The KIDS-91 Newsletter A Global Dialog for Children 10-15 Years Issue number 5, December 15, 1990

1. KIDS-91

The objective of KIDS-91 is to get as many 10 to 15-year-old children as possible involved in a GLOBAL dialog continuing until May 12th 1991. We want their responses to these questions: 1) Who am I?; 2) What do I want to be when I grow up?; 3) How do I want the world to be better when I grow up?; 4) What can I do now to make this happen?
We would also like them to illustrate their future vision, for example in a drawing, a video tape, or something else.
On May 12th, 1991, the children will be invited to "chat" with each other in a global electronic dialog. Exhibitions of selected parts of the responses will then be sent back to the children of the world to see and enjoy.

2. THE NEWSLETTER

The KIDS-91 news letter is an information bulletin for participants, sponsors, teachers, mediators, promoters, and others.
Suggestions and contributions to the next issue are welcome. We hope to port it within 45 days or so. Write the Editor to receive future issues of the newsletter.

Editor/Project director:		Odd de Presno, Saltrod, Norway.
Mail address: Telefax:		Saltrod, Norway (Europe). +47 41 27111
Online addresses: Internet: UUCP/EUnet: Saltrød Horror Show BBS:		opresno@ulrik.uio.no uunet!ulrik.uio.no!opresno SYSOP. Phone: +47 41 31378.

3. PROGRESS REPORT

Our two Internet/BITNET discussion lists, KIDS-91 and KIDCAFE, have quickly become key meeting places for people involved in the KIDS-91 project.
To join KIDS-91 send the command SUB KIDS-91 Yourname to LISTSERV@vm1.NoDak.EDU. (For example: SUB KIDS-91 Ole Olsen.) The command should be in the BODY of the text.
The Danish Ministry of Education's "Skolernes DataBase Service" (more than 250 schools connected) has parallel KIDS- 91 and KIDCAFE conferences in Denmark. Messages are fed from the Internet/BITNET discussion lists. Messages entered by Danish participants are ported to the global discussion lists.
Parallel conferences are also in place on other networks. For example, on:

• GeoNet, on a bulletin board called "GD-KIDS-91". Internet address: GD-KIDS-91@TLXF.GEOMAIL.ORG.
• SciNet, Toronto. All messages from the lists are exchanged with the KIDS91 and KIDCAFE conferences respectively.

Our "call for help" has been posted in ENET.SYSOP (the European FidoNet System Operator's conference) and FN.SYSOP (world-wide FidoNet sysop's conference), on BOOKMAIL in Frankfurt am Main (Germany), in the "kids.91" conference on IGC/US, in the misc.kids newsgroup on the National Centre for Software Technology in Bombay (India), as well as other places.
"I am right away going to post the great idea of KIDS-91 on our Notice Boards and to all Indian Sites. You are very likely to get a lot of responses from interior India ....." --Jagdeep Antani.

And then:
".. I have been to one village in the state of Maharashtra (India). I collected responses of about fifty students from that place. ... I will keep on typing the responses. All are from students of rural background. They are not aware of environmental degradation, drugs and other things. The most touching where the responses about what they wanted to be. There are many interesting responses..." --Pradeep Waychal.

The invitation to participate has been mailed out to 54 schools in Moscow! We are spreading out in Brazil, Argentina (through el Programa Nacional de Comunicacion e Informacion Cientifica y Tecnologica de la Secretaria de Estado de Ciencia y Tecnologie, 250 nodes), and Germany.
The first batch of responses came in from the Paterson School System in NJ, USA, a network of 25 7th grade classes. Then there's the Americans living in Germany, WCU MicroNet (a North Carolina, USA, network with more than 50 subscribing schools), the Big Sky Telegraph (Dillon, Montana), TOGL (Telecommunications Opportunities for Gifted Learners) in Florida, the schools in Sacramento, the Seabury Hall High School in Maui, Hawaii, and many more.
In the city of Santa Monica (USA), they decided that all Santa Monica/Malibu schools with students in the appropriate age range will be brought online the PEN system to participate in KIDS-91. Phone lines will go in. Modems will be provided. Five hundrer KIDS-91 flyers will be distributed to teachers and others. Wow!
Wait, there's more: they are developing a multi-national real-time continuous-action full-color satellite video linkup -- a "Hole in Space" -- for the climactic day of KIDS-91, May 12th, 1991.
Others are eager to exploit amateur packet radio in connection with the project. Lynn Richardson put news about KIDS-91 up on his radio bulletin board (email address on CompuServe: 73417,437), and is planning to distribute it nationwide.
Initially, we thought that teachers and schools were our only target group. Wrong! There's also a lot of interest in groups working with preventive care as illustrated by Mr. Volker Ulle at Langenhagener Verein fuer Sozialarbeit e.V. in Germany, and the Department of Preventive and Adolescent Health Care at the Medical Faculty, Charles University, Prague, who is running a major KIDS-91 campaign in Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia came online after having read about KIDS-91 in the Online Journal of Distance Education (Alaska, USA). This magazine goes to about 2000 people in 40 countries.
We also have contacts in other countries in Eastern Europe. Via FidoNet we correspond with Daniel Kalchev of Sofia, Bulgaria ("I was told, some months ago, that it's not possible to use the phone lines for data transfer - well, 'theories' may not be true sometimes", he wrote.) We also have several contacts in Poland
Via modem from Riga, Latvia, we learned that the children's newspaper "LaBA" featured a story about KIDS-91 in their November 9th issue, and that responses are now being received. We expect a batch to arrive by courier later this month.
FidoNet is also our gateway to Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, and to a helper in Brazil.
John Carson of the Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia, wants to make KIDS-91 a project for his graduate diploma in Educational Computing.
Winding down, we have friends in CHATBACK, a network for children with special needs in the British Isles. And then there is Peter Flynn of Ireland (of SCHOOL-L discussion list fame), and a host of others that we should have mentioned.

4. SOME NEW RESPONSES

So far, we have received responses from:

• Fenwick in Ontario, Newfoundland, Kelowna B.C. and Lismore (Canada),
• Oslo, Saltrod and Valderoy (Norway),
• Seattle, Mt. Vernon in New York, Seabury Hall School on Maui, Hawaii and Paterson in NJ (USA),
• Madrid (Spain),
• Rio de Janeiro and Mercs in Curitiba (Brazil),
• the English Grammar School in Riga (Latvia),
• Byron Bay, O'Connor Catholic High School in Armidale, Kentucky, and Uralla N.S.W. (Australia),
• London (UK),
• Moscow, USSR,
• Asahi-cyo elementary school in Tokyo (Japan),
• Herttoniemi School in Helsinki (Finland)
• Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Here are a few examples from our new participating countries:

>From Moscow (USSR):
1. My name is Yulia Snegiryova, I'm 12. I love my country. My country is very beautiful. Only beeing friends we can preserve beauty and nature.
2. It's difficult for me to say, what I'm going to be, but I enjoy English and I want to study foreign langnages. I would like to have an interesting job and to meet with people of dif- ferent countries.
3. I want me and everybody to live in peace on our planet. I want people to understand each other and to love animals.
4. May be I can't do much, especially now, but I want to study well, to learn everything about our world, it's history, countries and people.

>From Buenos Aires, Argentina:
1. My name is Maria Estefania Marini, and I am 10 years old. I am argentine. I go to 5th form of school. I like playing voley and tennis. I have 10 dogs, 10 canary birds and a turtle. My sister has a horse too.
2. When I grow up I will be a stewardess because I like flying and because my mother has been one of them. I like being a lawyer too, because I want to protect people who need it.
3. I would like a world without poverty and without thieves.
4. I can call the police when I see a thief and I can give my savings to the poor people. I think this is all I can do. I wish that when I grow up I would make too much.

>From Tokyo, Japan:
1. My name is Yuusuke Matsuo. I am a boy. I am 11 years old. My hobby is playing with miniture trains. I am not good at sport.
2. I would like to be a cook at "Blue Train", especially nicknamed "the Great Dipper" (bullet train).
3/4. I will join a group which is very active in environmental movement. I have already decided not to use spray things. I should do recycling as much as possible. We should reuse the heat from factories to make the water at home hot.

>From Helsinki, Finland:
1. I am Aino Telaranta and I'm almost 14 years. I play the piano. I'm concerned about pollution and the Iraqi situation. I like music: pop, rap, hip hop, heavy (not hard) and so on. My sister and I have a gerbil.
2. I really don't know, but I have a little bit thought of becoming a pediatrician or a doctor. And why? I don't know that either.
3. I want the earth, water and other nature to be clean, there should be no wars and it should no matter how somebody looks or thinks. I+d like the world to have no famine and no violence. No racial descrimination, no dictators, people shouldn+t destroy nature, and people are equal. People should have work.
4. I must save the world as much as I can. I should never tease anybody or be a racist and I should never kick or hit anybody. I can give money to the Red Cross and so on.

5. DOCUMENTS AND FILES

These following files are now available by email from the archives of the KIDS-91 discussion list.
The "Letter to Teachers" and Newsletter #4 have been translated into Spanish. File names: TEACHR-S and NEWS-4S.
The "Action Guide" (file name: ACTIONGD) is a list of 17 suggested KIDS-91 classroom activities.
The "Overall Proposal for Support" is a general proposal for KIDS-91 sponsorship. It may be used as an appendix to your own applications for support of local KIDS-91 activities. (File name: SPONSORA.)
The children's responses are stored in files with names like RESP1190 and RESP1290.
For information about how to download these files, send a request to the editor using the email address above.

6. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A MODEM

Teachers without access to communications equipment can get the responses sent to them on computer diskette. Here's how:
Send a letter with a preaddressed return envelope and a formatted DOS diskette (360KB 5.25" MS-DOS/XT, or 720KB/1.4 MB 3.5" DOS). Enclose a check for US$ 10.00 payable to KIDS- 91 (plus any amount that you would like to donate to the project). Send this to KIDS-91 c/o Odd de Presno 4815 Saltrod Norway (Europe)
He will send you as many received responses as possible (up to the capacity of your disk). If you also want some of the other files, please indicate that in your letter.
Those who want files sent to them in Macintosh format can send to SciNet using the address below.

7. INVITATION TO NORWAY

On Sunday May 12, 1991, we invite the children of the world to participate in a KIDS-91 Celebration with youth in other countries via a variety of technologies. And all of you are invited to celebrate the occasion with us in the small town Arendal in southern Norway (your editor's home town).
The KIDS-91 Celebration will be integrated in a "Nordic Children's Cultural Week" in Arendal.
A communication centre will be set up. All children present will be given a chance to "chat" electronically, and the dialog will be displayed on large screens for everybody to see and enjoy.
For more information, send an electronic message to the editor, or call Anne-Tove Vestfossen of the Nordic Children's Cultural Week at +47 41 31204.

8. FOR INFORMATION

about KIDS-91, or if you want to help out or participate, contact the editor, or one of the following persons:

You can also write to KIDS-91, c/o SciNet, 131 Bloor Street West, Suite 200, Box 326, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1R8, Canada.