1. Translate module announcements.
2. Send to your language lists.
3. Send, or have one of your helpers send, a personal welcome message to teachers who subscribe to your WAI lists. We are building a supportive atmosphere. I receive a message from the listserv that comes to me automatically every day showing me who is signing on to our lists. You might want to think about this little act of welcoming and kindness that could add a personal touch to your module work. You can write a simple yet personal note and send the same one to each newcomer. This will help with your time management. Use their names because this is important. "Who Am I?" My name is special to me.
4. Make sure your teachers know that they need to subscribe to *both* lists - one for the kids and one for the teachers. We will truly use the teacher list to support our teachers in the modules. The lists are named on: http://www.kidlink.org/kie/waila/welcome.html
5. Read through the complete module so that you are familiar with your "textbooks" for these modules.
6. Say "Hello" to the kids on your lists and start talking to them.
7. Chat a little with the teachers to give them some hints how to start with the kids? Some may have only one computer and others may have several Internet connections. Have we made any suggestions for teachers of the younger kids who might have difficulty answering the 4 Q's? It is difficult for the little ones to think in big world terms.
8. Begin module discussions with the kids.

• It is important to keep the kids writing and communicating across the mailing lists for students.
• Be sure to send prompts when the list is silent.
• Encourage the students to interact with each other as well as answer the discussion questions.
• Encourage them to collaborate and share knowledge with each other.
• Guide the kids to answer the discussion questions in the first lesson of the modules. If we don't, they'll go off and talk about anything which is fine except that WAI has an agenda already planned for them. Gently try to keep them focused.
• Be sure to keep students and teachers within a module's time framework.
• The lessons are written "to the kids" and you can keep that same tone or use your own. The decision is yours.
• Each module's Discussion Questions and Classroom Activities are only suggestions. Feel free to add any of your own ideas.
• Make sure that http://www.kidlink.org/kie/waila/translate.html is made known to the language area translators, and in particular the paragraph about language that kids understand.
• The LAC interacts several times during the week with kids and teachers on the kids' list and the coordination list for teachers. That is a big task but very important to make a project happen successfully. Find people to help you for each module.
• It's important for all the LAC's to act as "virtual teachers" in these WAI listservs. The kids and teachers are not going to carry on the project without you. To stir some dialogue you will have to ask questions and keep going back until they answer. If not, the module will be over and no one will have said anything.
• When all is said and done our main goal is bringing kids to gobal dialogue and deeper insights about our cultural diversities. We hope that by taking part in our Kidlink activities kids will *learn* something of value. We have excellent modules to help teachers reach those curriculum goals we all face. Our challenge is to support them as they use our Internet activities in their classrooms.

Suggested Sample "Welcome to KIDWAI" messages

Example of a short, personal "welcome" message that you might send to those who subscribe to our WAI lists. You should write from your heart. Try to include these items in your message:

1. name of the class or student
2. name of their country
3. use of subject line
4. URLs for the modules
5. promise of support from you or your team

Hello kids in Kolarngskolan 6th form in Sweden, ^^^^......................^^^^ .... I personalized it with their name and country

Welcome to the KIDWAI list! It's great to see you in our virtual classroom for the "Who Am I?" program. We will be doing two modules in this listserv space:

"Who Am I?"
"Where Do I Live?"

You can join us in both projects or either one. The choice is yours. To help us keep the messages organized for everyone we will be using the <subject> line to show the difference between the two. Like this:

WAI: Hello from Kolarngskolan
or
WHERE: Hello from Kolarngskolan

Are you ready to have some fun and learn more about the other kids in this virtual classroom? We are! We hope you are, too. Stay tuned for more messages. Look here to see how our discussions will unfold:

Who Am I? http://www.kidlink.org/kie/nls/english/response/lessons.html
Where Do I Live? http://www.kidlink.org/kie/nls/english/where/lessons.html

I'll be here to help you as the 8 week topics are discussed. Feel free to ask for assistance if you need it.

All the best, <your name here>

Example message two

Hi kids!

It's great to see you here in our "Who am I?" program. Have you read through the questions on the web page for lesson 1? What???? You mean you haven't seen them yet? Oh no! <tears> I might have to take your playtime away today if you aren't prepared for class. Hmmm.... need a second chance? Ok. Let's look at the first questions together:

"Who Am I?" module:

1. Introduce your class or group to those who are participating in our project. Include your school or group name, number of students, your town, village or city and country.

"Where Do I Live?" module

1. Introduce your class or group to those who are participating in our project. Include your school or group name, number of students, your town, village or city and country. Find your latitude and longitude and GMT factor as well. There are resources to help you on our Resources page.

The first class to send in their answers gets a pizza party after school next week! ;-) Oh well.. sounded like a nice idea anyway.

So, ok... tell us who you are. We'd love to know.

Have fun, Mrs. Weeg

The Module Begins

When you start with the module, think of yourself as the teacher in front of a "virtual class of kids" from all over. You can talk to them just as you would your own students in your schools but, you won't see them misbehave at all in our virtual environment!
Point them to the web pages for the first lesson *and* talk to them on the list. Give them the first question and don't count on the fact that they or their teachers will go to the web pages to see the questions.

"Who Am I?" module

1. Introduce your class or group to those who are participating in our project. Include your school or group name, number of students, your town, village or city and country.

"Where Do I Live?" module

1. Introduce your class or group to those who are participating in our project. Include your school or group name, number of students, your town, village or city and country. Find your latitude and longitude and GMT factor as well. There are resources to help you on our Resources page.

• Notice that our first questions are nearly the same except that I ask the kids for latitude and longitude and GMT. The kids might need your help. You can also be talking "behind the scenes" to their teachers on the adult WAI lists and giving them hints to help them guide the kids. It is important that we assist the teachers as well as the kids.
• As always, when writing to the lists be sure to use the subject line wisely.
• [use something like this on the kids' list] WAI and WHERE: Time to begin!
• [use something like this on the adults' list] WAI and WHERE: startup advice for teachers

Examples of Good Practice

Regina Royer has led the "Through Our Eyes" project,  http://www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/Eyes98  for 4 straight years and each year it gets bigger and bigger. People really respond to her way of interacting with them. She has an outline and a plan for her project and she gently guides everyone in their tasks throughout the weeks. It takes time and lots of hard work. She will be the first to tell you that she can do this knowing that in December the project is finished.

From: Regina Royer rroyer@shore.intercom.net
Hello everyone.
It is so exciting to see that almost every class in the TOE project has sent in a letter of introduction. It is easier to feel a part of the group if we all know something about each other. And what a diverse group we are. A home school class, a first grade class, an advanced grade 10 class, and classes from Europe, Asia, South America, and North America. Isn't the Internet wonderful? And all of this excitement is free!!! I never cease to be amazed and excited at the potential for motivating our students.
Have your students written to any of their new friends? (check the web site for e-mail addresses.) Have your students located their TOE partners on a map? Have your students discussed how our classes are similar and different based on our letters of introduction - class six days a week in Israel???? How many of the classes mention liking sports? There are a lot of possibilities.
The next part of our project is upon us. Your class needs to select a place to describe. This place should be a specific place: a building, a statue, a scene. Make sure that your students are DESCRIBING a specific place not telling us ABOUT a place. Instead of telling us about your town, show us one building. One of the best ways to do this is to have the students imagine taking a picture, (they could really take a picture and send it with the essay) and then have them describe what they saw in the picture. Many of your classes have decided on a topic and have planned field trips. This is the best way for ALL students in your class to feel that they are a part of the project. (We'll discuss collaborative writing next week.)
While on location, have your students make a list of the details that they think describe what they see. Have your students SEND TO KIDPROJ their list of nouns, adjectives and verbs that they think best describe their chosen location. I always like to stress the use of active verbs. I will post your topic and list of details on your pre writing page on our TOE web pages. I hope your are watching that site grow.
Send in your pre writing soon.
Regina

From Marisa Lucena:

How to act in the lists in each kind of projects? How to guide moderators?
"One upon a time"... when I offered myself to moderate the project "Virtual Transaction", a Kidforum project, as it was my first time, I had several doubts how to handle it. At that time, Alenka gave me help.
For instance, I didn't know that I was supposed to send mails to the list and to motivate kids to write in the Kidforum Project list. I noticed that I needed to behave as I was a "sort of kid" too. I mean: that I should act like them, that I should be "one of them", part of the participant group. When I and Paty Fiero (that was assisting the project too) understood this role, we started to communicate with the children and we had a good interaction at the end. We understood that to manage a Kidforum's projects, we had to have an active participation and not a passive one in the list. We had to instigate, to talk, to ask questions (Why this? Why that? Did you see xxx's message? etc...), well, to put kids in contact to discuss others ideas, to create situations of dialog.

Tips from Odd

1. Try recruit volunteers to help you with the LAC task. You are free to enter the names and email addresses of your helpers in your version of the welcome.html file.
   Hypothetical example:
   Knut recruits a teacher called Donald Clinton as assistant. Knut is now listed as the LAC for Norwegian in the northern hemisphere program's Participating Languages table. His email address is under "Lang.area coordinators" on the line for "Norwegian". This very cell in this table is where he can enter Donald Clinton on a new line under his own email address. You can also add other assistants in the same cell.
   If you feel this gets to messy, then you can also add a new section at the bottom ofthe page under a subject heading saying "The WAI Norwegian Language Area team", and underneath:
   Language area coordinator:
   Tor Arne Richvoldsen <email address> phonenumber?Assistants: Donald Clinton <email address> phone number?
   This information will remain local to your version of the welcome.html, and you are herewith authorized to make this change in the page. (Other changes will have tobe approved by me, the owner of the contents of the welcome.html page.)
2. Consider using the web to support the discussions in your language area teacher conference. Complement the youth discussions by private email to the individual teachers having their classes in the youth list. Ask if they have any questions. When you answer them, consider a summary of the reply to the teacher conference, and post the reply on a Frequently Asked Questions webpage used for such questions/answers. Make a link on welcome.html to this page. (In the teacher conference, you may want to keep the name of the teacher asking the question anonymous unless authorized to use it.)
   On the FAQ web page, which may be very simple, write the question in boldface, and the answer with ordinary fonts. Follow on with the next question in the same way. When you have several questions and answers, consider listing the questions (in normal type) at the bottom, and make links to their place on the page for quicker reference. Teachers visiting the page may only be interested in one of the questions, and in this way they can find the answer faster. Refer to the web address of your FAQ page each time you report a question/answer to the teacher conference. (Yes, you may report each individual q/a.)
3. When writing privately to the individual teachers, you may consider suggesting that they appoint an interested student in their class as a KHelper. This person can help in the computer lab at the school, and also help the youth online in the students' WAI program mailing list. We have very good experience with KHelpers in other language areas.

A compilation of suggestions from the WAI-COORD postings. Please contact  the Program Manager for clarification on any points that are unclear.