Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 1. Model of Suncrest Middle School built in VRML by students
town, West Virginia. As part of this elective,
various technology skills were taught including
Photoshop, Microsoft Publisher, Dreamweaver,
HTML and VRML. Because the school webpage
was also authored by the students in this elective,
all technology skills needed to be taught during the
first semester. The second semester was devoted
to completing a new school web page.
The teacher involved in the study acted as a
facilitator with students being self-directed for
the most part. Since the students had learned a
new skill via VRML programming, they wanted
to include it as part of their web page design.
The web page required skills with Photoshop,
Dreamweaver/HTML and VRML. The students
were tested to ascertain their strongest skill sets;
they were then organized into teams according
to their proficiencies. Students who were more
adept at using Dreamweaver/HTML were placed
in charge of constructing the web page and the
students who had expertise in VRML were charged
with brainstorming a VRML project to include
with the web page design. The two teams were
then given a specific area of the lab to complete
their assignments.
Because there is a recognized need for students
to be prepared for the 21
st
Century workplace, the
teacher treated the two teams as research/develop-
ment teams. Discussions were held with the class
as a whole and with individual teams to clarify
what was to be done. Students were to choose
their leaders and assign jobs to individuals. For
the purposes of this chapter, we will be focusing
on the VRML group. This group brainstormed
ideas about possible projects and decided that
they would like to make a 3D scale model of the
school. Realizing the complexity of the project
and the time constraints, they set deadlines for
themselves, divided up the different sections of
the school for different individuals and chose a
project manager. The team chose their project
manager considering expertise in programming
with VRML. The project manager was not in
charge of completing a specific area or region of
the school. The manager was in charge of trouble-
shooting difficulties that arose and combining team
members' work (individual notepad files with the
programming) into one large file. The end product
was a 3D scale model of the school constructed
entirely using VRML programming language
(Figure 1). This model can now be accessed via
the homepage of the school's webpage (http://
boe.mono.k12.wv.us/SuncrestMiddle/).
21
st
Century Workplace Skills
This case study highlights how one teacher simu-
lated the workplace for her students and facilitated
the learning of many of the essential 21
st
Century
Skills (collaboration, communication, creativity,
leadership, responsibility, self-direction, and
people skills). This project also used exciting tech-
nology to motivate students to develop the skills
necessary to succeed in today's workplace and to
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