|
Article Excerpt
This article presents a design of educational software employing group competition using a large interactive electronic whiteboard, and a report on its experimental use. Group competition and collaboration are useful methods to cultivate originality and communication skills. To share the same space, the same large screen, and face-to-face communication with others is very important in a group competition. By employing a large interactive electronic whiteboard, we can also introduce the benefits of IT into this environment. We have designed a group competition application, i.e., Kanji pairing software using an interactive electronic whiteboard. Through experimental use of the application at two elementary schools, we confirmed the necessity of selecting competitive elements according to the children's personalities, the teacher's leadership style, as well as the potential to motivate children to learn. Moreover, the children kept their concentration and the teacher grasped children's study processes. Therefore, we have found that an interactive electronic whiteboard and group competitive software can be effectively employed in classroom learning.
**********
In recent years the importance of the role of computers in elementary school education is increasingly being recognized. For instance, the revised curriculum introduced in Japanese elementary schools in 1998 stated: "In each subject, the teacher should aim to make the children familiar with using computers and information networks in their study by introducing audiovisual and other necessary educational material." In order to meet this objective, computer labs are rapidly being set up in elementary schools, and teachers are also making an effort to acquire and hone their computer skills.
Many schools are making an effort to incorporate computers in the teaching of various subjects, and several software systems in the field of Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) have been developed to assist in this task. Many of these systems are drill-based or tutorial-based and show a varying ability to adapt to the student's progress (Alexandris, 1998). More recently, Computer Supported Cooperative Learning (CSCL) systems have also been proposed, which allow students to collaborate with each other in a group (Strijbos, 2001). However, little attention has been given to the role of competition in learning.
While an undue emphasis on competition may be stressful, a certain level of competition is necessary to motivate and inspire students. If the competition is between teams, it also fosters cooperation among team members and promotes improvisation. With proper supervision and guidance, the teacher can also help with the development of individual students. Therefore, the students can get a sense of achievement and feel encouraged to study further.
Introducing the computer into group competition-based teaching reduces the time needed by the teacher for preparation, which in turn allows the teacher to pay more attention to the students and to monitor their growth and development. The teacher can check the students' answers and their results can be discussed in the group to encourage the students' ideas naturally. Furthermore, schematics, animations, and other audiovisual material can be used to facilitate students' understanding, as software tools for preparing such materials are now available.
The interactive electronic whiteboard has already been introduced for classroom teaching, and has been shown to possess many advantages. The electronic whiteboard is a large whiteboard with a pen-input tablet and an eraser, which work like normal chalk and eraser. We have already developed several useful interfaces for the electronic whiteboard [IFIP] (Nakagawa, Oguni, & Yoshino, 1997, Nakagawa, Hotta, Bandou, Oguni, Kato, & Sawada, 1999). More recently, we have been working on incorporating the electronic whiteboard into classroom teaching to integrate the advantages of traditional classroom teaching and those of using the computers in the classroom [ACM SIGCHI] (Sakurada, Bandoh, & Nakagawa, 1999, Bandoh, Nemoto, Sawada, Indurkhya, & Nakagwa, 2000, Otsuki, Bandoh, Kato, & Nakagawa, 2001).
In this study we focus on developing competition-based study environment using the electronic whiteboard in a classroom. We believe that the use of an electronic whiteboard fosters teamwork and face-to-face communication.
Towards this goal, we present the design of competition-based educational software for learning kanji pairs. We also demonstrate the potential of the software by showing how it allows the competitive elements to be adjusted depending on the personality of the students in...
|
