Breaking the Ice
Illinois Online Network (ION)
Thursday, April 28, 2005
2:00 – 3:00 PM (CDT)

IDEAS

• Ask each participant to post three hyperlinks to websites that describe their interests. Ask other participants to guess what that interest is.

• Have each participant introduce her/himself in the eyes of her/his pet, friend, family member or child.

• Ask participants to post / tell two of their achievements: one true and one false. Ask the rest of the participants to guess which one is true.

• Have participants describe themselves by naming a film actor that they look like (sorta) and a recent film that features the actor. Ask the rest of the participants to read the posts and search for an actor whose name is not familiar reply to that person to. 1)  ask the person to send a URL where you can see a picture of the actor 2)  discover why the name was not one that you recognized (possible answers: there is a large age discrepancy between the two writers, the writers like different kinds of movies, they come from different cultures)

• 25 questions – Ask a student to come up with a word: something pertaining to their life. Go around the room and give each participant a chance to ask a single question. Keep it going until you have asked 25 questions or someone has guessed the right answer.

• Story telling - In small groups, have come up with a story by going around to each participant and asking her/him to contribute to the story. The catch is that each participant must contribute something true about themselves that matches the story being developed.

• Have each participant post / write down three characteristics of their favorite animal without disclosing the animal. Then, go around (or ask them to post) how those same three characters relate to them personally. Other participants can reply by asking other questions and trying to guess the animal.

• Ask each participant to list a fun fact about them that the group may not know. Ask each participant to discuss the fact in more details.

• Art Gallery – Ask each participant to share a physical representation of her/himself. This could be in the form of a photograph, collage, self-portrait, drawing, etc. Ask other participants to look through the gallery and respond to artists with questions and comments about the art.

• Top Ten List – As a group, have class develop a Top Ten list about something. This could be something that relates to the topic of the class, or something that is just for fun. For example, if you are teaching an online Film Studies course, you may ask your class to develop the Top Ten Worst movies of all time. As people add to the list, have others reply asking questions about why the person posting that it was bad, or argument for why it wasn’t bad.

• Provide the participants with a brain teaser, puzzle, or something that requires a little bit of thought processing. Ask the group to try to solve or piece the puzzle together. Discuss how the group chose its process, leaders, etc. Also ask the participants to discuss how each of them went about solving the problem individually before contributing to the group. This allows the group to learn to appreciate differences in how people process information.
  
  For example, “A man is about to cross a stream in a rowing-boat. He is carrying a wolf a goat an a head of cabbage. He can´t bring with him more than one of his objects in one crossing. The wolf can´t be left alone with the goat and the goat can´t be trusted on its own with the cabbage. - How can the man handle the situation to put everyone and everything safely on the other side of the stream?”

• Ask each participant to post / write one thing that he/she can teach the rest of the group to do (make lasagna, count to 10 in Quechua, build a dry latrine, etc.). Ask everyone to use this information to ask questions about the person and the topic they can teach.

• Provide the group with a text-based description that uses very vague and ambiguous descriptions of the characters. Ask the group to post / discuss their assumptions of the characters in regards to gender, profession, etc. For example, A blind beggar had a brother who died. What relation was the blind beggar to the brother who died? The answer is that the blind beggar was the sister of her brother who died. Use this information to prompt a discussion on how online courses can break down these assumptions.
  
  Another example from a Scientific American column by Douglas Hofstadter from 1982:
  http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive032005.html
  
  "A father and his son were driving to a ball game when their car stalled on the railroad tracks. In the distance a train whistle blew a warning. Frantically, the father tried to start the engine, but in his panic, he couldn't turn the key, and the car was hit by the onrushing train. An ambulance sped to the scene and picked them up. On the way to the hospital, the father died. The son was still alive but his condition was very serious, and he needed immediate surgery. The moment they arrived at the hospital, he was wheeled into an emergency operating room, and the surgeon came in, expecting a routine case. However, on seeing the boy, the surgeon blanched and muttered, 'I can't operate on this boy―he's my son.'"
  
  The surgeon is the boy’s mother.