ࡱ; gh  !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefijklmnopqrstuvwR   FCompObj   \WordDocument  $ObjectPool))  FMicrosoft Word 6.0 DocumentNB6WWord.Document.6;  Oh+'0* 0 < HT\ dp @dtao:Applications:Apps -- Lab:Microsoft Word 6:Templates:NormalNECC '94 paper sampleMichele EvardMichele Evard'@ @v@ ܥhA eҩ$ۢ#( i(""""&XC "ce"""" """"""""r0l0"""A COMMUNITY OF DESIGNERS: Learning through Exchanging Questions and Answers Michele Evard Epistemology and Learning Group Learning and Common Sense Section The Media Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology 20 Ames Street Room E15317 Cambridge, MA 02139 mevard@media.mit.edu ABSTRACT Traditional school activities do not generally allow children to make authentic presentations of their thoughts and opinions to their peers. Based on the belief that children learn through sharing their ideas with others, I am developing a computer-based environment for conversation around topics chosen by the children. In this paper, I present and analyze the first three weeks of a project in which two classrooms of children discussed the design of educational video games. In one class, students had just begun to design their own games; in the other, students had already designed games and were able to act as consultants to the new designers. Usage patterns and types of interactions during this time frame are analyzed and discussed in this paper. One of the results of the evaluation is that issues which surfaced during the first three weeks were strongly affected by the amount of time the children used the communication system. 1. Introduction One week into her design of an educational video game, ten-year-old Renee asked the following question: How do you make words appear on the screen when you reach a certain point of the screen or you reach a shape that is on the screen? This query itself is unsurprising, but the fact that this quiet girl addressed it to the combined populations of two classrooms, rather than to a teacher or one of her friends, is unusual. In the environment described in this paper, however, it was welcome and became a frequent occurrence. Seven fifth-graders answered this question; three from Renees class and four from the other. Of these children, four were male and three were female; three were African-American, one was Hispanic, and three were Caucasian. Given that these two classes rarely had contact about academic matters, and that even among themselves, these boys and girls most often asked questions of friends of their own gender, these responses were somewhat surprising. After receiving eight helpful messages, Renee replied to her own question, saying: Stop answering this question. #1, I have too many answers, and #2, I have solved my problem and am using something else. Thank-you very much. Two children replied to that message with additional information. I believe that children can learn through both asking and answering authentic questionsquestions which are personally important to them. When asking a question, a child needs to articulate what he or she wants to learn or obtain. If the response is not what was desired, the child has the opportunity to observe a different perspective on the question. The child may also realize that a single statement of a question may provoke different reactions in different people. Similarly, answering a question requires articulation of thoughts; in addition, it implies some interpretation of the question and what kind of answer was desired. While these might not be conscious processes or ones in which people choose to engage, they are possible in a question/answer scenario, particularly when the participants really want to communicate. To research these issues, I am designing a computer-based environment and activities in which children can communicate easily and feedback is valued. In this paper, I describe the first few weeks of a project in which over one hundred students were given access to the initial version of this environment. Section two provides the context of my work. In sections three and four I discuss the type of environment desired and the specific tool which was used. In section five, I describe how frequently the system was used and what types of messages were exchanged. Section six describes several patterns of interactions between the children. The final section provides a brief overview of the range of issues which arose during this project. 2. A Context for Communication Constructionism is based on the idea that people learn particularly well when making thingsespecially things which can be shared with others. A strong emphasis is placed on created objects being external to their creator, as things in the world can be shown, discussed, examined, probed, and admired (Papert, 1993). Sharing a creation can result not only in its refinement, but also in the learner obtaining a deeper understanding of other peoples perspectives on the object and on the ideas to which it is related. While my primary interest is in people learning through communication with other people irrespective of the particular topic, I believe that the nature of the topic, as well as the environment and community of the participants, strongly impact the development of communication. I have chosen to focus this paper on fifth-grade students discussions around one particular project on educational video game design in a constructionist environment. Yasmin Kafai (1993) developed an environment in which, over the course of several months, children design and implement educational video games for younger students. The designers not only discuss their projects with the others in their class, but also have the younger children test their games and give them feedback. These demonstrations, and the discussions which surround them, are critical to the process of creating objects for others; they provide the designers with new perspectives on their games. These discussions have generally been ephemeral; the children rarely have even taken notes on what their classmates or play-testers said. While the articulation of their ideas about their projects is an important step, I believe that it is important to think not only about what is said, but how it is said. Many of the designers have recognized this when writing text to be displayed after the game player did something wrong. Their verbal questions or explanations, on the other hand, have not been recorded in any way that would allow them to examine their own words. The designers write in their Designers Notebooks every day to form a permanent record of their goals, problems, and ideas. There is no sense of an audience for these writings; the notebooks are introduced as a private place. I believe this type of space is necessary, but while it is an external creation, the fact that it is not meant to be shared means that the children do not gain other perspectives on their writing. I believe that the addition of a public communication space to the Game Design Project could provide designers with the ability to not only share their questions and ideas with more students, but to reflect on their own words. Kafai and Harel (1991b) included a consulting component to one of their software design projects. In that situation, the consulting occurred on two specific occasions, in assigned pairs. The communication environment I was designing for in-school use would allow students to have much more frequent contact. Kafai put me in contact with a teacher who wished to conduct a Game Design Project but who needed Logo assistance. Use of the new environment would allow the designers to ask questions of the previous designers, who would now be consultants. 3. Providing a Tool for Communication Children in a traditional school setting may be allowed to talk with others in their own classroom, but the amount of time and the range of topics is often strictly limited by their teachers. Lunch periods and recesses are less constrained than class periods, but even if children find time in which they can talk about their own interests with their peers, it may be hard to identify other children who share those interests. These problems are magnified when children who wish to communicate are in different classrooms. In addition to the physical space between rooms, the logistics of a school day make it difficult for teachers to arrange regular times for their students to meet. A shared environment on the local-area computer network in which participants could leave messages by topic would provide students with a means of communicating with each other whenever they and their teachers deem appropriate. It would also allow each student to participate legitimately at a level with which he or she feels comfortable (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Reading messages without posting may seem to be a minimal form of engagement, but would be one way for students to be part of the community; children would have the opportunity to increase their participation whenever desired. While private email would be fairly simple to enable on most local-area networks, I do not believe that it is the ideal environment for a communication environment such as the one I envisioned for these students. Private email is sent directly from one person to another; this limits the communication to people who are already known to share an interest in whatever topic a child would wish to discuss. Furthermore, it limits the conversation to a fixed number of people, and does not allow for other people to view the discussion and decide to join it. A broadcast environment, in which all messages are public, on the other hand, would allow for children to locate people who share their interests (assuming that those people also post messages), and also to learn about others interests. As demonstrated by a study about childrens viewpoints on news which I conducted, children have particular interests but can be entirely unaware that other children in their own classroom share their interests (Evard, 1994). Several on-line systems have been created to support learning about particular topics, such as science (e.g. Barowy & Newman, 1994), social studies (e.g. Kass et al, 1993), and use of language (e.g. Bruce & Rubin, 1993; Bruce, Peyton, & Batson, 1993). This type of focus allows for more tailored software. As I wanted to provide a means for children to encounter the interests of their peers, however, I chose to design an environment which would be of more general use. A netnews type of broadcast environment seemed to be particularly well-suited to discussion of the Game Design Project between the two classrooms of students. The students who had already created their own games had a certain amount of expertise in the domain of game design, and as such could answer many of the questions the novices would have. The games they had created were often very different from each other, however; so students had varying amounts of experience at particular aspects of game design. The new designers usually did not know which of the consultants had done things which were similar to what they designed, so asking their questions in a broadcast environment was the most efficient way of locating someone who had the knowledge that was needed. One final benefit of the broadcast environment is that everyone would be able to read all the different statements, questions, and answers. Some of the designers might have similar problems; reading each others questions could help them locate students doing related things as well as eliminate redundancy of topics. By reading various answers to one question, students could view disparate viewpoints or problem-solving strategies. Children would also have the opportunity to share their expertise in particular areas, gaining a measure of appreciation in the community. Other researchers have noticed the importance to children of publishing their work in an on-line environment (e.g. Bruce, Peyton, & Batson, 1993). It is unclear if the children view posting of single messages as publishing them. While student-generated messages may remain on the system as long as there is sufficient disk space, they are still individual messages, rather than portions of a database such as the ones CSILE students create (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991). I chose not to provide an archival structure to this discussion environment; one of the goals of this research is to see if students see a need for such an addition to the environment, and what form they wish it to take. 4. Introduction of the System Mark Kortekaas of the MIT Media Lab developed a network-based news server entitled NewsMaker; his initial goal was to provide an environment in which students could write and edit articles to produce a printed newspaper. External news articles were to be transmitted daily for the children to use and possibly edit (Kortekaas, 1994). This initial framework was similar to what I wanted to build, and since we would be working at the same site, we decided to use the same software for both projects. I was able to participate in certain design decisions which were related to the environment I wanted to build, and since I have access to the source code, I will be able to modify the software according to the childrens preferences when possible. The class of consultants were able to use NewsMaker twice a week, for the last ten minutes of their computer time as long as they made progress on their own projects. The designers were free to use the system whenever they were working on their games, which was a minimum of four forty-five minute periods per week. Each child had a personalized disk with which to boot any of the computers. This brought up the Microsoft Windows environment, and allowed access to NewsMaker. When a child entered NewsMaker, the main menu bar was present. The choices included the standard Windows options File, Edit, Search, and Help. There were two additional menu items which were unique to NewsMaker entitled Newspaper and Groups. The Newspaper menu items allowed the user to indicate which messages to include in a paper and then print. The Groups menu was where all of the discussion groups names were listed; selecting one of these names displayed the list of messages in that group. I created a group called Game Design for the designers and consultants to discuss their projects. NewsMaker itself was introduced to these two classrooms as a way for them to ask and answer questions about game design in particular. The other groups on other topics were not formally mentioned to them, although many of them did become interested in other groups, such as the external news feeds, and used them on a regular basis. The designers were not given their NewsMaker disks on the first day of their Game Design Project, as most of them were involved with setting up their designer notebooks and starting their games. One girl, Whitney, asked if she could learn to use NewsMaker so that she could ask a particular question. She successfully sent her message and then went to her next class. The next day, Whitney showed two other students how to post questions; instructions were given to the entire class on the third day of the project. The consultants first used NewsMaker the afternoon of the day which Whitney sent her question about creating an extra shapes page. As there was only one question for them to answer, some of them answered it and then asked what they should do. These students did not seem able to determine what kinds of information would be helpful to the new game designers until they read the question messages. One boy, Ken, told me explicitly that he did not know what to write about. I said that he could give advice that would have helped him when he was just starting with his game. He thought about this, and said maybe he could tell them about a particular command that he had used, then stated but they probably already know it. He tried (unsuccessfully due to network problems) to answer Whitneys question, and on the following day answered three more questions. To date, none of the consultants has posted a message with advice unless it was in response to a question. 5. Usage Patterns During the first three weeks of the Game Design Project, fourteen of the twenty game designers posted questions to the game design group. Of the other six, two answered questions but did not post any of their own, and four read messages but did not write any. All but one of the eighteen students in the consulting class posted answers to questions; the one boy who did not post at all was relatively new to the school and Logo programming. As could be expected, the largest number of messages were exchanged when the system was first introduced; while Figure 1 displays a steady decrease, it does not reflect the quality of the messages or the subsequent increase in useful communication (as categorized by the children). Figure 1. Number of posts in Game Design per day of usage. To identify usage patterns, I categorized each of the 235 messages that the students posted to the Game Design group. As expected, most of the messages were either questions or answers; those messages which did not fit into either of those types were categorized by their primary content. These included agreements (e.g. with a persons posted message), I dont know statements (those without other information), thank-yous, evaluative remarks (including requests for clarification, unprompted clarifications, and comments on the tone of messages), replies made up of random characters, and blank replies. Over half of the messages were primarily questions or answers. Figures 2 and 3 break these categories down by the roles of the students in the two classrooms. Figure 2. Questions and Answers. Somewhat surprisingly, the designers answered almost as many questions as the consultants did. This is likely due in part to the amount of time each classroom had to access NewsMaker, but it may also be because the designers had more of an investment in seeing their classmates questions answered. In any case, the children did not seem to divide their community into two separate classrooms (designers and consultants) when writing messages. Very few students from the consulting class asked questions, but this was most likely due to the fact that they were doing short-term projects for which they already had the knowledge they required. Figure 3. Other message categories. Students in both classrooms made remarks about how useful various types of non-answer messages were. The evaluative remarks were generally considered helpful, and messages of thanks were appreciated. Some messages consisted primarily of agreement with another person; while these were not considered useful, they were not labeled as harmful either. Posts which were simply I dont know were said to be a waste of time by some of the children; responses that were blank or consisted of random characters were considered much worse, although some of the children allowed that the blank messages may have been due to interface problems. The designers made more posts which were considered useful than the consultants did, as figure 3 shows. In some ways, this is not surprising as they were answering their own classmates questions, and had more of an investment in the usage of the NewsMaker system than did children who only answered questions. When I talked with several of the consultants, they made it clear that part of the reason they did not spend much time answering questions was because they had their own work to do. 6. Interactions There were many different types of exchanges between students. In this section, I discuss those which were the most striking in the first three weeks of the project. Even within this short time, it was clear that there were developments on both the individual level and the community level. 6.1 Unknown Answers Some of the students considered certain questions to be unanswerable. Most of the time, when a child responded saying you cant, he or she also included an alternate solution which avoids the problem. Whitneys first question was one such problem: Title: shapes page how do you make a new shapes page? I want to have more space on my shapes page . Whitney X. While this is possible, it is non-trivial, and was not anything the children or their teachers had previously heard of or done. Even though they did not know how to make a new shapes page, several of the students answered Whitney, explaining what they would do. For example, Simon suggested an alternative solution: Title: Simon March 11, 1994 Dear Whitney, I don't know how to make a new shapes page but I do know how to erase shapes. All you have to do is go to the shape you want to erase and press F4. Bye! Of the seven children who answered Whitneys question, five of them gave this type of alternative. In this case, their alternatives were not used, since Whitney wanted to know the exact answer; she blamed these unhelpful answers on her statement of the question since, as she said, if she had told them she knew how to erase shapes but that she did not want to, they would not have told her that was the solution. In other cases, however, alternative answers were more useful. While many children began their replies with I dont know and went on to give an alternate solution, there were also five replies to various questions which simply stated I dont know without offering any advice. One such post was in response to Whitneys question. Title: Whitney"s Answer Dear Whitney, I don't know the answer to your question. I never had this problem. I hope I will be able to answer in the future! Kim X Many of the children were apologetic when they did not know an answer to give. Even so, several of the designers reacted negatively to these messages. Stephen asked a question and ended it with the words Don't answer I don't know! Albert wrote a pointed message about certain types of messages which he considered unhelpful, in the middle of which he included the statement: ... Answers like "I don't know" don't make a lot of sense, either. I think that when a person asks a question, they are trying to find out what people know, not what they don't know! ... Whitney made a similar statement. There were no more simple I dont know responses after these three messages were sent. This demonstrates the growth of a community sense of what was appropriate and helpful in this context. 6.2 Researching Answers The children did not limit themselves to answering only those questions to which they already know a solution. Some of them asked other people, searched in books, or even wrote test programs in their search for answers for other students. For example, Jorge posted the following question: Title: How many mammals live in the ocean? --Jorge X A few minutes later, Emilie came up to me and asked how many mammals are there in the ocean? When I asked her if she meant how many kinds or how many of each kind, she did not seem to know. We talked about it for a while, then she went and looked up some things in one of the reference books. She spent at least five minutes of the forty-minute class period trying to answer this question, and finally returned to her computer to send this message: Title: RE: How many mammals live in the ocean? > --Jorge X I DON"T KNOW THE ANSWER BUT THERE ARE 20 SPEICIES OF WHALES+DOLPHINS EMILIE Another designer, Jaques, also spent some of his time searching for the answer to Jorges question. He found a poster in the classroom that listed several types of seals, whales, and dolphins, and typed them all into NewsMaker. He was quite persistent, and went back the next day to finish typing in the list. Jaques and Emilie could have simply spoken to Jorge, giving him the information they had found, but both of them chose to share what they learned with the entire community. Several children stated that they tried various solutions in their attempts to answer messages. Deanna was unsuccessful in her attempt to find a solution to Emilies question HOW DO YOU GET RID OF THE BOX IN THE CORNER OF THE SCREEN?, and explained the process as follows: I think I know what you are talking about maybe if you try to delete the screen it would erase but I tried that and it would not work so I guess you are stuck ( Deanna B.) While this may not seem helpful at first glance, Deanna did explain a method which would not solve the problem so that Emilie would not try the same things she had. Each of these children willingly did research to help their classmate, going beyond simply reporting what they already knew. The teachers were glad to see children voluntarily doing research, but were concerned that some of the students would take advantage of the others; this did not happen over the course of this project. 6.3 Appropriateness of Questions Two types of questions have been considered inappropriate by the students of this community: those which the questioner could or should have looked up without help, and those for which the NewsMaker environment was not suited. These limits to the childrens communication were not formally dictated by the classroom rules or the technology, but were informally discussed and agreed upon by the students. Jorges query about mammals in the ocean initiated a discussion about questions among the designers. The two students who did some research and posted responses clearly did not think the question was inappropriate, but others disagreed. Most of those who considered the question inappropriate were students in the design class, who stated in a classroom discussion that ocean questions were things that they should search out answers to on their own. One of the consultants, Isabel, posted this response: Dear Jorge, Why don't you go and see if you can look up your question somewhere in a book or ask someone else okay. It is unclear if she thought he should not have asked on NewsMaker since she added that he could ask someone else, but her tone seems to imply that he should have known to try looking it up in a book. The designers teacher was quite clear in her message: Dear Jorge, Is this question about how to design your game? Or is this a question about information you need to know to create your game? Who is responsible for doing the research about your topic? Your classmates or you? I suggest that to answer this question, you leave the computers and go into the classroom to consult the many books about the ocean which are there. If the answer is not in one of these books, I suggest you continue your research at the library. Sincerely, Ms. M. This distinction between the science content of their games and the questions related to Logo programming was the first line drawn by the students, many of whom mentioned the question before the teacher posted the above message. Several students went beyond the ocean/Logo distinction to say that there were some kinds of questions, such as those about the appearance of an image, for which the NewsMaker environment was not conducive. This topic went beyond a one-time classroom discussion to be incorporated in the childrens discussions, and also in later posts. In his post entitled False Answers as well as in conversation, Albert stated that questions such as those about graphic design don't make sense in NewsMaker. Some students have included short code segments in their messages to demonstrate certain techniques; since there is no connection between Logo and NewsMaker at this time, however, the sender needed to retype the code. To avoid this problem, several of the students have answered a question with a proposed meeting time, generally at lunch or on the bus. For example, Cheryl replied to Emilies question with this message: I can't write out the whole procedure right here because it's too long, but maybe I can print it out and give it to you on the bus. I believe that it was important for these children to be able to recognize the limits of the technology that they were using, and to work out other means of communication when necessary. Through exchanges such as these, the quality of questions has become part of the discourse in the game designers classroom. Several times a student has mentioned to me or to another student that some of the answers received were not helpful because the question was not worded clearly, or because the question simply was not appropriate in the NewsMaker context. These children began to be aware of other students perspective of their messages, and recognized that they are responsible for communicating clearly to their audience. They also developed more of a sense of what was helpful to ask about in the given context. 6.4 Evaluating Questions and Answers As time went on, more of the messages included some kind of evaluative content. Many times students used phrases such as it depends or I dont understand and then explained the ambiguity they saw. For example, a consultant named Rachel replied to Jorges mammal question by saying: Dear Jorge, It depends on if you mean how many kinds or how many of each kind. Students in the consulting class were concerned with what the other children should know; several messages included statements like Ursulas comment: P.S. Do you already know this? because I think you do. Sometimes misunderstandings or ambiguities would be identified when the initial message (generally a question) was read, and then resulted in a conversation between two or more students. In this example, one of the designers was trying to understand what another was asking: Title: RE: RE: RE: RE: Reverse shapes >>>> Does anyone know how to reverse a shape: make the black >>>> part white, and the white part black? >>>> >>>> Albert >>> no >>> >> What do you mean? Do you mean on the shapes page? Or on >> the screen? >> Renee >> > The shapes page. > > Albert > Can't you just click space on all of the blocks in the square and then make the picture by clicking again? Then the black or background would be white and the picture or the white would be black? Renee At other times, students who responded would not realize they had misunderstood the question they were answering, but the questioner would see that the answer was not what had been desired. In several of these cases, I heard the designer who had asked the question tell another student that the question had not explained the situation in enough detail. Increasingly, the students who asked questions would clarify their own words after reading the responses. Title: RE: RE: Following Shapes >> How do you make one shape fallow another? One shape moving >> by the arrow or letter keys, the other moving by computer, >> following the other shape? >> Renee > > WELL YOU COULD USE YOUR FOUR TURTLES,THEN SEE WHAT HAPPENS. > TINA H.-307 I could use four turtles, but that doesn't answer my question. How do you make a shape follow another shape that a person is controlling? How do you make the shape that is following, follow by computer? Renee I believe that these exchanges demonstrate how the children are learning to clarify their written messages for each other, as well as to identify misunderstandings. The quality of original questions also increased with the childrens experience. Students who did not participate in evaluative or clarifying remarks did not disparage these exchanges; rather, a community sense that such interactions were helpful began to develop. 7. Discussion There are a number of issues which I intend to study throughout this and subsequent projects. I will introduce several of the topics which arose during the beginning of this project here; to treat these issues more in-depth, however, a longer time frame would need to be analyzed. The students usage of NewsMaker changed over time in at least two dimensions: the types of topics discussed, and the characteristics of the messages. Three main types of issues were discussed electronically by the students in the designing and consulting classes during the first three weeks of their projects: programming issues, issues of the content of their games, and social etiquette. Later in the project the students discussed educational issues as well; questions such as those about how things should look disappeared. There were fewer questions later in the project than there were in the first few days, but the questions which were posted were increasingly detailed and descriptive. More of the questions in the later weeks of the project requested opinions rather than simply how to do something. For example, there were discussions on topics such as whether or not trick questions in a game would teach the user anything and how to make losing funner than just halting the game. The quality of discussion, both of topics and of discourse, increased over time. When introducing this system to the children, I made no mention of any kind of social standards, as I preferred to see if the children would construct a self-governing community. This hope has been fulfilled; children have posted comments about what types of messages they consider helpful, and these opinions seem to have been heeded by the group. For example, several of the boys ended some of their answer messages with DUH! during the first few days of this project. Several of the students responded negatively to this, and some of them posted their opinions. Carrie responded to an unclear answer ending in DUH!!! by concluding her message similarly. Whitney was more explicit, as in her message titled Rude! she stated: I think that some of the answers that are given are rude and impolite.... They should also not end the question writing something like "Duh!" they should answer it with something like "And that is how you do it.". So please stop thank you. After that time, none of the children included DUH! in their messages, and the tone in general was more positive. Many people have observed the gender split on Usenet newsgroups and seen that the vast majority of people posting messages are male; it has been estimated that less than ten percent of the messages are written by women. Many women with whom I have spoken say that while they do not post in the public forum, they often send private email responses to questions which are posed in public. One of the reasons I preferred to provide public broadcast but not private email in this system was that I wanted a community to develop and for all of the children to be able to take part in it. This has occurred, and I believe that broadcast-only nature of the environment aided participation. Girls and boys answered about the same number of questions in both classrooms; the girls were more likely to qualify their answers, however, while the boys were more direct. Female designers asked twice as many questions as their male counterparts did, and while the female consultants asked a total of four questions, none of the male consultants asked a question. The children have occasionally addressed a particular person in the title line of a message, but most posts have been unaddressed. Those which were to someone in particular were generally regarding something about which the questioner already had talked to the addressee, or in which the addressee was the one known expert. While these messages were all answered by their addressees, occasionally another student would respond as well. These additional responses were welcomed by the questioners. Occasionally a question which was similar to a previously asked one would be posted. Generally these were answered as if theyd not been asked before, but a few times a respondent would refer to another answer by repeating it. For example, when Jaques asked a question similar to another, Stephan replied: Jaques, just like I replied to somebody else, "Make 'em on you shapes page!" Only one student referred to a previous post by title during the first weeks of this project. Frequently-asked questions are considered a problem on many electronic bulletin boards, partially because they cause the entire group to revisit a topic that they have previously discussed. They are most often asked by people who are new to the group and who have not seen the old discussions, so collections of such questions and their answers are commonly made to be supplied to new people. The students who have been using NewsMaker have not discussed creating any device for collecting information or for dealing with repeated questions. There are at least three possible reasons for this: all messages remained on the system throughout the project, all of the children started using the system at about the same time, and the duration of the entire project was only four months. Each of these issueschanges in topic and presentation, sense of community, gender-related issues, establishment of connections, and common themes or questionsis something which is strongly affected by time. In this preliminary paper, I have discussed the first three weeks of a four-month project; in future work, I plan to develop issues such as these more fully. Even during the first three weeks, however, a community began to develop, there was a growth in the students ability to post their questions in ways that would help others understand them, and the quality of questions has become something that the students discuss among themselves. I believe that posting questions in this public environment has helped the students own words become objects for them to think with and about. Acknowledgments I would like to thank the children and their teachers for participating in this project and discussing their perspectives with me. Mark Kortekaas not only encouraged this use of his software, but allowed me to participate in its design and supported my work with it; his aid was invaluable to me. Yasmin Kafai has been my mentor during my first two years at Project Headlight. Without her support, this work would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Edith Ackermann, Seymour Papert, and Mitchel Resnick for discussions about this project. The preparation of this paper was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant # MDR 8751190), the LEGO Group, Nintendo Inc., Japan, IBM Corporation, and the MIT Media Laboratorys News in the Future Consortium. The ideas expressed here do not necessarily reflect the positions of the supporting agencies. References Barowy, W. & Newman, D. (1994). Community of Explorers: Building a New Kind of Computer Network for School Science. Second Annual Report; Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc. Borovoy, R. D., Cooper, E. B. W., & Bellamy, R. K. E. (1994). Media Fusion: An Application of Model-Based Communication. In the Proceedings of CHI94, Boston. Bruce, B. & Rubin, A. (1993). Electronic Quills: A Situated Evaluation of Using Computers for Teaching Writing in Classrooms. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Bruce, B., Peyton, J. K., & Batson, T. ( 1993). Network-based Classrooms: Promises and Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evard, M. (1994). What Is News?: Childrens Conceptions and Uses of News. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. Harel, I. & Papert, S. (1991). Software Design as a Learning Environment. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kafai, Y. (1993). Minds in Play. Computer Game Design as a Context for Childrens Learning. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA. Kafai, Y. B. & Harel, I. (1991a). Childrens Learning Through Consulting: When Mathematical Ideas, Software Design, and Playful Discourse are Intertwined. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kafai, Y. B. & Harel, I. (1991b). Learning through Teaching and Design: Exploring Social and Collaborative Aspects of Constructionism. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kafai, Y. B. (1995). Minds in play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Childrens Learning. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kass, A., Dooley, S., & Luksa, F. (1993). The Broadcast News Project: Using Broadcast Journalism as a Vehicle for Teaching Social Studies. The Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University. Kortekaas, M. (1994). News and Education: Creation of The Classroom Chronicle. Masters thesis, MIT Media Arts and Sciences Program, Cambridge, MA. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms. New York: Basic Books. Papert, S. (1991). Situating Constructionism. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Papert, S. (1993). The Childrens Machine. New York: Basic Books. Renninger, K. Ann, Hidi, Suzanne, & Krapp, Andreas (Eds.) (1992). The Role of Interest in Learning and Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (1991). "Higher Levels of Agency for Children in Knowledge Building: A Challenge for the Design of New Knowledge Media." The Journal of the Learning Sciences, J(1), 37-68. Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Figure 1. Number of posts in Game Design per day of usage.  Figure 2. Questions and Answers.  Figure 3. Other message categories. A total of 262 messages were posted in the Game Design group during this time; I wrote ten, the designers teacher sent two, the consultants teacher answered three questions, and students from a fourth-grade class posted twelve. These messages were also categorized, but are not included in these figures. All messages contained a title and a body; the date of posting and the authors name were also associated with them. They are quoted here exactly as they were typed, other than pseudonym substitutions. The children were uncertain how to title their responses to Whitney, and a couple of them commented that it would be better to have a reference to the question in the answer. For this reason, a reply command was implemented. It puts RE: in front of the messages title and includes the message being replied to in the body of the reply, preceding each line by a >. This reply by Lisa, who didnt sign her name, seemed to be ignored by both Albert and Renee.   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