Report KIDS-92 in the CLASSROOMS Compiled by Odd de Presno April 12, 1992 1. PURPOSE ========== The KIDLINK concept is easy, but making it work in the classroom is another matter. The purpose of this document is to tell about what other teachers want to get out of our projects, and about some of of the practical "tricks" that they are successfully using to involve their students. Since there are no major differences between KIDS-91 and KIDS-92, we have included comments relating to both projects. Please send us a report about the "tricks" that you find useful in your school to help us update this guide on a regular basis. The best is to send a description of your experiences directly to the KIDS-92 discussion list (all participating teachers should read the things being discussed there). The next best is to send it as a private message to me at opresno@ulrik.uio.no WHAT TEACHERS DO AND THINK ========================== Canada ------ Sherry Franklin and Martin McCormack are teachers at the Hopewell School, in the center of Ottawa the capital of Canada: "There are about 800 students from 4 year old kindergarten to grade 8. We are called a dual track school in that all of the students are English but most of them are learning in French. These students, who are learning French, start in 5 year kindergarten. They come to school for 1/2 the day and the teacher speaks to them in French. By the time they are 13 years old they are bilingual. We are involved in recycling and would be very interested in telling you what we are doing and we would like to hear from students what they are doing. We have a very active science programme and would like to work with any group interested in this area. We read about a group interested in NASSA. We would like to hear from you. Our French classes would like to communicate with anyone wanting to speak in French. There are about 50 students from grade 4 to grade 7 wanting to communicate. We can do this almost every afternoon and look forward to hearing from you." Czechoslovakia -------------- Milan in Prague wrote this in early 1991: "Here are some details on sampling, methodology and further plans in country where is English not native language. The responses from our kids will be divided methodologically: Methodology A: 1. Two schools in Prague participated. These school have an extensive English teaching programs, so some children were able to answer in English directly, without help of translation. 2. The kids were "interviewed" in written form, with four questions on the top of paper. The children had a time to think about it in a classroom, with teacher assistance. THIS was not homework but DIRECT RESPONSES in the school. 3. The written responses were retyped into the electronic form without any changes, it means with all, grammar and other mistakes. One of the reason for this was that in such schools there are not any computer facilities. 4. Retyped responses will be sent to KIDS-91 via EARN.BITNET 5. The teachers and kids will work on their initial responses in order to think about it. They will be supplied with responses from other countries and Newsletters and they will work with these materials when studying English in their classroom. 6. We will see the progress. However, the lack of hi tech equipment is apparently the major problem in spreading the KIDS idea aroud this beautiful country in the heart of Europe. Mark Wolfe at Zakladni Skola Omska in Prague: "The entire structure of the society is in the process of changing, and cultural attitudes are being forced to accommodate the virtual tidal wave of capitalism, tourism, and general Westernism that's rushing into the country (not a few people were made upset by the introduction of COMPUTER into the womb-like, un-automated environment of our school). I believe that my 10-15 year-olds could present an excellent perspective on this situation to both children and adults alike. England ------- Mike Burleigh from "Cedar class at Oldfield House school, near the river Thames outside London": "We would like other kids to reply and tell us about themselves especially if their lives are different from ours. " Germany ------- 13 year old Kerstin Battel, a student at Caecilienschule(Gymn.) in Oldenburg, recently wrote the following in KIDCAFE: "I write this letter in my school. Every Monday and Friday a computer meeting.It's very interesting, to write people all in the world." Volker Ulle (Langenhagen, Germany): "I think it's a great idea to collect a worldwide 'childrens-view' of our time. And to collect children's hopes and desires all over the world to get a cross-section of children's life in many countries. And through the responses perhaps bild up the imagination of a 'global village' in the childrens minds." Norway ------ At Moland Comprehensive School, two 15-year-old boys with a strong interest in computers have been appointed KIDLINK coordinators. They are given one full day per week for their job. Functions: help teachers introduce KIDS-92 to several classes, enter and send responses, handle technical problems, etc.. Hallvard Rydland - teaching the 6th grade at Knarvik elementary school - offers the following practical advice: "Lots of children in this project have found a key-pal or a pen-pal or a friend. Lots of children have experienced the excitet feeling when they receive a letter from someone out there. And ... some children have never experienced this ..... What can we do to help them to get an answer to their letters? At my school some children are in this situation. They are very eager to write, and some of them work really hard with their letters. Maybe there are other teachers somewhere having the same "problem"? My idea is: If you gave me some names of your "have-got-no-answer-chil- dren", and I gave you some of mine, maybe we could put them in touch ...... It's not my idea to force them to be friends, but we could guide them along the road .... as we do in school ...." Italy ----- Ivana e Gianfranco lives in Bologna in Italy. She writes: "I am a teacher of English. I'd like my pupils to exchange messages with children of the same age (11-14) in English." Russia ------ Maria Chermnykh is a teacher at Protvino Lyceum, a school of a new type. These are her experiences: "I teach mostly 7th and 8th grades. It wasn't easy to involve students into the project at first. Some of them after answering 4 questions were waiting for the answers and when the answers didn't come, they were disappointed and didn't want to write any more. But as time passed and they saw that those who were active and persistently wrote letters, got the answers, they began to work. And now we've established communication with many schools in different countries. Some students, such as Nadin Zakamskaya, Lena Rykova, Ann Mukhina, Maxim Svyato, Kirill Lugovsky have got about 50 mails. We receive many letters every day. As you know the USSR was a rather closed country and we didn't know much about life in other countries. And now it's like reading an interesting book. Kids from the US, France, Germany, Norwegia, Japan, Italy, write us about their schools, their hobbies and even give recipes of their national cuisine. When we studied the theme Christmas (for the first time), this year, we could see all the traditions and the way of celebrating it in the letters of american children. That was very useful. The next very important reason why we greet this project is an opportunity for our students to practice their English. And we see such a great success due to our corresponding. New our students are able to write letters without teachers help. We often do it at the lessons. They even try to speak English and that's very important for us. I think our teaching foreign languages never used it during there life. But today everything changes in our country. And we seem not to live separately from the world any more. And it's great. United States ------------- Paul Riding is a teacher at Colonial Heights Junior School in Virginia, United States. His subject is Computer Literacy, but he is also the educational computer coordinator for the school. In the summer of 1990 he wrote: "With the addition of Social Studies teachers to our growing group of intrepid explorers, we plan on implementing cultural studies of the countries involved, i.e. language, climate, economy, type of governmental structure, educational opportunities, ect. "English department will continue as the *writing* center (p.s. a few students have received and/or sent letters to Norway since May 13. Neat stuff). Also, with the BARK project involving the Science department, we will try to tie in environmental issues along with the social ones. So, we'll try to have a truly interdisciplinary curriculum next year." Joe Serico is teaching in Paterson (New Jersey, USA), a large urban city on the east coast (17 miles from NYC). There are over 20,000 students in the school district: "About 2 1/2 years ago we started a local telecommunications program. It encompassed 27 classrooms each equiped with a phone line, modem and computer. Two local BBS's were established to allow the students in the classes to post messages and send E-mail. These boards are still in operation today and average 30-40 calls per day(as of this writing there have been a total of over 7500 calls made to the BBS's). We started off with 3 schools (now there are 5) joining the list and posting answers to the questions and chatting on KIDCAFE. One of the teachers used the answers to the questions as compositions and corrected and grade the students on them. Another teacher use the answers as a word processing lesson with each student saving their own answer to a disk file and then the entire class will be merged into one file and uploaded to the list (this is still in the process of being done/time consuming with only one computer) and you can expect these replies very shortly. In other classes students were seperated into small groups and each group worked together posting their questions and send mail to KIDCAFE. This was all a moderate success and then.... School 18 saw the message from Israel by Nachson. They were very moved by his original message and the several pieces of correspondence betwen him and others. They sent him a reply and have established a correspondence with him. The teacher of the class printed out this give and take and circulated it about her school. And what a small world, it appears at this point that one of the teachers in the school may be related to the young Israeli boy. At this point in time another message has been sent to Nachson with some additional info and we are awaiting his reply." Joan Button is the Computer Coordinator for a small school district (1000 students, K - 12) located in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State in the USA. She writes: "We have a 5th grade class that has just answered the four questions and they want to take part in the "War Concerns and Reactions project". We also have a high school class that wants to communicate with the young men from Haifa, Isreal--especially since the war has started. They did send one of them a message last Friday and another group in the same class will try to send a second message to Isreal later today. I would like to be in touch with a 3rd grade class from Japan. Last summer I attended a "Teacher's International Exchange" Conference at Stanford University in California between 20 American educators and 20 Japanese educators. But I was unable to connect with an elementary teacher that had access to telecommunications. I have a 3rd grade class here that is ready and waiting for a Japanese partner. Could you help us out?" This report comes from Harold Miller at Seabury Hall, Maui, Hawaii: "Our school (300 kids) has a daily "newspaper" called NOON SCOOPS..any material submitted to the main secretary by 10:45 am is xeroxed and collated and put on the tables in the dining room during the 2 lunch periods. I often submit email prinuts to Noon Scoops and invite students to participate in responding to the email. Works well. And from Sally Laughon at NorthCross School in Roanoke (VA): "I have taken a huge section of the hallway wall across from my classroom and posted Kids-91 messages by country of origin. Banners and signs highlight sections of the wall. Banners, signs, messages and maps occupy another section slightly apart from Kids-91. I tape the sheets only from at the top so so there may be a small "pad" of messages available under countries with prolific contributions. The messages start at the top of a comfortable eye level for high school students and extend down to the floor. I had to overlap the messages after I ran out of wall space! Students, teachers, parents, visitors, coaches from other schools, board members and _especially_ students browse this board constantly. I recently added a map of Kibbutzim to the messages from Israel. The maps add color and provide an initial interest in THE WALL of 1991!" Cissy Myers, Language arts teacher, Morningside Middle School North Charleston, South Carolina (from The Instructor Magazine): " .... I sent six to seven kids at a time to Jeanne in the computer lab, where she helped them enter their responses into the computer. A few days later, the first respondents discovered that they had gotten a flood of pen-pal mail (53 pages of responses!) from other kids around the world. Students took turns reading the responses aloud, in groups and in pairs, awed by the content and variety of the responses. Paul, a 12-year-old boy from Dublin, Ireland, shared his love of choral singing and his desire to become a doctor; 14-year-old Vazgen from Yervan, Armenia, wants the world to be without wars and borders. The children were especially fascinated to discover the similarities and differences between their responses and those of their international counterparts. For example, my students discussed problems associated with drugs and violence, while the European children were most concerned about pollution and ecology. My students were also pleasantly surprised that children from foreign lands wrote and spoke English." Barb Manchee of the Pittsford Middle School in the state of New York: We bring the kids into the library and project the computer screen onto a 25" monitor. We turn up the modem so the kids can hear the dialing and their faces light-up! When they see teir messages being sent out they get so excited. It would be great to get some messages coming in too. OTHER IDEAS =========== 1) Introduce class to electronic networking. Define basic terms such as modem, communications software, parameters, online, e-mail, computer conferencing, chat, uploading, downloading, porting, moderating, lurking, etc. Show class how modem is connected to computer and how to call up communications software. Log onto a local computer network. 2) Have teams of students choose particular countries to study. Have each team research various aspects of their country (ie, its climate, language, economy, governmental structure, educational opportunities, etc) and report back to the rest of the class. 3) Compile a "KIDS-92 Almanac" based on your students' research. Perhaps use map software as part of the project. Send a copy of your Almanac to Norway for displayed in the next KIDS-92 Exhibition. 4) Let your students enter their own responses on computers to the four KIDS-91 questions and save the text in ASCII format instead of letting others (you?) do it for them. 5) Work with other teachers at your school to participate in the KIDS-92 Creative Challenge. Have your students depict their future world through painting, drawing, video, multimedia, or whatever. Send them to Norway for inclusion in the KIDS-92 Exhibition. 6) Encourage your students to develop "keypal" relationships with other students from around the world through KIDCAFE. It is often better to do this by responding to other students's requests than by sending "Hi, please write to me" messages. Some students will always experience difficulties in getting others to write to them for various reasons. Consider teaming them up with 'successful' kids whenever this happens. Jerry Guy (jguy@pro-finders.cts.com) writes: On my system the kids have individual email accounts but the do not all suscribe to RESPONSE, KIDCAFE, KIDS-ACT, or KIDPROJ. This system has set up a conference for each of these lists. All the kids access this conference area to read the high volumne stuff. Right now I have only 4 kids on the system and I've had to unsub from the KIDCAFE until I can find more money. This forces my users to find direct email contacts. Hopefully I'll find some a$$i$tance here this year and add KIDCAFE back in. Till then the kids are happy with e-mail, the RESPONSE, and KIDS-ACT. I keep the last 1000 entries in each list available to each user so they can search for a contact whos response was posted a long time ago. FEEDBACK FROM STUDENTS ====================== Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1991 20:08:22 MET From: Lindaas skole Subject: 6TH GRADERS ABOUT KIDLINK The pupils in class 6A at Knarvik elementary school in Norway have made their answers to 4 questions about the KIDLINK-work. The students have been working in the KIDLINK-project since early spring 1991. When they have finnished the 6th grade, they go to another school for the last 3 years (see answer 4). I found the answers so positive and interesting that I wanted to share them with you. The questions: -------------- (1) What is your opinion of the KIDLINK-work? (2) What have you got from the KIDLINK-work? (3) What have you learned from the KIDLINK-work? (4) How do you want the KIDLINK-work to be the next 3 years? Each student worked out his / her own answers to the four questions. Then they got together in groups of five students. The group then worked out an answer where they incorporated all the different "meanings". --------------------------------- Here is a summary of the answers: --------------------------------- (1) -a- We find the work interesting and nice. -b- It's interesting, we learn a lot, and it's good work. At the same time it's very nice work. -c- The KIDLINK-work has been VERY GOOD, and it's incredible nice work. We get new friend, and we get to know what's happening around the world. -d- It's nice and interesting work. (2) -a- We have got friends from other countries. -b- We have got pen-pals and key-pals from other countries. We have learned about computers. -c- We have learned much. We have learned about other ways of living. We have got an impression of how many people there are around the world who want PEACE. -d- We have got new pen-and-keypals in other countries. (3) -a- We have learned english and about computers. We have learned how other children are living. For excample what they do in their sparetime, and about their interests. -b- We learn better english. We have lerned to send letters through the computer. -c- The KIDLINK-work has taught us a lot about computers and about problems in the world, and about how the children handle the situation. KIDLINK teach us more and more english. -d- We have learned more about other countries and how children are in other countries.. We have learned more english and learned to use the computer. (4) -a- We want the KIDLINK-work to continue in the comprehensive school, and that other classes in the elementary and the comprehensive school will join the work and become KIDLINKERS. -b- We want the KIDLINK-work to continue in the comprehensive school, and we want more children to join the KIDLINK-work and get new friends. -c- We want more and more people to be KIDLINK-workers as the years go by. We want to continue our KIDLINK- work in the comprehensive school. -d- We want to continue the work, and we want other children to become more active.