The KIDS-92 Newsletter
A Global Dialog for Children 10-15 Years

Issue number 5, May 1, 1992

1. "My home language is XHOSA"

The goal of KIDS-92 is to get as many 10-to-15-year-old children as possible involved in a GLOBAL dialog continuing until May 19th 1992. All of them begin by responding 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?
Here are some recent responses. As usual, we try to select from countries who have just recently joined KIDS-92:

** From Grahamstown, South Africa **
1. MY name is luthando mqulwana and I am from Alice (S.A) my home language is XHOSA and I was born in SOUTH AFRICA. I go to college at ST ANDREW'S COLLEGE (S.A).I AM 14,3 years old and am in std 8. Since I went to school I have only been to four school but I have never been expelled but am a rebel in my sort of way. You must enjoy life while you can.
2) when I grow up I want to be a doctor and I think I will have to put a lot of effort to be that.
3) I would like every one to live in peace to love each other and care for each other. This is the world God created for us so we must take care of it hope that happens.
4) I want to pray that happens and I hope you do that too.

** From Vienna, Austria ***
1) My name is Sonja Frst and I live in a small town called Himberg near Vienna. I attend a grammer school in Vienna. My hobbies are skiing , playing the piano, the clarinette and the trombone, swimming, skating, hiking, travelling, writing and playing soccer. My favourite groups are U2, Kraftwerk and Queen.
2) I don't really know, what I want to be, but I want to do something with chemistry,music or German.
3) I want everyone to do what he want to do unless he disturbs another person.
4) I try to let everyone do so.

** From Lima, Peru **
1. Soy Mar!a Sara Aguirre Pajuelo, tengo 14 a$os.
2. Cuando sea grande quiero ser doctora (pediatra).
3. Cuando yo sea grande deber superarme y ayudar a los demas a superarse ,es la unica manera de hacer que el mundo sea mejor.
4. Que puedo hacer hoy para que el mundo sea mejor ? Estudiar y cada d!a saber m s cosas de las que supe hoy.

** From Dhahran, Saudi Arabia **
HELLO!
I am in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia with my parents. My name is Syed Rashid Husain. I am eleven years old. I am a student of grade five. I have three brothers and a sister. My younger brother, Syed Arif Husain is seven and a half years old. He will also share Kidcafe with me. He likes sports like basketball, badminton. He also likes to work on the computer. My elder brother is in U.S.A. In high school. My only sister is in a college in USA. My father is a scientist. My mother gives good care to all of us. My hobbies are basketball, table tennis, and indian music.
When I grow up, I want to be a veterinary doctor. I love animals. My brother, Syed Arif Husain wants to be an engineer.
We want a world without fighting and free from pollution. We have to work hard to stop fighting. People throughout the world should have enough food to share.
We have to produce more food and we have to work on conservation of resources.

** From Suriname (South America) **
1. My name is Rodie van Dijk. Age : 8 year Hobbies : drawing, swimming, bycicling. Concerns : nothing.
2. Pilot, Busdriver, Farmer
3. Everything should be new and peace.
4. I'm gonna work for it, and make everything OK.

2. "Je m'apelle SARA ..."

When the kids have sent in their responses to the four questions, they're invited to participate in the KIDCAFE discussions. Most of the messages in KIDCAFE are in English, but some children write in German, Italian, Spanish and French. KIDCAFE is where kids make friends. Like these children:

Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1992
To: Nicole - Cathedral School, NY
From: SARA DALMONTE - Toscanella di Dozza - Bologna

Castel Guelfo le, 13 avril 1992

Cher amis
je m'appelle SARA, je suis ne le 7 novembre 1978 donc j'ai 13 ans. J'habite Castel Guelfo un petit bourg medioeval pr ville du grand prix de Formula 1. J'ai les cheveux chatains friss les yeux marron. je suis grande 1 metro et 56. Je suis mince,je suis gaie et j'aime m'amuser avec mes amis. J'ai aussi un chat qui s'appelle Yuri, il est blanc et noir, il a les meme couleurs de l'equipe de mon coeur: la JUVENTUS j'aime jouer au volley-ball, au tennis et au foot-ball, avec mon cousin et mon ami Gabriele. Je suis majorette. Mon uniforme est blanche, la jupe, et rouge la jaquette, elle est tr

J'attends ta reponse amicalement

Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1992
To: Anybody
From: Brent Newson, Huntsville, Alabama, USA

Hello, I am writing to any 10-13 year old who does not have a key pal, so you will not be complaning, or begging for one. I already have one, though.
My name is Robert Brent Newson (please call me Brent). I am 12 years old, I was born on October 1st, 1979. When were you born? I have a pet dog, her name is Rugby. Do you have a personal computer? Mine is a Commodore 64. I am a boy, in the 6th grade at Grace Lutheran Curch, and School. I don't have cable TV. I live in the United States of Amarica. The state I live in is Alabama, and the city I live in is Huntsville. I have many collections, and my hobby is modle trains. What is yours?
Brent.

Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1992
From: Margiris, Vilnius city, Lithuania
To: Alessandro Nanni, Bologna city, Italy

Hi Alle!
Thanks that you wrote me.I was glad when I got a letter from you. I want to write to you some sentences about my country.
Lithuania is a very nice country in Europe center. It is near the Baltic sea. Lithuania is without mountains. There are very much rivers and lakes. There are many forests too.
My town Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania. It is not very large. There are half a million people in Vilnius. There is very large oldtown. There are many churches in it and they are very nice.
Margiris Klenavichius

PS: I will send you my photo by post. My favourite subjects are: PT, Geography and Art.In the afternoon I go to school When I stay at home I do my homework. Sometimes I watch TV. 3.

3. The KIDS-92 Celebration - May 18-19, 1992

At the end of the year-long KIDS-92 project, KIDLINK invites our children to "chat" with each other in a global electronic dialog. We do this

• to bring the children closer to each other during those particular days,
• to play with new communication technologies (and old technologies in new ways) and gain experiences,
• to tell the other kids out there about our projects, and try to get others to help them get started.

Planning of this great event has been going on for months. And as last year, a picture of the Celebration is emerging which is greater than in our wildest dreams.
We're planning for global online "chats", i.e. direct keyboard to keyboard dialogs. We're planning to use fax machines, amateur radio, videophones, global video conferencing, as well as other mechanisms.
If you want to participate in this extravaganza, please join in. Even seemingly "impossibilities", like participating in the global videoconference event, may be possible. International communications companies like Picture Tel are offering to sponsor our participation in many countries of the world.
More information about how to participate is available by e- mail from the KIDS-92 archives. The file names are:

BIG-DAYS		Information of the KIDS-92 Celebration May 18-19
SITEINFO		KIDS-92 Master Site Info (will be updated as with new sites on an increasing frequent basis up to the BIG DAYS)
HAMSITES		Amateur Radio sites
VIDEOCON		About how to participate in the video conference
CHATIRC		How to chat using Internet's IRC
CHATBIT		How to chat using BITNET Relay

Information about how to get these files is given in item 6 below.

4. Around KIDS-92

So far, kids from 40 countries have been involved in the KIDLINK projects. Their responses to the four questions have come from Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Puerto Rico, Roumania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Suriname, Taiwan, Ukrain, and USA.
Maria Chermnykh, an English teacher at the Protvino Lyceum in Russia, sent us a long letter explaining her experiences with KIDLINK (abridged):
"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.
"Two weeks ago on our local Moscow TV program there was a film about our lyceum, where our kids shared there impressions and spoke about there correspondence, read some interesting letters and said they were very glad to take part in KIDS-92. They said many kind words about it.
"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. Now 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.
With best wishes.
Maria Chermnykh"

The 11 year old Denis Pshelkin lives in Protvino, Russia. One of his graphical contributions to the KIDLINK Gallery of Computer Art was used on the front cover of The Co-op Spirit (TechAlliance), March 1992, with credit to the artist given on page 3. This picture is available from the KIDLINK Gallery as ART016.
There was a two-page article on KIDLINK in the British magazine COMMUNICATIONS MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA volume 2 number 3 March 1992, and an article in Agderposten (Norway). The British magazine "Radio Communication", April 1992, brought a nice announcement of the KIDS-92 Celebration (pp 20 and 21).
Thanks to support from Arendal Naeringsraad, Arendal, Norway, we now have a menu-driven desktop PC slideshow presenting KIDLINK. It contains over 130 pictures to be viewed on a VGA color screen. (The text pictures can be viewed on CGA, EGA, and Hercules color displays as well.)
We offer this presentation to ANYONE in the world on the following terms:

• Send a letter to KIDLINK, 4815 Saltrod, Norway. (Don't be confused. You don't need a street address.)
• Enclose your choice of MS-DOS diskettes as follows:
  1 x 1.4MB 3.5" diskette, OR
  2 x 720KB 3.5" diskettes, OR
  4 x 360KB XT diskettes (low density only!)
  Enclose an envelope with your return address on it
• Enclose US$10.00 to cover postage and local bank charges. (A Norwegian language version is also available on the same terms. People with a Norwegian return address just have to put enough stamps on the envelope for the return.)

Please distribute free copies to all your friends!

5. Sponsors

Arendal Naeringsraad (Norway) has sponsored the development of a PC-based KIDLINK-presentation with NOK 22.000 (appr. US$3,400). Further, they have ordered a feasibility study of a possible local KIDLINK Center. Value approximately US$3,800.
Norsk Faglitteraere Forfatterforening (Oslo, Norway) has given Odd de Presno a grant of NOK 47,620 (appr. US$ 7,300) to write a book about KIDLINK. The work will start after the Celebration in May. Others will also be involved in the work. Royalties earned by sales of this English language book will go in full to KIDLINK's global activities. (Mail opresno@ulrik.uio.no for more information or to get involved.)
The Canadian Secretary of State's office has agreed to sponsor a pilot project to involve Canadian youth throughout the country in KIDLINK and KIDS FROM KANATA, an initiative modeled after KIDLINK to engage Canadian youth in dialog about the critical issues facing their country and the world today. The initial grant was $60,000 (Canadian).

6. New Documents and Files

These are some new or updated files that are available by e-mail from the KIDS-92 archives.

General information:

GENERAL		What is KIDS-92?
GENERALG		Was ist KIDS-92 (Deutch)
QUESTION		The four KIDLINK questions explained
MASTER		KidLink Document Descriptions
INDEXHLP		How to use the INDEX and INDEXW services
LIBRARY		How to use the KIDLINK archives
GEO-DAT		Data files for GeoClock (KIDS-92 by April 1, 1992)
KIDMAP		Map of KIDLINK
KIDMAPIT		Map of Kidlink (Italian)
CONTACTS		People to contact about KIDS-92
PROJECTS		KIDLINK Project Overview
SLIDES		KIDLINK presentation in Oslo
LOGO-UGF		KIDLINK Logo GIF/UUEncoded
LOGO-UPX		KIDLINK Logo PCX/UUEncoded
LOGO2BGF		KIDLINK Logo GIF/UU 640x200
NEWS4-92		newsletter #4
NEWS492G		KIDS-92 Newsletter #4 (German)
KIDSHOW		The KIDLINK Slideshow offer
TIPS		Practical tips about using KIDLINK

Information for teachers:

REPORT		KIDS-92 in the Classroom
NOMAIL		When your students get no mail in KIDCAFE

KIDS-92 Project Information:

ENVIRON

Youth Environment Forum

To get a list of all available files in the KIDS-92 archives, send a message to LISTSERV@vm1.nodak.edu . In the TEXT of your message, write the command: INDEX KIDS-92
To get one of the files from the list above, write the command: GET KIDS-92 <filename> as in "GET KIDS-92 GENERAL". If you have problems downloading files, please e-mail Odd de Presno (opresno@ulrik.uio.no).

7. About KIDS-92

On May 18th and 19th, 1992, the children will be invited to "chat" with each other in a global electronic dialog. Exhibitions of selected contributions to the KIDS-92 Creative Challenge and parts of the responses will be sent back to the world for the children to see and enjoy.
Our global online discussion forums, KIDS-92, KIDPROJ, KIDPLAN, and KIDPLAN2, are meeting places for teachers, parents and other persons involved with the KIDS-92 project. KINDEX and KIDNEXW are special services set up to help coordinators cope with the volume of messages. KINDEX covers KIDCAFE, while KINDEXW covers the rest.
The project operates the following forums for the children themselves:

RESPONSE		where the children send their personal introductions (their responses to the four introductory questions)
KIDCAFE		where they can 'talk' about anything they like
KIDS-ACT		where they can discuss 'What we can do NOW to make the world a better place to live'.

To join KIDS-92 through Internet/BITNET, send the command SUB KIDS-92 Yourname to LISTSERV@vm1.NoDak.EDU (for example: SUB KIDS-92 Ole Olsen). The command should be in the BODY of the text. The discussion forums are also available through several conferencing system and mail exploders around the world. Write us for more information.
All discussion forums are open for everybody, but only kids between 10 - 15 may write messages in KIDCAFE and KIDS-ACT.
The KIDS-92 newsletter is an information bulletin for teachers, participants, sponsors, mediators, promoters, and others. Suggestions and contributions are invited. But please don't wait until the next issue to plan activities in your community! And be sure to write us if you want to get on the mailing list for KIDS- 92!! Onward!

Editor/Project director:		Odd de Presno, Saltrod, Norway.
Mail address: Telefax:		Saltrod, Norway (Europe). +47 41 27111
Online addresses: Internet: UUCP/EUnet: DASnet: Saltrød Horror Show BBS:		opresno@ulrik.uio.no uunet!ulrik.uio.no!opresno ADIAS4 SYSOP. Phone: +47 41 31378.

If you want to help out with KIDS-92, or participate, contact the editor, or one of the following persons:

Daniel D. Wheeler:		Bitnet: wheeler@ucbeh Internet: Dan.Wheeler@UC.Edu
Nancy Stefanik:		MetaNet=stefanik, PeaceNet=nstefanik, AppleLink=x0447, TCN=tcn145 Internet: stefanik%tmn@uunet.uu.net UUCP/EUnet: tmn!stefanik@uunet.uu.net Fax: (202) 547-2079

You can also write to KIDLINK, 4815 Saltrod, Norway or just sign up ...