Frequently Asked Questions
Following are a few insights to questions regarding:
Apprentices
My fifth graders are not very good or quick with typing. Any suggestions for how they might improve their efficiency? Some teachers have had success with "team typing." One student types what the other student says (either by reading from their handwriting or constructing orally). The student who is speaking is careful to see that their words get typed accurately -- so the typing, proofreading and correcting steps are collapsed into a briefer time frame. Once the first draft is typed, the student can work independently on the computer to edit and expand the text.

Some teachers have found that it is worth the students' classroom time to have an intensive typing experience.


My students are too quick to interrupt me with simple technical e-mail problems -- how can I make them more independent and responsible? This problem should be short-lived, but it may be useful to identify one or two adept computer-users in your class to serve as helpers.

Direct them to their e-mail address books, which has problem-solving tips.

Post the instructions on or near the computers they use.


One or two students have not received a timely response from their mentor -- what should I do to help them? Suggest that they e-mail their mentor again, but not to whine or complain. Instead they should write a funny, overly dramatic or otherwise compelling statement to which their mentor will be unable to remain silent. Simultaneously, ask your collaborating high school teacher to check on these mentors to see what the problem is.

Another approach to this problem is to look into the archive (in E. Laine) and read the correspondence between the apprentice and mentor. You could e-mail the mentor directly to see what the problem is.


Some of my students don't like to write whether on the computer with a mentor or by hand in an old-time composition book.
What can I do?


Give credit for correspondence. Ask the student to turn in printed documentation of the e-mail exchanges.
If I publish only the very
best writing of my students
in the cyberzine, how
will this encourage the
weaker writers? 		Quality writing is the goal, but working toward quality requires active writing. Start the cyberzine with the very best writing. As you scroll down the page, less impressive writing can be presented. Presence in the cyberzine can motivate your weaker writers to move up the page.


Just about all my students
want to print out their
e-mail correspondence.
Should I discourage this? 		No. Many fifth graders are not fluent writers -- they cannot spontaneously create an appropriate reply to e-mail. They need time to think the message over and construct a reply. For some, the printed e-mail is a kind of trophy that shows that they are "wired."


Some of my students almost
never check their e-mail. How
can I get them to pay attention? 		Set up a regular schedule between the apprentices and the mentors so they know when to check their mail.

Post "you have mail" notices on a bulletin board.

Send the errant mail-checker a partial clue to a larger puzzle. For example, clues may lead to the location of a missing newspaper reporter. List all the students who have the clues (available only in their e-mail). In order to solve the puzzle, the students will put pressure on each other to get the clues.


I am running out of cyberzine ideas -- any suggestions? In addition to publishing school projects, you might consider developing briefer pieces on: local heros, movie reviews, book reviews, best web sites, class statistics, where am I? (mysterious place description) or what am I? (description of a thing).

Check some other web sites for ideas. For example, the Library of Congress site (http://www.loc.gov/) provides primary historical documents and the Smithsonian Institution (http://www.si.edu/) has all kinds of sites.


I am concerned that the cost of the telephone connection will be too much. How can I help
to control the cost? 		Make sure that your students are creating their correspondence or writing assignments off- line. We all know it is better to write in a thoughtful or reflective situation (off-line) than in a stressful one with the clock ticking and other students waiting their turn (on-line). Writing off-line gives more students a chance to telecommunicate.


How can I get more time on task for writing on the computer? Perhaps you can work out a collaborative assignment between the librarian, the computer lab teacher and yourself. The librarian may care about the creation of a good bibliography, the computer lab teacher may care about introducing more word processing techniques such as handling indented quotations or the creation of tables, while you may care about the construction of a good argument about a current social issue. If you can agree on what each of you requires and can collaborate, the students will be more focused, have a more integrated experience, and get more time on task.


I have little experience with web searching -- how should I construct a search activity for
my students? 		As you probably know, searches on the web can be endless. You may want to draw a comparison between a library search and a web search, stressing the importance of subject headings and key words. Showing them how to use "bookmarks" is also a useful first step. The first search they do might be a team effort between two or three students working collaboratively. How to cite things found on the web is also worth discussing. The first search can be simple and straightforward -- something like early airplanes or space travel.
Return to Q & A beginning
Mentors
Some of the mentors aren't paying adequate attention to
their apprentices. How can
I encourage more and better interaction from them? 		If sufficient writing has been accomplished by the apprentice, ask the mentor to analyze the writing problems of the apprentice. If all the mentors do this, it can become the topic for a class discussion. Perhaps you can discover what are the most common problems and which ones are exotic. If you have a mentor page on your high school web site, these problems can be discussed there. This could even become an on-going site for writing diagnosis and cure.


Now that the Writing Exchange is in full swing, interest on the part of the mentors is starting to diminish. What can I do to keep them active? If you haven't initiated any form of mentor recognition, this would be a good time to do so. Recognition can take many forms: you could invent a series of graded steps on your web page from listing by name to writing guru advice to posting the mentor's own writing to offering to host a homepage for the group of for the most active mentors.


Some of my mentors report that they are not getting any responses from their apprentices. How can I help them establish a better connection? There are several things you can do: 1) send e-mail to your teacher-partner and see if he or she can jog the students into actions and/or 2) encourage your mentors to send an unexpected message to their apprentice -- something funny or crazy -- something requiring a response, like a knock-knock joke.


Some mentors are having trouble getting computer time to send or receive messages. They don't need much time if they are not composing on-line. Make some of the phone connected computers "hot," i.e., scheduled for brief use only. (Mentors wanting to search the web will need a fair amount of on-line time.)
Give mentors "priority use" of modem-connected computers.


I am finding that there is a great disparity among the mentors in their use of the web information. Any suggestions for how to give them more experience? You could pair up a mentor with much web searching experience with one with little experience and ask for a team report on some topic. In this way the less experienced students learn from the more experienced ones.

Set up a research assignment in which more points are given for relevant but obscure web sites. You could turn it into a kind of web site "bingo" game. You would have to thoroughly search the topic and create the game board.

Set a research assignment and have different segments of the class use different search engines and pool their findings and techniques.
Return to Q & A beginning
Teacher Collaboration
Once the collaboration is set up and things are rolling, I get distracted with other commitments. How can I keep the apprentice and mentor activity synchronized?


Staying in touch with your teacher-partner on a casual basis helps. Share your student's success and growth -- this is what gives the project meaning and keeps your attention active. On a more technical level, keep each other informed about your schedule and any change in expectation.
Despite the schedule the collaborating teacher and I set up, our students seem to get off schedule and then the writing doesn't move through the various stages of change. Any suggestions for how we can improve on this?


Tie the writing mentoring to something physical to be handed in on schedule that demonstrates that they are, for example, on the second draft. Especially when a project goes on for weeks, students tend to procrastinate and wait until the last minute. This tendency defeats the process-oriented approach to writing that the apprentice-mentor system advocates.
Return to Q & A beginning
Technology
Must both schools use the same service provider?


If both schools are in the same area, it is easier to use the same provider. If this is not possible then you and your collaborating teacher need to decide which service provider will perform the match between the apprentices and mentors at the two schools. Both service providers will need to download E. Laine.
I want to access the correspondence of one apprentice-mentor pair.
How do I access the e-mail archive?


The e-mail archive is kept by E. Laine, who resides on your internet service provider's unix system.
Some mentors want to set up a mentor cyberzine and I know nothing about html. How can I help them?


You can copy for them the section of the Teacher's Handbook that deals with this topic and/or you can direct them to the cyberzine on this web site to use as a template.
Return to Q & A beginning
Send your questions to Writing Exchange
To learn more about the Writing Exchange, select from the following options: