Each of LEAP's elements represent a different stage of the problem solving cycle. LEAP is the problem solving part of a larger problem processing model for an Internet based site called CROP or Communities Resolving Our Problems.
 

An Overview of the Simple Model

 The thinker uses the found information of the previous stage to evoke a response. That is, the composer must create with sufficient skills to stimulate a response from others. Without a response, the effectiveness of the communication cannot be known. The greater the communication skill, the greater the ability to put the new found information of the Look phase in a context readily understood by the creator or by the listener(s). To date, primarily just one computer tool has been heavily promoted for composing thought, the word processor. However, not only is the text manipulated by the the word processor just one of many means of computer mediated expression (e.g., paint, digital video editing, music) but it is no stronger than other equally available tools for efficiently and playfully mapping and guiding developing thought (e.g., outliners, draw programs or spreadsheets). Later charts in this article will point to other options.

 The learner must next pause to assess progress. Assessment runs from low level spelling and grammar checking to reflective discussions among members of online work groups of projects underway. This stage requires emphasis on value judgment. Evaluation skills must cover the wide range of potential means of expression noted in the previous stage, from word processor programs to spreadsheet programs to multimedia. This assessment is formative in nature. That is, the goal of assessment at this stage is to have an impact on a creation still in development.

 Last in this cycle, the thinkers publish their creations. Publishing implies far more than submission for a grade in a classroom. It calls for the targeting of an audience most similar to the focus of the author or creator. Publishing is sharing among peers, among those with genuine interest in a topic. Further, I use the term synonymously with perform. I intend for this stage to appeal equally to those whose means of sharing does not necessarily involve the simple frame of a page or a video screen, such as a choreographer, a conductor or a gymnast. The emerging information highway gives thinkers an instantaneous neighborhood and global reach for their effort. Yet, publishing is not really last in the cycle. Publishing often serves as the incentive to begin the cycle again, a recycling stimulated by feedback on the performance or publication. Inherent to the publishing stage is a more summative assessment of achievement. Critics (e.g., a movie critic) provide comparison with similar work and give some indication of overall quality.
 

A Deeper View of the Model

An Overview of the Complex Model

Application

2-D: The Tools Dimension

Though a complete explanation of the concepts, skills and actual program and web sites titles is far beyond the scope of this discussion, the index can provide a personal growth inventory. That is, print out the branches of this index and check off the tools that you can use effectively now. Those that remain unchecked represent skills and concepts to pursue for your own personal development. This index or table, then, provides the LEAP model with a second dimension, the tools dimension.
 

3-D: The Curriculum Dimension

These charts show that the LEAP reveals a significant common ground across all content areas, a common ground differentiated only in terminology. This creates links that cut across the work of those developing thinking process skills in many curriculum areas (e.g., writing, Kelvin & Leonard, 1992 and Pelletier, 1992; critical/creative thinking, Manzo, et al, 1992; science, O'Loughlin, 1992; math, Pruett, 1993; problem solving, Reschke, 1991). Each column expands the definition of each stage of the LEAP model. Through these curriculum specific terms, the LEAP model can more tightly wire computer tools to specific content areas. From another angle however, LEAP provides a cross-curricular structure, taking a generic thinking model and its associated computer tools and applying them to solving problems across a number of content domains.

 To experiment with an online version of this model, rich with options and alternatives, visit the Problem Solver's Home page (http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/Learner/learnerhomeEasy2.html) currently being served from Western Carolina University.

Local vs. Global Computer

If you can operate only on your immediate computer workstation, then you use the local computer. This is the column in the chart labeled Local Actions. Instead of repeating the names of specific applications used at the local computer (e.g., word processor), I have converted the applications from the LEAP application concept map to general sets of actions that are universal to the wide range of local tools.
 

LEAP Application Concept Map

If you can operate with, from or on computer systems that are remote from your immediate workstation, then you use the global computer. This is the column labeled Global Tools. Global computing requires computer networks. Network enabled tools are advancing at an accelerated pace with much to offer those educators who acquire this power to extend their reach (e.g., Hunter, 1992; Anderson, 1993). The right-most column shows which of the many applications given on the prior chart require connection to computer networks in order to function. The LEAP application concept map also incorporates examples of the commonly used global tools. It is important to emphasize that these are examples of type, as new network tools are being invented faster than they can be included in the concept map. The extensive nature of this global list re-emphasizes the importance of thinkers having access to the Internet and other computer telecommunication utilities.

The Curriculum Integration Table and the LEAP application concept map provide a way to see what applications should be taught in the context of different stages of the problem solving process. They also enable those in different content areas to see that they share a vast area of commonality among the 21st century tools for thinking.  A wide range of significant technology skills used in one course will have obvious application even in courses significantly different in content themes.

These two perspectives also enable us to create rubrics from which lessons and assignments can be built. A blank example of such a rubric that is ready to use is easy to create. Providing generally useful examples is more difficult as each teaching situation involves very different problems in content. Creating a lesson with the rubric which uses a basic recall question in the context of science merely requires the educator to make decisions about which tools in the far right column are appropriate to use. There are many decisions that an educator must make at each stage. Some steps of a lesson will not requires a computer connected to the network and some will not. Some applications will already be known by a teacher and the teacher's students and some will not. If sufficient instructional time is available, the lesson may need to be proceeded with focused time in learning and teaching an application that is not known that needs to be incorporated in the lesson.

The overarching goal of the K-12 curriculum development process should include eventual instruction and use in all the applications noted at each of the four stages. This should be done with the understanding that new applications may be added or may be replacing those now included. This rich set of applications cannot be introduced, let alone mastered in one year of instruction. Following Bruner's spiral curriculum model, each year should include some work with one or more applications in each of the four stages of the LEAP model. The comprehensive nature of these applications might lead users to see the computer as playing an increasingly domineering role in our culture. It is important to communicate that though its value and importance is growing, the computer's dominance over key elements of what it means to be human is not.

NOT!

These processes are highlighted by bold facing text in the column on Local Computer tools, beginning with "humans not computers choose problems and purposes."That is, at the look stage, somehow a selection must be made among all the vast things at which one might look. Our selections are based on human intentions, on problems and purposes as thinkers see them. Only when these human decisions are made can computers amplify human intelligence.

Second, humans, not tools, generate and elaborate. That is, no matter how long you let a word processor run, it will not type anything by itself. This is true of all our composition programs, whether paint or music. Even if computer programs are written that mimic creativity, someone must still write those programs. People, not computers, initiate and extend creativity.

Third, tools have nothing to say about the substance of the teacher's and learner's work. That is, the computer might give you feedback on spelling and grammar patterns, but it cannot judge the direction of a work. It cannot report that the writer is on the right or wrong track nor say what actions need to be taken next. A teacher can. A student can. A computer cannot.

Fourth, humans, not tools, have value systems through which to appreciate or take comparative measurement of the works of others. When a work is published, critics can apply their values and judgments to weigh the contribution of a creation. They can compare it with similar works. Computers cannot.

At each of the four stages of the LEAP model, the most substantive actions of that stage are not taken by computer technologies, but by the value laden actions of human beings. Consequently, these actions taken at the local and at the global computer highlight aspects of thought that are unique to humankind.

I pass for now a more extended discussion of the question of whether technologies can ever can fulfill them or whether they should even if they could. It is my bias that the computer cannot perform these value laden roles, but even if it could, it should not. However, connecting our value systems with these wide reaching computer capabilities is essential in allowing the technology to provide the greatest possible magnification for the role of human intelligence, for the ethical direction of advancing technology, and for the even more critical role of intelligent teaching.

The importance of this issue requires educators to consider carefully the degree to which our system of education emphasizes instruction in ethics. Without a significant ethical base, increasing human power to think (through the enhanced ability to deal with information) merely empowers a two-edged sword to also cut in both random and negative directions.

The LEAP model provides a framework from which issues can be resolved as they are found.

Complexity

 Taylor's model (1980) still guides educational planning for computer technology at the highest level of our states. Through this model we design curriculum to show our students that the computer can teach (tutor), do work (tool) and be taught (tutee). Yet the Taylor model is a model that does not grow out of educational direction and philosophy. Its language is centered in what the computer can do, computer science categorization, not what the learner should do. As long as our eye is on what the computer can do, our planning will be in turmoil, for computer technology is rapidly going through a metamorphosis to the telecomputer and beyond. Our educational game plan is hitched to a no-win catch up race. By the time educators have developed within the culture the economic will to provide major support for a technology in education, and then adequately educate teachers in its use, our culture has moved on to other technological targets. We can do better. LEAP's emphasis on placing our educational agenda first, and technology second, provides another important benefit. It changes the psychology, the perception that education is always behind technological developments. From LEAP's perspective, our educational concepts are in the lead, awaiting computer technology to catch up with our goals. To change our status as educators, we must move to lead developments, not follow those set by corporation products (such as computers and multimedia) and by national economic planning (the national information infrastructure agenda). While attention is drawn to education to see how we are doing with these new technologies, it is a good time to change the perspective to our educational concepts.

 Those with responsibility for curriculum development and the integration of technical innovations can see that teaching the use and mastery of these concepts and tools will require a deep scope and sequence chart spread across the K-12 spectrum and beyond. But it is a challenge that educators have faced and managed before. The challenge of teaching these concepts and tools matches the complexity, the time and the importance of teaching the reading process. Such work takes many many years. But if the accent is to be placed any where in the LEAP model, it falls not on the look stage with its inherent emphasis on reading skills for a wide range of media, but on the creative skills in using a broad range of media at the evoke stage. Though it is important to look and be aware of problems, it is through composition skills that problems are solved or at least tackled.

LEAP provides an educational framework for integrating new technologies with the critical and creative processes of finding, inventing and sharing solutions to real world problems. In the nonlinear environment in which we live, our inventiveness and our ethics, not just our forecasting skills, may yet keep the human race alive.

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 Gipe, J. P. & Richards, J. C. (1992). Reflective thinking and growth in novices' teaching abilities. Journal of Educational Research; 86(1), 52-57.

 Hunter, B. (1992). Linking for learning: Computer-and-communications network support for nationwide innovation in education. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 23-34.

 Kelvin, P. R. & Leonard, S. A. (1992). Computer-assisted writing classes: Problems among the Promises. Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication; 55(4), 21-25.

Manzo, A. V. et al. (1992). Dialectical thinking: A generative approach to critical/creative Thinking. ERIC Accession: ED352632, 25 pp.

 O'Loughlin, M. (1992). Rethinking science education: Beyond Piagetian constructivism toward a sociocultural model of teaching and learning. Journal of research in science teaching, 29(8), 791-799.

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 Pruett, P. L., et al., (1993). Utilization of the microcomputer in the mathematics classroom. Computers in Human Behavior , 9(1), 17-26.

 Reschke, R. (1991). The future problem solving program: How and why it works. Gifted Child Today (GCT), 14(2), 30-31.

 Taylor , R. (1980). The Computer in the school : Tutor, tool, tutee. New York : Teachers College Press.