Neither the boat nor bodies were ever found. Students speculate in their real-world class about what might have happened to the men. The answer to the riddle of what happened to the men can only be found in the Virtual Classroom. The information missing in one cloze passage can be found in the other. In order to complete the cloze each class needs to formulate questions to ask their partner classe.
Classes send their questions and answers directly to each other by e-mail.
Since classes were likely to be engaged in this activity at different times, we were unable to post any of the exchanges between pairs of classes lest we compromise the activity for those coming later. The object of these activities is to explore the potential of the Virtual Classroom as a forum for free exchange of student opinions. Rather than setting specific tasks, each of these activities offers several controversial statements relating to the unit being studied. Teachers are asked to encourage their students to discuss the statements, post the opinions of the class and compare them with the opinions of other classes. During these activities we asked teachers to take a back-seat role.