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A dynamic duo
Two students who work well on their own find that they do even better working together. By Jennifer Holvoet SCR*TEC You find out what each other's strengths and weaknesses are. And that just because one person may work on the computer a little bit more, the other one is not incompetent, but that they may just be stronger in other places. --Kristi |
 rica and Kristi
are high school students in Texas, and since they have
done outstanding work as a team, their technology coordinator, Jan Johnson, nominated them to be
interviewed together for KidSpeak.Erica and Kristi have been good friends for a long time. Together, they have learned a lot about computers, the Web, and working as a team, and they have recently created an online resource for anyone who wants to learn how to dance. Their multimedia project this year won third in the state, and they've both placed at state in previous years. Both are involved in projects of their own, as well. Kristi's currently doing a Web project on the local quilting ladies, while Erica, who is the editor of the school paper, is putting the Badger Times on the Web. It seems that more and more teachers are incorporating collaborative projects into the classroom, and from what these two have to say, this is a successful and welcome approach. Here, Erica and Kristi offer their insights into the dynamics of group work. |
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I was told that you guys worked as a team and that you took third in state with a
multimedia project. I'd like you to tell me a little about that project. K: Well, it started as a HyperStudio stack and Jan Johnson, she required a six-week project and she let us basically pick whatever kind of topic it was, as long as it was semi-school-related. Erica actually gave me the idea of dancing, since I do dancing on the weekends and she helps out with a dance studio. We did a stack. I did it in six weeks and then we combined and made it bigger the second six-weeks, and then the third six-weeks we turned it into what's on the Internet. E: Well, basically what she said. It took a lot of research to find the different kind of dances. We asked around, asked different elders in our town about some kinds of dances. We thought it was going to be hard to turn it from a stack to a Web page, but we found out it was really easy. That's really it. |
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So how did you guys decide you were going to work together? E: Because it was such a big stack it takes two people to really get the information. Like Kristi, she found most of the information. She knew a lot about the dances. Since I work with a dance group, I'm an assistant dance teacher, I got the. I got the dance videos that are in there. Okay, but were you friends? Were you in the same class? K: We've known each other for a long time. So you just decided to work together because you had a common interest, more or less? E: Yes. |
 Erica |
Let's talk about your Web
page on dancing. You interviewed some older people to find
out about some of these dances? E: We had a substitute one day and Kristi and I are not very fluent in ballroom dancing, and so one of substitutes, she was an older lady, she helped us understand what some of the dances are. That's great. I took ballroom dancing, so I'm one of these older people. E: And neither one of us was fluent in Spanish dancing either, so we had to ask. So you had to go around town and find people more or less who might know this stuff? K & E: Right. |
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When you worked together, were there some advantages and, at times, some
disadvantages to working together as a team on one common project? K: The advantage, I guess, is because not one, single person had to do everything. We could divide up the work. But as far as a common project, it was just the fact that only one person could work on it at one time. We shared ideas, but only one person could do the typing and cutting and pasting, as far as that went. That was the only big problem, I thought. Otherwise we always did it together in class. One did typing and the other one figured out what to do next. We'd switch off typing, and that was the only, the biggest problem that came about. Sometimes group projects are hard to grade and I know that is a concern for teachers. How did you get your grade? Did you feel like a group grade was fair? Did you get individual grades plus your group grade? How did that work? K: Well, we each had to get our individual grades just like on our report cards. But, we got the same grade. E: Combined effort. Yeah, it was basically just like a combined effort. And Jan Johnson saw us working on the project together and each putting in 50/50, so that basically worked out. Can you see situations in which that might not work out? Did you see any teams in your class where the work might not have been done so equitably? E: Maybe . . . I really didn't see anything. So basically, you think that when people are assigned collaborative projects, everybody pretty much does their share and does the work they should? K: I don't know. If I were put in group that didn't get along, I don't think the group would work as well as . . . well with me and Erica. We're friends, so we get along well together. Also, if you are on different levels--like we both knew about the same on the computer, so one couldn't do more than the other. But if we were put with a group that didn't know as much, we would probably end up doing more of the work on the computer, while others would do more of the work outside the computer. And it sounds like to some extent that happened even with you guys. One of you did video, and it sounds like Erica did most of the video, but somebody else did the actual research piece. K: Right. |
 Kristi |
What kind of skills did you need and how did you get those skills so you
could do both your HyperStudio stack and then turn it into the Web page? E: We've been doing HyperStudio stacks ever since the beginning of my high school year, my freshman year. Jan Johnson was always there to show us how to do it, and she would go step-by-step on one of her overhead things on how to do it. And that's pretty much how I learned how to do it. And then the Web page. To build a Web page took me longer to learn, but Kristi knew a lot about it, so she helped me as we went along through it. K: In class, Jan Johnson had us each do a little individual Web page on ourselves, which helped. It helped me learn a lot, like the basics of how to put a Web page together. And she gave us worksheets that helped us know where to put the tags and all that. But basically, since we're in the class, that's what helped us a lot, because she went over a lot of it just in class. Where do you do most of your work on this project and other things like this? Do you work at home or at school primarily? E: Well, when we did our dance stack that we won third in state with, we did a lot of it in school, seventh period, and some of it we did at my house, because Jan Johnson gave me the software to convert it so we could work on it sometimes at my house when we couldn't stay after school. Mainly we did it in seventh period class. Do either or both of you have computers at home? K: Erica does. I have an older computer that is not a Macintosh, so I didn't have the software to do it at my house. But Erica does. Do you spend a lot of time on the computer? K: At school, yes. All the time. |
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What do your parents think about the Web? K: My dad is a lot more interested in it and my mom would like to find out more about it, but she's just not very computer-friendly, I guess you could say, since we don't have that kind of software at home. But both of them are very interested in it, and all my brothers and sisters have either been on it or had the chance to use it daily. They're interested in what I'm doing, too. E: Both my parents don't really know a whole lot about computers. Since we have one at home, my dad is learning more and my mom, she gets real frustrated with it, but I try to help them the more and more I learn about the computer and teach them what I learn at school. They like it because it's handy. Me and my sisters, we always have to use it for school. Are they worried about all the negative publicity that comes out about the Web? Does that worry them at all? K: My mom is. My brother, he goes to school up at UT, and he's on the Net all the time, she's worried about it. You hear on the news about how people get your name and stalking and stuff of that nature. She's worried that he's going to end up getting hurt somehow. My dad is not too worried. He knows that I'm not going to publicize everything about myself on it. E: My parents feel basically the same way. They hear all that stuff about the stalking and stuff and they just tell me not to give out all this information so people won't find out more about me. How do you think technology overall and the skills you have gained through class relate to your other interests and your life plans? What's technology's place in your life right now? E: Well, I want to be a journalist when I grow up. So, to be a journalist and go into broadcasting, you have to know a lot about computers. And I've also thought about after I get my journalism degree going and maybe minoring in some kind of computer databasing, so it would help me make more money if my journalism falls through. K: As for the future, I would like to go into accounting and/or business administration. So all my work on the computer is going to help me there somehow. Maybe not so much as everything I'm doing on the Web now, but a lot of it will come into it. If I don't go into accounting, I'm looking toward education, somewhere in the mathematics field. In terms of technology, and I know that one of you doesn't have an up-to-date computer from what you say, but do you find that you have started using the computer for other things besides assigned projects? K: I do all the time. When a teacher wants a report on something, I just go on the Net and get a little information on a person or find out a little more about this subject. Since I learned how to use it in class, I use it for almost all of my classes, not just for an assignment in that class. E: Personal interests, too. If you want to know something about somebody, you can use it all the time. |
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How do you think you guys got turned on to technology? I mean technology doesn't
grab every
student. It doesn't seem to do with how intelligent someone is, because some
very intelligent people grab onto technology and some
very intelligent people don't. And we're
trying to figure out what is it that makes somebody think, "This is for
me, this works for me." E: Well, when I first learned how to use the computer, I was so amazed at how much faster I could do everything. Instead of having to hand write all of my research papers, I could type them. I was amazed at the Internet because instead of having to go to the library to find something I could just look on the Internet and it would be faster than having to go and look for an hour for a book. I just, I love computers. K: It's basically the same way for me. Just how fast it works and how much easier it'll make life. Because, I mean, to go into a library, and first have to find the book that you need, and then go through the book to find the information that you need, takes forever. Just to be able to find it on the computer, grab what you need, and then you haven't wasted a whole lot of time looking for the book, and you haven't wasted a lot of paper trying to take notes on it. It's just the easiness of it that grabbed my attention. |
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On the other hand, both of you say that you have some parents who don't
seem to have that grab. What do you think makes it so hard for them to see that
ease? Because apparently they
don't see it as easy. They see it as something difficult. E: I guess as a child growing up, they were never really taught it. And so, as we were growing up, we were always taught to use computers, so I guess since they are just now trying to learn, and they feel their kids know more than them, they get real frustrated with it. K: I guess because technology moves so fast, and since we've been in school we've been able to keep up with it, and my parents are now jumping into it, and they feel like they're so far behind that they're never going to catch up. So I think that's why my parents aren't into it as much as I am. Do you have teachers that are the same way, or do all of your teachers use computers? K: Some teachers use it a lot more than others. Some are kind of like my parents, they know how to type and they can, you know, print out Word documents and stuff. They know the basics, but they don't use the Internet and stuff like that. They just do simple things on it. Other teachers are on the Net all the time and e-mail. So it's a wide variety. |
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So what have you learned from technology besides just the
technology itself? What are some lessons you've learned by using
technology? E: Well I know once you get to college, that's all that you use and with having that class, it's going to help a lot. K: I don't know what. I'll give you an example. For instance, one of the things I learned is how small the world really is. The Internet for me puts everything at my fingertips, but it also puts tons at my fingertips, so I've had to learn to sift more. Have you learned any lessons like that? K: How small the world is is very accurate. Because you can get on the computer and let's say you want to look up "history," or you're talking to a person on the chat across a 3,000 miles, you'll find out that maybe they know somebody that you know. For me, it brings the world closer to you. It doesn't seem so far away or so far out there that you're never going to be able to touch it. E: Yeah, you don't even have to leave your own house to get an airplane ticket any more. K: Right! Do you think the information on the Internet seems more real to you than, say, information in a book when you get it off the Internet? E: I don't know. It seems like there is a lot more out there on the computer. But I feel a book has more information. K: To me, it seems more real, but then at the same time, it seems a little scary because of the fact that you know a couple of years ago, that this wasn't possible. You know you just couldn't just go on the computer and want to find something and be able to find it. And now it's all right there for you. I don't know, it seems, the information seems more real, because it's right there and it's not in a dated book. |
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What have you learned from working together? K: You find out what each other's strengths and weaknesses are. And that just because one person may work on the computer a little bit more, the other one is not incompetent, but that they may just be stronger in other places. Like I wasn't able to video because I wasn't, I just didn't have the opportunity. Erica was much stronger in that than I was, but as far as actually getting down the Web pages, I knew a little more there, so I could make up there what Erica made up with the video. Is there anything else you want to tell me about your project, or technology? K & E: Jan Johnson's been a big help. K: Technology is out there. You're going to have to use it one way or the other. Especially those of us growing up now. E: Everything is going to be technology. |
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