Software: an underestimated variable?
Peter Scrimshaw · 2002
As Robinson shows, there is a wide range of ways to take advantage of this sort of electronic network. She discusses, for example, an e-mail project in which secondary pupils provided the start of an adventure on the network for a group of primary pupils, and then responded to them in role as the adventure evolved. This led not only to the composition of the text, but also a great deal of discussion and problem solving by both groups. At the same time it illustrates neatly the way in which the teacher’s role is also changed, with the older pupils in effect taking over part of the responsibility for the younger children’s learning. It also provides some parallels to the word processing case, for when a group is sitting round the keyboard preparing their message they are in effect engaged in cooperative word processing. Yet introducing a collaborative enterprise of this sort changed rather than eliminated the teacher’s contribution; as Robinson notes, the email messages were seen as real and authoritative, while one result of letting the secondary pupils lead the process of story development was that the teachers became enablers of the pupils’ activities.