Analysis of VMT Project paper
From VMT
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[edit] Instructions
- Provide a review of this paper.
- Comment on what you found relevant to the course in this paper.
[edit] Comments on Team Statements
It is interesting to compare the different impressions that the 4 groups got from reading the overview of the VMT project. Group A seems very concerned with issues of security (from child predators), authoritative knowledge and strong facilitation by teachers. Other groups seem to emphasize the opposite, the ability of groups of learners to develop their own practices and to build knowledge with little or (increasingly over time) no teacher facilitation. It might be useful for the teams to comment on each other's statements here. This area is not necessarily just for the instructor to comment, but providea a space for knowledge building across groups. Gerry 09:52, 26 April 2007 (EDT)
Comments by groups on postings of other groups:
[edit] Team A Statement
- Seth, Olivia, Brian
- Bku22 21:33, 18 April 2007 (EDT)
Analysis of VMT Project
The main goals of the VMT project are to encourage and nurture networks of people discussing mathematics in a web-based environment. The catalyst for these discussion forums are online chat rooms for small groups of K-12 students and other scholars to be able to communicate about math.
Social networking procedures:
-To qualify for a Math class level a online test would have to be taken by each individual student joining VMT. This process will better bring individauls together who are around the same level. And teacher or mentors can be assigned to each groupaccording to their grounds.
-All classes with have a state cerified teacher of facilitator for the child security.
-Parent are required to assist there children in registering for VMT, enough idenfication is required to identify parents and children together for legal purposes on a yearly bases.
-Grade level will be determine the social networks class size. The size of the group should be directly related to the group grade level and the amount of teacher guidance required.
-When group has to be larger it will be spit into two or more chat room and multi teachers or mentors will have to be availiable. There should be more teacher involvement for younger grades (1-5), and less for higher grades.
-All video used in any social network process will be reviewed by the teacher or facilitator.
Group practices:
-Smaller groups would be more effective for generating focused discourse because one topic could multiply into several tangents if there are too many participants. Hence, one practice for group discourse would be to focus on the discussion topic at hand when in a particular chatroom. If other major discussion topics arise, these should generate separate chatroom discussions.
-All chatroom participants should be conscious of the fact that not all information being offered by other students is necessarily fact. The purpose of interactive learning is to generate discourse between those interested in a topic; however, all should be aware that the chatrooms are discussion forums, not reference sites of experts. All facts should be cited appropriately to help other students distinguish between fact and opinion.
Technology:
- must be easy enough so that young children can use the tool for learning as well as computer-savvy folks.
- must have chat function to allow for discussion between multiple users.
- must have enough security on edit functions to prevent multiple users from editting at once (and losing work).
- should have some kind of undo/recover capability.
- incorporate webpage sharing capability.
- ability to share video/other multimedia (many people are visual learners, so being able to upload a video into the shared space would facilitate learning); to prevent the violation of the learning space, all media would need to be approved by the teacher/facilitator for appropriateness.
- survey function to allow users to submit feedback about the technology and offer suggestions (particularly if the software is new and bug-ridden).
- include search option for finding relevant discussion postings/comments.
- FAQ button for frequently asked questions.
- allow for knowledge building and feedback about others' postings.
[edit] Team B Statement
- Dave, Elizabeth, Fernando, Kate
- Fernando 02:38, 25 April 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Analysis of VMT Project Paper
1. Provide a review of this paper.
The paper documents the evolution of the Virtual Math Teams Project (VMT). The VMT project seeks to use the Internet platform and it’s capability for social networking and interaction for the advancement of mathematical knowledge. The project has evolved from the use of a commercial chat system to work on a Math Forum Problem of the Week (PoW) into a social interactive network.
The VMT team added several capabilities in order to provide the Web 2.0 social network experience. In collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute a chat system was developed along with a lobby for connecting with and creating other chat rooms. Students use these tools to build upon each other’s knowledge of mathematics with the help of VMT staff.
2. Comment on what you found relevant to the course in this paper.
The obvious relevance to the course is our use of the VMT system to connect in groups. We use the VMT to collaborate on group work and build on each other’s knowledge. The paper did bring about a better understanding of what VMT was and what it was targeted for (mathematics). We see that VMT was designed as an ongoing platform where students gain experience then mentor other novices in VMT. For our course this was not logical as by nature our courses begin and end in a non-overlapping fashion. So we as the non-targeted market for VMT do not have the mentoring of experienced users.
[edit] Analysis of Groupware Paper
1. What kind of social networking procedures, group practices, technology would be helpful to attain the goals of the BSCW project? Did the paper describe features that would support social networking? Did it describe features that would be useful in this course or in the VMT project?
The BSCW project was more of a basic way for groups to share documents in an organized manner. It could use a way of socially networking with other groups in an interactive manner such as chats, whiteboards, and forums. The paper described these features as part of the additional capabilities built on BSCW by the ITCOLE Project. This new groupware known as Synergeia supports the collaborative knowledge building that was lacking in BSCW. One of the features in Synergeia that would be useful in this course was the group knowledge building area. This asynchronous tool allows for offline thought and cognitive individual thinking prior to submission to the group. A great tool to help with the offline content would be someting similar to Blackboard's Backpack (http://backpack.blackboard.com/). This tool allows users to use Blackboard offline. Once the user has internet access, information can be synchronized between the local computer and the online content. Another capability that can be used for this course and specifically for the VMT project is the MapTool which is Synergeia’s whiteboard function. It allows users to start with a blank session and save previous sessions. We found this would work well in the VMT environment.
The combination of both papers gives a historical overview on how groupware has been adapted to fit educational needs. One such platform is the VMT Project which is using groupware to create a collaborative, knowledge building community in the field of mathematics. VMT is is paving the way for future collaborative learning sites on the Internet.
[edit] Team C Statement
- Members Ben, LisaG, Kevin
- Date and Time of posting 4/23/07 9:15 pm LisaG 21:16, 23 April 2007 (EDT)
Analysis of VMT Project Paper
One of the main points of the paper is that the VMT environment provides a different kind of learning experience than what is possible in a standard classroom environment. This type of environment, the paper argues, is better suited to the way mathematics is learned. It is argued here that mathematics is best learned through a process of discourse and practice, as opposed to memorization. Another goal of the VMT project is to record and analyze the digital records of learning which are automatically created by the VMT learning process. This analysis is used to study how the social practices of the group progress from the start of the problem till the end and how they change as students become more familiar with the software and the environment. The students themselves then become the advanced users taking on the role of mentor or leader and assisting other users. Then there are learners at all levels coming together to collaborate and share experiences and information. Students who may be shy to participate in a traditional classroom setting gradually feel more comfortable sharing their perspectives in VMT. The more practice a student has with the VMT, the tasks can unconsciously become second nature, building confidence, and ultimately bringing a student back wanting to continually learn and contribute. Metcalf's law "The more people who use something the more valuable it becomes" may apply here with the idea that the more active members will assist with growing the community.
This paper helped clarify that the design of the VMT is not meant to replicate a classroom environment, but to create a collaborative learning environment, which will also allow forthe creation of further data for analyzing patterns of online learning. The article also highlighted the extent to which the VMT was developed over time by starting with small groups of students in a chat only environment. VMT evolved in response to user needs which only became apparent as users experimented with the service. By adding the whiteboard it allowed for another form of communication inside the group and also showed that, due to the technical difficulties using the board, particpants varied in levels of comfort using this tool more time to learn about working in this environment was needed. Additionally, the article effectivley presented the idea that group cognition is possible with the VMT project and not necessarily within the traditional classroom setting. The student participants produce steps (or sequences as the article describes) ultimately consolidating the actions of various users into an integrated communication path resulting in group cognition. The idea being that the congnitive results are not the outcome of one individual's contribution, but are the result of contributions by a group of participants. Finally, the article emphasized that the VMT evolved, and by introducing new tools at different steps and evaluating feedback from participants, this iterative design approach is in itself a form of collaboration between the users and the system designers.
Application of key points in our course work
We all came to the table with different levels of experience and had to learn how to use the whiteboard and post to wiki. As each group member learned something new it was shared with the group. Some members took on more of a leadership role and were able to answer "how to" questions from other members. We made extensive use of the chat and could go back and utilize the individual contributions to formulate our agreed upon group statements. We also shared our technical frustrations (such as the instability of the system) and supported each other.
[edit] Team D Statement
- Members Bertha, Jeeves, Eric
- Date and Time of posting Eric 21:26, 18 April 2007 (EDT)
Group statement on reading.
Team D - Week 3 - Group Reading Part 1- Virtual Math Teams Project
The paper itself is well structured and properly defined its intended purpose and audience. (pg 1; ln 43-46) Section 1 introduces the environment in which VMT will serve, followed by an explanation of what VMT will contribute in section 2 and 3. Section 2 explains the tools that VMT will provide the users of Math Forum while section 3 explains how these tools will promote user interaction and community learning through use of these tools.
The background information helps to place the ideas related to creation of a dedicated meeting and discussion tool for mathematics, as well as the basic challenges that would be expected for a collaboration tool involving group members around the world. Therefore, the basic VMT services were created to ensure daily participation and encourage collaboration on simple problems, before promoting the more free thinking aspects of the system. (pg 2; ln 33-36)
The primary focus of the VMT Project is to promote knowledge through math discourse (pg 4; ln 16). In keeping with this concept and with the global outreach of this Project some systematic considerations should be addressed. With collaborative systems such as VMT connection latency may well negatively impact the project. In keeping with the global scope of the project a distributed network of servers would maintain lower latency and as close to realtime discourse within the VMT Chat and the whiteboard subsets of VMT (pg 5; ln 32 - 44)
This paper emphasized the initial structure and administrator intervention required to ease users into the system. Furthermore, the reasoning behind the pairing of a whiteboard and chat system is easily understood in the context of a collaborative interface, and delivers an evolutionary pathway from construction to usage. In addition to this VMT is designed to take real world experiences and learning techniques and work with the student to integrate those ideas into the user experience. (Pg 6: ln 18-21)
In this course, we use VMT to discuss non-math issues. Even though we do not benefit from being able to communicate mathematical topics by drawing our symbols and equations, we were able to benefit from the ability to communicate through drawing in week 1 for the design of our resort devices. Since this course is based on communication of verbal ideas, we benefit the most from being able to communicate through composing analytical write-ups together and being able to review the history of the write-ups' development. We also benefit from the ability to point to parts of conversation or whiteboard and post our comments in the chat window. At the same time, the social practices that we have developed and are developing in our group and how we use VMT may differ from how other groups that are using the forum.
The Virtual Math Teams Project was initially designed as a collaboration tool for Mathematical problems, and to promote discussions from individuals around the world. The system has evolved to take on a role that is considerably beyond the initial coursework leveled on the device. The method of learning has changed the group dynamic from taking sole direction from an authority figure, to a self sufficient interface. Initial guidance was needed to shepherd teams through, but after the first few weeks, proficiency has been gained by all members involved, thus generating a new pro-active learning dynamic. The VMT Project has fulfilled many of the expectations for a Mathematical collaboration device, and has a few features lacking to make it an all-round collaboration tool. The features that can improve the applicability of VMT is covered under the Group Design Project Week 3.
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