by Elisabeth Nedergaard, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

In the period 2000-2003, the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Development gave a grant of 170 million Danish kroner to the Danish region called Nordjylland (Northern Jutland). This large sum of money was to be spent on the region's development of an "ICT lighthouse" to shine over the country. The project was called "Det Digitale Nordjylland" (Digital Northern Jutland), abbreviated "DDN" (see http://www.detdigitalenordjylland.dk/).

As part of the DDN project, the gymnasia of Northern Jutland were to be connected in a network, allowing them to share knowledge and create networking projects. A pilot project was the DDN Latin/English project between Fjerritslev Gymnasium and Noerresundby Gymnasium & HF-kursus. Teachers from each school suggested the pilot project should take place within the school term of 2000/2001. This was a one year project created for 1.g-level (students in their first year, age 16-18). Subjects chosen were "Roman Britain" and "Latin in English". The participant students were from 1.a 2000/01 from Fjerritslev Gymnasium and from 1.b 2000/01 from Noerresundby Gymnasium & HF-kursus.

The teachers involved were the following:

English, Fjerritslev Gymnasium: Elsebeth Austin, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ), Latin, Fjerritslev Gymnasium: Kell Commerau Madsen, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ), English, Noerresundby Gymnasium & HF-kursus: Birte Toenne Nielsen (now Birte Oskjaer), ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ), Latin, Noerresundby Gymnasium & HF: Elisabeth Nedergaard, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

The overall aim of the project was to create an innovative teaching/learning situation by means of introducing new ICT resources. The collaboration between Latin and English was supposed to add to the dimensions of both subjects (which it also did). The networking part of the project formed an important part of the innovative ICT-based teaching methods. The ICT skills and programmes were seen as preparatory for further studies. These were introduced to and practised by the students (and the teachers) during the process:

• word-processing
• use of the Internet
• conference system: FirstClass, see http://www.centrinity.com
• sentence analysis via VISL (= Visual Interactive Syntax Learning), see http://www.visl.sdu.dk/
• vocabulary training via gtPlus, see http://gbcdesign.dk/
• other digital programmes like Hot Potatoes, see http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/, Quia, see http://www.quia.com/ and Markin, see http://www.cict.co.uk/software/markin/

The networking part of the project took place in the later period of the school term, in spring 2001, when the students had already been working on the overall subjects "Roman Britain" and "Latin in English" for some time (parallel teaching) and the basic knowledge of Latin as language had been formed. Another reason for choosing this late period was that the network to be tested had to be created first.

Before introducing the networking project to the students, the teachers met and decided what sub-topics the project would embrace. We chose to focus on a literary subject, i.e. the carpe diem theme in the poets Catullus and Robert Herrick. We then created different sorts of tasks to be undertaken by the students:

• linguistic/grammatical questions with relation to Catullus III (to be answered by all)
• an English paraphrase exercise on one of Catullus' poems (either III, V or VIII depending on group)
• an essay on the influence of Catullus on Herrick as seen in ten of Herrick's poems
• and finally a creative assignment with relation to the carpe diem theme (the students were asked to write a poem of their own on the theme in any language they would choose).

The students were to work in 6 groups, each consisting of 5-6 persons of each class. The answers to the different assignments were at the end of the process period to be joined together and copied into one word-processing product, that each group was to send to their teachers as an attached file to a mail.

After the meeting, a webpage, http://home5.inet.tele.dk/austin/carpe.htm, was created for the students comprising information on:

• the groups, see http://home5.inet.tele.dk/austin/carpe2.htm
• the schedule, see http://home5.inet.tele.dk/austin/carpe3.htm
• the text of ten poems by Robert Herrick on the carpe diem theme, see http://home5.inet.tele.dk/austin/carpedigt.htm
• the assignments, see http://home5.inet.tele.dk/austin/carpe1.htm

For the process itself, it was originally planned that the two classes should meet initially, but it proved practically impossible to find a day for this purpose. In their evaluation, the students were very critical about working together with unknown persons without faces in the conference. It would have improved the outcome if they had had the chance to meet first - or at least the teachers should have let them create a personal profile for their fellow students to see. Students of this age (and perhaps of all ages) need personal contact to make the best of the virtual dialogue.

In the process, the technical details also became a problem. The network in Fjerritslev was not ready after all at the starting point of the process period, and this caused some delay to the virtual discussion between the students. The conference set up for the networking project by the technical advisors of the two schools did function without any technical problems but it soon became filled with emails sent from the different groups and became very confusing to navigate. Here, a series of sub-conferences would have improved the circumstances considerably (at least one sub-conference for each group of students).

Another problem that came as a surprise for us, was the problem of the different word-processing programs. In Fjerritslev the students used Star Office, while the students in Noerresundby used Microsoft Word. It soon turned out that they could not open each other's attached files unless they were saved in .rtf format. This formed another delay in the process. Another difference between the two schools was that the students in Fjerritslev each had a laptop, while the students of Noerresundby had to rely on desktop computers in the school's computer rooms. If all had had laptops with Internet access, the situation would have been more profitable.

Delays in the process, combined with other external factors, ensured that the planned synchronous sessions only happened once. It would have improved on the speed of the collaboration to have more synchronous sessions, giving the students an immediate response, perhaps using a chat facility. As it was, the process was rather slow, since the students often had to wait to get responses from the correspondent group of the other school. This again meant that most of the work was done by the groups without exploiting the networking process fully. At this point, the teachers were partly responsible, since the assignments could be answered by the groups of one school or the other without using the network.

In the planning phase it would have been better to construct the assignments with deadlines attached to encourage the networking. The assignments could (and should) have been conceived in a way to ensure that the end product could not have been constructed without the groups of one school having to discuss the entries of the correspondent group of the other school.

In the groups it soon became clear that the persons taking responsibility of writing in the conference were nearly always the same. Again the teachers might have encouraged the groups to arrange themselves in a way so that everybody was given the chance of writing for the conference and training the skills of sending and saving attachments. The groups could have been asked to change their contact person week by week.

The time frame for the project (three weeks in March and April) was not at all sufficient, and work actually continued far into the month of May. This was partially caused by the delays mentioned above but was also due to networking taking much time than foreseen.

When at last the end product was to be gathered and sent, it proved difficult for some of the groups to find all the relevant material and paste it together. This was partly due to the disorder of the conference but it actually caused several of the end products to be partially incomplete, which again was reflected in the evaluation of the product, where the groups in question did not get the grades they might have deserved. This served really as a lesson to be learned by the groups in question. It should be mentioned, however, that the major part of the groups did a fine job and delivered a satisfactory end product. Two of the papers were excellent in quality.

The evaluation was given in writing by the teachers of each school for their own groups. The marks were given group by group but were also reflected in the grades of the individual student at the end of the school term. The students evaluated the process through a questionnaire.

An evaluation report (in Danish) of the DDN Latin/English project can be found here:
http://www.nrsbgym.dk/~en/DDN/evaluering_af_ddn.htm