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.
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.
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.
- 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
- 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
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
- 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
- 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.
Created for the Fermilab
LInC program sponsored by Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory Education Office,
Friends of Fermilab, United States Department of Energy, Illinois State Board of Education, and
North Central Regional Technology in Education
Consortium which is operated by North
Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL).
Panagakis, Chris Marszalek,
School: Twin Groves Junior High School, Buffalo Grove, Illinois
Created: October 18, 1997 - Updated: December 8, 1997