Computers and related technologies have forced momentous cultural changes over the past two decades. Currently, the Internet is a number of computer networks connected together sharing information all over the world to well over 16 million people in 90 countries on all six continents, including Antarctica. After more than twenty years of growth and change, this "mother of all networks" is emerging as one of the mast magnificent and profound achievements in recent time. Certainly, the Internet will be the largest human communication network in the history of the world. Consequently, one finds it hard to understand why a majority of the world population has never heard of the Net and its assembly of world wide information resources. On the other hand, the resources of this majestic development are so vast as to be well beyond the comprehension of any individual on this planet. Those of us who work in education may soon find ourselves entangled by tradition beneath this huge information tidal wave. While some in the field can be seen bracing for the worst and speculating on how best to stay afloat, there are others out there who have learned to ride this wave and surf the Internet.

GETTING SCHOOLS CONNECTED TO THE WORLD

       When educators set the tasks of getting connected and learning to utilize the Net in their classrooms, they usually find themselves encountering four challenges to innovation. These challenges take the form of tradition, apathy, ignorance, and the lack of funds. The traditions of school administrators, faculty, and students usually set the focus of the whole campus on the immediate demands of each day. The constant flow of events in the work of a school tends to devour the time and energy of the entire staff. When planning takes place, it is usually done for the short term. Consequently, thanks to computers and telecommunications, educators are about to face revolutionary changes in teaching and learning methods while little or no preparation may be underway at the campus or district.

       In many educational situations, tradition is not the only barrier to planning for change. Apathy seems to go hand in hand with the daily rituals in many schools. Undoubtedly, most schools have a portion of the faculty that has no interest or intention of becoming computer literate. Currently, most educators are indifferent toward telecommunications.

       The primary reason for this indifference to telecommunications in the school is ignorance on the part of administrators, teachers and parents, alike. Undeniably, the majority in the field of education are oblivious to the potential of an Internet connection. Others may see the exciting possibilities for e-mail and telecommunications in the classroom but find themselves locked out because of their unfamiliarity with the software and the hardware, required to get connected. Certainly, the early weeks working in telecommunications will present a steep learning curve.

       One needs a dedicated phone line, computer connected to a modem, communications software and an Internet access provider for a simple telecommunications system. At some institutions, the cost of these basic requirements is beyond the funds which are available. In spite of the problems and obstacles which stand between an educator and the Internet, many teachers and administrators are getting connected. The reality that teachers are facing is that they have to be patient, tenacious and at times they are going to have to find their own resources to get their students involved. For example, Marjan Glavac and his school were given access to the Internet in September 1993 through the Canadian Federal Government's SchoolNet initiative. In addition, their school was given a $400 donation from Bell Canada to help in the initiative. Even with all of the help, it was four months after getting an Internet account before a dedicated phone line was installed in the computer room. Marjan and his students waited until January of this year for a modem to connect the system. Until then, all work had to be sent from his personal system at home. In January, Marjan asked if anyone in his classes had a spare modem. He discovered that one student had a dad with 15 modems. Two grade eight students came in the next day, pulled the computer apart. replaced cards and cables and adapters and hooked up a 2400 baud modem. So, Marjan's school will start the year on line. This gives new meaning to the saying, "your students are your greatest resource."

       The situation for Robert Fromme and his students in San Antonio was similar. The school depended upon Robert's computer system and his personal dial-up account to involve the students for the past two years. For several years, teachers and administrators in Texas public schools have had easy access to TENET, The Texas Educator's Network. The statewide net serves as an educational resource for public education and as a gateway to the Internet. Working without connections at school. Robert collected student work on disks, transported them home at the end of the day, uploaded and e-mailed the files from his computer. With Macintosh computers at school and a DOS based clone at home, time and additional file transfer software was required to complete text based telecomputing projects. After involvement in several events, interest and support from administrators and teachers is growing at Robert's school. Change on the campus has come in the form of switched access to a fax line which will double for telecomputing. A computer and modem will soon be up and running for faculty use of TENET and the Internet. Although Robert is an art teacher, he continues to actively encourage and help teachers and students from other courses to discover the world through e-mail and the Internet.

       For the last three years Sheldon Smith has used CORE. California Online Resources of Education, online service that is currently free to educators in California. CORE is a dial-up vt100 and SLIP connection accessible at any one of the California State Universities.

       Three years ago during his first year of teaching, Sheldon started integrating telecomputing into his classroom with the use of an Apple IIe computer sitting at the back of his classroom. Throughout the course of the day, he would allow students to drop whatever they were doing to type on the Apple IIe. Whatever class work they missed automatically became homework. Students would type letters to KidCafe, write about their hobbies for Cleveland Freenet/Academy One, or correspond with students who were introduced through the first personal poem project.

       At the end of each day, Sheldon would take the 5.25" disk full of letters and convert them using an Apple GS in the teachers room. Once the letters were on a 3.5" disk, he would convert the letters to Macintosh format using Apple File Exchange. After the letters were converted. Sheldon would take the disk home and send the letters to KidCafe or Cleveland Freenet from his home Macintosh. This complicated method went on for his entire first year as a classroom teacher. Sheldon related the following story about his second year at the School:
 

"I finally got a phone line in my room the following year. When the principal and superintendent were touring the school. they popped into my classroom only to find students working in pairs on four Macintosh computers that I gathered from around the school. I borrowed the three math department Macs, and a library Mac. The students were typing letters to students in Estonia after being introduced to each other via the Personal Poem. The letters were not typed online, but compiled into a class file that I could send at the end of the day."

       After some discussion about telecomputing with the superintendent and principal, his principal asked, "How many computers do you need next year, Sheldon?"

       With all of the responsibilities which face educators today, one has to wonder if it is worth the effort for those few teachers who are willing to take on the additional challenges of tradition, apathy, ignorance, and the lack of funds in order to give their students access to e-mail and the Internet? The answer to this question is "yes".

       In an effort to demonstrate the wonderful learning potential of telecomputing as an educational tool, let us concentrate on one of the many project examples of the global educational village. The example which we have chosen is an electronic mail exchange of poetry and letters between children in schools separated by thousands of miles, as well as by national, cultural and ethnic heritages.

THE PERSONAL POEM PROJECT

       Global communications in education becomes a vehicle that allows contact that is immediate and meaningful to the students. It is also blind to age, colour and religion. Students from all cultures have the potential to share their thoughts and work together for common aims without the barriers of time, distance, economics and politics. Over the past three years, English teacher Sheldon Smith of Atascadero Junior High in California has been organizing and refining an international exchange of personal poems which, as an instructional device, has proven exceptional and quite effective. This project exemplifies the best in global communication experiences for children.

       Concerning the Personal Poem Project, Sheldon has remarked:
 

"My goals for this project were for students to be able to use poetry and writing to share their personalities, show their friendship and voice their concerns. The project was intended to reveal and demonstrate that kids are more similar than they are different. It was my intention to show how small the world really is, especially when using telecommunications."

       In the first stage of the event. Sheldon mailed a simple description of his idea for the exchange to numerous classroom teachers around the globe. Within the explanation, a list of questions were included. When the questions were completed by the students, a personal poem resulted. All of the poems for the class were to be saved in a single file. This file was to be sent as e-mail to the other participants in the project. He suggested that the poems be printed and placed in classroom folders for students to read and compare. The students were to discuss the things which were similar and different in their lives compared to the children from other schools. Sheldon also suggested that the poems could be followed by an e-mail exchange of letters.

       The poem format which was chosen for the exchange was developed by Mimi Wheatwind, an educator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. It had been distributed in recent years by N.C.T.E. (National Council of Teachers of English) and it was circulated by the National Writing Project and the California Writing Project. Previously, Sheldon used the format in his classroom as a simple method of introducing school children to poetry. It was a natural step to test the format in his international poetry exchange. Six of the twelve questions which were used to create the personal poem were as follows:
 

My name is _________________________________________________________  But my real name is __________________________________________________  The animal inside of me is a ____________________________________________  because ______________________________________________________  A sound I love is the sound of a_________________________________________  because ______________________________________________________  A smell I love is the smell of ____________________________________________  because ______________________________________________________  A phrase or saying that my mother (or father, grandparents) say to me a lot is. ____  ___________________________________________________________________

 

       Marjan Glavac's comments concerning the sentence format used in the project were:
 

"I was familiar with this personal poem format before Sheldon sent us the invitation to participate. I didn't like poetry, but I let my students make the decision to write a poem. Within a fifty minute period, most had very little difficulty writing a poem. Some did ask whether this was 'New Age" or if it came from California. After using the format with seventy-five students, I was very impressed how quickly they adapted to it. Sometimes the poems reflect sides of students which teachers never see, or have never known about the student. For example, the grade eight boy whose cat died; another boy who loves to cuddle; the fatherless girl who loves the wind because it makes her feel secure knowing something is wrapped around her."

       It is not uncommon for teachers to voice considerable despair when they first discover that they will be working with junior high/middle school students. The general impression is that these students are more difficult to teach than any other age group. Certainly, teaching at the junior- high/middle school level has also revealed the exciting instructional prospect this age group offers, and the satisfaction that comes from sharing with energetic, challenging, and creative minds the excitement of personal expression and creative thinking which is inherent in poetry and script. Ages ten to fourteen, the traditional age span of these students, are not necessarily easy ages to teach. Added to any personal difficulties students may experience during this time are the more pervasive characteristics of adolescence. These attributes-- physical, emotional, and intellectual-- are important to teachers, as they can have a direct bearing on the response of students toward learning. The Personal Poem Exchange is a project designed to tap into the adolescent personality and their world, where the child can experience a direct and personal involvement in learning. In order to understand how the project works with the adolescent child, we should note some of the specific behaviour characteristics which are found in the junior-high/middle school classroom. Attitudes and behaviour can change from one moment to the next when the students are adolescents. In a learning environment where the unexpected is the norm, the format for the personal poem allows the student a chance for an honest confrontation with their own inconsistent behaviours and their common experience of behaviours which often slip beyond reason and self. Their inconsistence can be due, in part, to the tremendous changes taking place in students. Growth is rapid and irregular. They are caught in a time when physical maturity may be far ahead of the emotional maturity and other aspects of their developing personalities. Of course, this discrepancy is frequently at the root of the swings in mood and behaviour and contributes to their characteristic lack of confidence.

       Adolescence is also a period of searching for identity and their own independence. This search frequently results in rebellion. To cover the shortage of confidence, or in the search for identity, a mask of pseudo-sophistication or brutish stubbornness frequently confronts the teacher and fellow students in the adolescent learning environment. Students respond well to tasks which are within their abilities and often rebel with the hint of failure and embarrassment when the task is beyond them. The format for the poem in this project was simple. It presented a task which was well within the proficiency of a wide range of ages, skills and creative abilities. The project was built on clearly defined and carefully explained objectives--with as strong a built-in success factor as possible. The children had only to answer questions about things in their world. When learning makes the connection with the child's environment, motivation picks up. Students who often exhibit a deficiency in the area of motivation, will come on board as the lesson enters their universe and involves children their own age. The product of their handiwork was a composition about themselves, their world. and their relationship to others. The experience afforded the student an opportunity to finish a creation which had been personalized and expressive. When the individual was able to find some quality and sensitivity in the experience, the finished poem gave rise to positive reinforcement from the teacher, from fellow students, and from within themselves.

        Marjan Glavac's students were divided on the merits of the poem format. Many of them disliked it, preferring instead to go into just writing letters to send in the e-mail. There were some students who suggested that the Personal Poem format should be changed and replaced with a letter of introduction because the poem did not reflect their true self. After consideration and experience with the exchange, Marjan commented: "I think for this age group the Poem format should be kept but with some fine tuning. Many of my students said that they wrote the poem just to get it out of the way. I think that may have been fault on my part. I really rushed them to finish the poem in one period. Many of them said that they wish they could have written a first draft and then come back to it a couple of days later. They really didn't understand that once the poem was written, there was no opportunity for revision."

        One idea may be to wrap up the exchange project with a second poem. After all the correspondence with other peers, the students may decide that the first poem was not a true representation of themselves. Another suggestion from several of the educators involved the revision of the line in the format which starts as, "A smell I dislike is the smell of......." It seems that some of the children's sentences using this line had to be edited before they could be uploaded and e-mailed to the other schools.

THE E-MAIL EXCHANGE OF PERSONAL POEMS

        In the second phase of the project, the poems from each school were sent as one file. The teachers were supposed to make sure that at least one student wrote to another student in the other class. The teachers wanted no students left out and every one should have received a letter. When the poems were received in most of the schools, they were printed and individually distributed to the students. However, Marjan placed the disk with the large poetry file in the students' computer files. He avoided the use of paper. With this arrangement. it was hard for students to read the letters until they learned how to block and copy a letter and put it into their personal files area for viewing. In this way, students learned word processing commands and keyboarding skills which they did not know until the Personal Poem Project gave them a reason for learning those skills. Students became proficient at the use of Microsoft Works. They are now able to load the program, use the word processing features of the program and save a file. They also learned the importance of constantly saving a file and file management due to power interruptions and accidents in the computer room. They all became very comfortable with the computer. Students also learned the power of telecommunications and the importance of clear written communication.

       In addition to learning to use a computer, the children learned that e-mail is not private, and that they had to be careful not to say anything that would embarrass them later, or include things that are too personal because anyone can read it.

       Perhaps the best valuative result of this project was related by Marjan telling of a student from London, Ontario reading a poem from a student in San Antonio, Texas. The child shouted spontaneously in the middle of the class and then he exclaimed "that person is exactly like me." A San Antonio student wrote back and said: "I didn't think anyone would write to me." Therein lies the power of telecommunications, the value of this project -- the power to connect.

THE SECOND EXCHANGE, E-MAIL LETTERS

       The third phase of the project involved the exchange of letters between the students following the exchange of poems. Undoubtedly, the personal poem experience proved an effective tool in the child's native learning environment, but what happened when the audience changed from teacher and fellow students to strangers? With this Personal Poem Exchange and the second exchange of letters which followed, the educational sparks began to fly. Think of it, children living thousands of miles apart with diverse ethnic and national heritages communicating as if they were passing notes across the classroom. Marjan Glavac remarked, "When the letters were exchanged, many of my students found that students in far away and diverse states such as California, Illinois, Maryland and Texas had a lot in common with them. There was an increased awareness of geography and the importance of culture and history. "They're a lot like us" was a phrase often said by students at every school. San Antonio educator, Mary Hanley noticed that her students seemed to find comfort in knowing that the other students were quite similar to themselves. This technology becomes even more powerful when Mr. Glavac's special education "at risk" students can transcend their barriers and communicate with peers of their own age without being prejudged. This project "freed" students from the barriers of sexual, racial and cultural stereotyping. They could communicate a message based on the message itself and not on the way they looked, or what they wore. My "'identified" students were writing letters -- something which they would have had much difficulty doing in the past without a computer and without a purpose. They could now overcome their "barriers" and connect with peers their own age based on their interests. Students would often write more than one letter to a class and often times "team up" with another letter. Due to the technology, I was able to let students read all the letters which came back, so they shared the same knowledge as everyone in the class. There was an increased awareness of geography and the importance of culture and history to the American students and to themselves.

       When the Canadian students were asked to react on the project, many of them wrote, "it was so amazing to see how many people in the world enjoy the same thing I do." Some of the students thought it helped them a lot with meeting foreign people with opinions about life which were different from their own. "You learn faster, better," said another student. Every class also noted how little Americans know about Canadians. They were amused to read a letter by a student from San Antonio asking if they had movie theaters in Canada.

        Other interesting suggestions were offered by the young Canadians. When the letter exchanges began, most of them said that writing to too many people was confusing. The children felt that it would have been better to develop a relationship with one or two different classes instead of the number that their classes were trying to communicate with. A suggestion to have a schedule in the classroom to help keep track of who has written, and students you have written to and not received a reply, was suggested by one student. Every class did voice disappointment by the infrequency of the letter exchanges.

       Several of the teachers admitted that they were also disappointed and felt for the kids who were enthusiastic about e-mail but did not find a letter to them in the mail. Although we have the technology, there is still the human element. There will be breakdowns in communication, in the technology. Schedules will change and the unexpected will become a priority. In order for the event to work for the classroom teacher, there really must be a commitment to follow up with letters as a courtesy, a letter should be exchanged if an individual receives one. Many of the kids wanted to exchange photographs and scanned images in digital format. The letter exchange continued on into the present semester over the Internet and through "snail mail," the regular postal system. Due to the size of image files and technical complications, the scanned image idea has not developed. However, the exchange of photographs has become part of the regular mail exchanges between students.

       Recently, Marjan Glavac had the chance to "debrief" his three eighth grade classes (seventy-five students) who were involved in this project. He asked how many would want to do it again and it was unanimous--every student wanted to do it again. This included four students who didn't get any replies to their letters. Many of the children said that it was their best subject this term. The students and Marjan agreed that one fifty minute class per six-day cycle was not enough to complete the letters. Most of the children said that a double period would give them enough time to finish their letters.

REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

       This project offered an alternative and innovative method of teaching a subject. It offered teachers and students the opportunity of ending the isolation of the classroom. It presented an opportunity to expand beyond the classroom walls, school and community to students and teachers in other parts of the country and the world. Global connectivity allows teens to anchor themselves in a fast changing world with their peers around the world. It offers these adolescents a way of overcoming negative peer pressure. They now have a wide source of peers their own age if their classroom peers reject them. It gives both students and teachers an opportunity to share and increase the flow of new ideas with hundreds of other students and teachers in diverse communities; it breaks down misconceptions and barriers; it expands our sometimes narrow perspectives by overcoming the barriers of space, time and geography. When you connect with the world, the walls come tumbling down.

       We believe this project has tremendous potential because it introduces students to the Internet and to "virtual sharing" of cultures, ideas, hopes, and fears. The experience of the children who were involved in this project generates mutual respect for each other. The events point to a potential for the children, years later, solving future problems across borders without government intervention or restriction. This project is good for introductions to the Internet, but for it to reach its full potential, follow-up projects must dove-tail the personal poem exchange.

CUE Journal / Summer 1994