...So, a little bit about myself and my 5. graders and how we are working with the Virtual Vacation program: I'm not a homeroom teacher for these students. (Mine are 7. graders) My subjects in 5. grade are English and history/social science, 4 lessons a week.

I'm participating in a regional network cooperation - subject English - in order to develope IT, and I'm supposed to come up with a project until the next meeting in April. I was lucky to find this Kidlink's Who am I program and find it ideal for my purpose. As you understand we have not a lot of time to spare on the program, uptil now we've had only one computer on the classroom (offline), and one computer hooked on the Internet in a faraway group room.

When we are back after the Easter vacation the classroom computer is hooked on, hopefully. That makes it easier for us to join in. 5. graders in Norway have quite elemntary English skills so I have to help them a lot, but I imagine that this project will motivate for English and improve their skills.

We started discussing the questions in the class (step 1). The students were working in groups with the class activities. I transferred the students work by scanned/writing to the schools homepage via my private computer. The homepage is now updated with the students work.

Unfortunately we are behind schedule (we have started our Easter holidays), but when we are back 7. april we will start planning where to go, then go on vacation. We will make use of the questions and activities suggested in the program, and try to make the best out of it. So actually I don't know how this will end. Some students have private computers hooked on the Internet. They have subscribed to kidwai and I'm encouraging them to read some of the incoming letters and to try to answer. I'm afraid you won't hear too much from them. However the studens seem to find the project very interesting, and so do I. We have fun work ahead of us when we are back after the break. I'm just hoping that we will be able to harbour it.

Kind regards,
Jorunn
arelien@online.no