presentation for the Guild Hall culminating activity in which they will showcase their talents in order to procure employment under prospective employers who have come to hire the needed talent for various projects such as:

• catering banquet feasts,
• building cathedrals or hospitals,
• forming an exploratory voyage,
• designing inventions or tools,
• engaging in scientific inquiry,
• commissioning artistic works,
• establishing a bank,
• designing clothes,
• mounting a theatrical production

The Last Two Days of the Project:

 

Armed with their rubrics to judge whether an apprentice or intern is ready to enter the real world and be taken on by a prospective employer, the students enter the learning center which has been transformed into Guild Hall. Half of the students have set up "stalls" to display the talents and knowledge they have acquired of their chosen guild during the past few weeks. Their objective is to convince prospective employers that they are ready to be elevated to "journeyman" status and be employed for one of the various projects the prospective employers are hiring for.

 

The other half of the students have come prepared to play the part of the prospective employer hiring an apprentice as a journeyman on a particular project such as those listed above. They each have a rubric prepared in their language arts classes by which to score their fellow students. Each prospective employer has been studying the same guild during the past few weeks and therefore is knowledgeable in what to look for in an employee.

 

The second day, the students reverse roles. The two students in the guild group of four students who were apprentices the day before, now become the prospective employers hunting for employees, and the two students in the guild group of four who were prospective employers the day before now become the apprentices hoping to make journeyman and sign on with a real job.

 

The Following Summer:

 

The scripts, products, and primary and secondary research sources of those passing from apprenticeship to working status will be added to the school's website by volunteer students in the following summer, to share with upcoming classes and the world-wide community.

The students will have the use of flatbed scanners, QuickTime VR authoring equipment and software, sound input devices, digital cameras, VCR equipment, camcorders, etc. in order to incorporate the finished products presented by students at Guild Hall on the website.