- Excerpt
A TEACHER'S PROJECT GUIDE TO THE INTERNET
by Kevin R. Crotchett
excerpt
23) EMAIL: Keypals Through the International Email
Classroom Connection (IECC)
Classroom keypal projects are a great way to get a whole classroom involved
with the Internet. Keypals not only demonstrate the efficiency of the
Internet to children, they also allow students to work on their writing
and personal skills as they communicate with others from around the world.
Finding keypals through email access would be challenging
without the help of the International Email Classroom
Connection (IECC) list. This list makes getting a classroom
keypal situation setup as easy as sending an email message.
Once you have submitted to the list address, you are sent
instructions on how to submit for classroom keypals. By
simply filling out a provided form and sending it back to the
list, your search for a group of children from somewhere in
the world is under way. You can also read keypal requests
from other list members.
I have been using keypals through the Internet for the past
two years and have found that the children gain many skills
from such a project. In my classroom, where I have twenty-
eight students and three computers, we first respond to our
keypal letters on paper. Once these letters are edited,
students take turns typing them into the computer. When all
the letters have been entered and copied to a single file,
they are emailed to our corresponding classroom.
This experience has given my students -- from a Portland,
Oregon, inner-city school -- the chance to write and become
friends with people their own age from a private school on
the east coast of the United States. Students have gained not
only friendships, but also writing and communication skills
while they continue to develop their typing skills and
experiences with technology.
IECC has subscribers from all over the world and is not
limited to keypals in the United States.
Server Address:
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List Address:
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37) NEWSGROUP SURVEYS
One question that often arises with regard to the Internet
and classroom use is in the primary classroom. Even the
youngest elementary students can become familiar with the
Internet. The World Wide Web, discussed in Chapter Six of my
book, is one way to engage the six-year-old with visual and
audio effects, but it can lack the personal interaction that
makes the global community such a powerful tool. One way to
enhance Internet interaction in the primary classroom and
throughout the grades is through newsgroup surveys.
Many primary classes work with a curriculum that deals with
the community, people, and cultures around them. This often
inspires surveys done by primary students on opinions about
sports or weather, for example. On any given day you will
likely find a clipboard-carrying five-year-old walking the
halls of my school asking adults whether they prefer rain or
snow. This survey information is then brought back to the
kindergarten classroom and shared with members of the class
in the form of a very basic data study.
Newsgroups can be used in the same
manner. Younger students can formulate a survey question that interests
them while at the same time think about questions that would interest
others from many different parts of the state, country, and
the world. After selecting the appropriate newsgroup, such as "k12.elementary.chat" for elementary students or
"clari.news.weather" or a local weather newsgroup for the
weather enthusiast, the question can be posted to the group,
asking for replies to be either emailed to the classroom or
posted back to the newsgroup.
Over the next few days replies will be coming in, many or
few, depending on the newsgroup and the question posed.
Replies can then be recorded, charted, or mapped. Writing
skills can be practiced by writing thank-you notes and
emailing them to respondents, thus increasing a student's
email experiences. Survey data and findings can be looked at
on a local, state, or global level, all depending on the
question posed and the newsgroup it was posted to.
The natural extension of surveying into the upper grades is
also a great way to introduce students to the uses of Usenet.
As a whole class or small group, students can survey and poll
others their age or target a specific group of people, as
well as a specific area of the world. Students work through
the scientific process, formulating a question, writing a
hypothesis, gathering and analyzing data, and proposing a
conclusion. The results of the survey can then be shared with
the class, the survey respondents, and the newsgroup.
46) USING FTP
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) allows you to obtain computer
programs and large text documents. While this is not likely
to become a largely used protocol by the average Internet
user, it can at times be very helpful. One of the uses I have
found to be very helpful for my fifth graders is retrieving
unabridged copies of famous speeches.
Be it the birthday of John F. Kennedy
or a unit on civil rights, FTP can bring to the classroom a library
of enrichment. From President Kennedy's speech of the first man
on the moon to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, "I have a dream"
speech, FTP can deliver unabridged copies to the classroom,
allowing them to be read, reviewed, analyzed, and studied in
detail. By logging on to the FTP site "ftp.msstate.edu" and
moving to the "pub/docs/history" directory, you will find
literally hundreds of speeches and text-based documents at
your fingertips. Whether you are looking for a printed copy
of the U.S. Constitution, a transcript of the Japanese
surrender during World War II, or one of many other
nationally and internationally known speeches, this site is
there to help.
54) GOPHER: Lesson Plans and Teaching Aids
Regardless of years of experience or filing cabinets filled
with lesson plans and ideas, teachers are always on the
lookout for new plans, new ideas, and new ways to teach the
same concepts. Prior to the technology of the Internet,
teachers had quenched this thirst by sharing ideas with
others in their own buildings or seeking out colleagues at
conferences or districtwide meetings, but these outlets
provided only a handful of resources. The Internet allows us
to share ideas with teachers from across the country and
throughout the world. Gopher allows teachers to find and gain
new and refreshing ideas and lesson plans.
The BigSky Telegraph and the AskERIC archives are two places
that can be found via Gopher menus and that contain a large
number of creative and useful lesson plans. BigSky
(bvsd.k12.co.us) is one of the more useful lesson-plan sites
I have come across. Once connected to this Gopher site, you
are presented with a menu of five choices. Each choice is a
subject, such as math or science. It is within these menus
that you will find some great ideas to enhance and enrich
your curriculum.
The AskERIC archive is another fantastic place to find lesson
plans, ideas, and teaching aids. Maintained at the
Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), a federally
funded information center for educational resources, the Eric
archive provides educators with valuable professional
information. At the same time, it allows teachers to submit
their lesson plans to the archive, expanding their ability to
share and communicate with other educators.
To access the ERIC archive, go to
their Gopher site "ericir.syr.edu". Once connected, you will be presented with
a menu of educational resources. One choice among many is
"Lesson Plans". It is within this menu choice that you will
find the AskERIC lesson archive. Do not let your journey end
there. ERIC offers teachers and others interested in
education many resources for professional development and
improvement.
After searching these two lesson-plan
archives with the resources available to you through the Veronica and
Jughead search engines discussed in my book, it is an easy task to
search for other lesson plans on the Internet. By surfing to
the Gopher site at the University of Minnesota
(k12.ucs.umass.edu) and entering the key words "lesson plan" into
the Veronica search engine, I was able to obtain a list of over one hundred
Gopher sites, all of which contain lesson plans for K-12 educators.
79) WEB: Welcome to Our Classroom
As schools get connected to the Internet, the ability to
develop classroom Web pages becomes available, and schools
and classrooms are taking advantage. With every classroom,
regardless of the level, comes a different group of children,
a different group of teachers, and a dynamic of
personalities, thoughts, ideas, and projects that are truly
unique. The Web gives each of our schools and classrooms the
chance to share their uniqueness and to learn about others,
like ourselves, in a way that has never before been possible.
Finding schools and classrooms online
has become as easy as finding the White House online, through WWW search
engines. Yahoo maintains a page of hundreds of schools and classrooms
at "http://www.yahoo.com/Education/K-12/". "The HotList
of K-
12 Internet School Sites" (http://www.sendit.nodak.edu/k12)
and the "Web66 International Registry of School Web Sites" (http://Web66.coled.umn.edu/schools.html)
are search sites that are dedicated to schools and classrooms. At these
sites you will find links to schools and classrooms throughout the
United States and the world, often categorized by state and
country to make your search that much easier.
Many educators will want to create
a Web site for their school or classroom. This can be a richly rewarding
learning experience, but the mechanics and issues involved are too
much to delve into in this excerpt. I devote two chapters of "A Teacher's Project Guide to the Internet" to
the World Wide Web, including a summary of my own classroom's year-long
Web site project. If you're interested in building a home page
for your home room, you might want to consult Chapters Six
and Seven in my book.
Copyright ©1997 by Kevin
R. Crotchett and Heinemann Publishing. Please request permission from
the publisher before duplicating or distributing this file. Thank You!
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