Elanora Heights Home Page
School Information Page| Elanora Heights Home Page | School Information Page |
This is a potted history of our involvement with Internet to convey the issues and questions we have been attempting to solve. If you are teaching in a Primary School where you have published a report on solutions to these problems, please email us and tell us how we can link your page to this one - particularly if you are coming up with better solutions than ours. |
|
During 1995 the Internet was being talked of so often that we thought we had better find out more about it. I have to admit I was doubtful about there being enough material on Internet at a level suitable for Primary School aged children to make it worth the effort. One of our parents, offered to demonstrate Internet at our school. He came with a very professional presentation which showed a wide variety of the sorts of web sites there were on Internet at that time, including moving graphics and sound which none of the computers in our school in 1995 would have been capable of reproducing.
However, we made a start - using the 2400baud modem that we possessed. This was in my own time - it took up to 15 minutes to load even a modest page from overseas with no movies or graphics! But it was enough to convince me that Internet had the most amazing potential for education!! But ..... how to go about it? The school's budget for the year had already been spent. There was enough money to pay for an Internet account but I had to work with the hardware we had.
Email was not a problem with the speed of modem that we possessed and we had already decided on Rivers and Lakes for Term 1 1996 as a Science theme within our own school so I thought of getting information about rivers and lakes via email from other schools around the world. It was evident within a very short time, that we would need to display the information coming in and so began our web site. (Say it quickly and it does not sound so horrendous - the learning curve for me was extremely exciting even if it was too steep for comfort!) It was frustrating that our own children could not realistically access all that we were putting on the website - we had to print it out in black and white and put the pages on the classroom walls.
June 1998: I think, after two years of involvement, that we have answered this initial question to our own satisfaction and that is why we are continuing to upgrade our equipment and are allocating time to work on the solutions to the other questions on this page.
Equity was a big concern for me. At the beginning of 1996 we bought a 28K modem and a faster computer - we had to be able to show that it would benefit all children, not just a chosen few. For this reason, we concentrated on publishing, rather than on accessing the Internet. This way, all children could contribute either a picture or some writing and know their efforts would help our school project on Internet. The Narrabeen Lake and Hawkesbury River pages were the results of this. The children used the wordprocessor and the graphics program that were familiar to them and their work was transcribed to Internet pages for them.
June 1998: Basically, the impact of Internet for each child and for most teachers is minimal when there is only one computer connected to Internet to share between 400 children which is why we have allocated funding in 1998 to increase the access to Internet across the school.
September 1998 : We have access to the Internet from every classroom and from every
computer in the staffroom, computer room and library now. The access from 486
computers is slow but it works. Children in all classes have become familiar with the
appearance of Internet pages and have learned how to click on underlined words.
Children in most primary classes have been using Internet to research information
particularly for information concerning the excursions they are about to undertake.
It is gratifying to see that children enjoy looking at their own and their friends' published
pages on Internet. We now have a class by class index which all children have learned to
use to make it easy to find their own and their friends' work.
December 1998 : Our Linux proxy server is operating and has made Internet access faster and much more reliable. Children are exploring our own site, watching the progress of our Polygon Project, and using search engines. An announcement has been made that during 1999, each school in NSW will be given a permanent Internet connection via ISDN which will give us another noticeable increase in speed and reliability of Internet access. We are delighted.
During 1996 and 1997, we published a lot of material and participated in many projects being organised by teachers in various parts of the world. The teachers at our school gave their students time to prepare responses, do research and run surveys that were needed for participation in projects. The children made their reports on Notepad or Microsoft Works and their work was transferred to web pages by me. Now (in 1998) that we have Windows 95 Pentium computers available, the children are making their own web pages using Microsoft Frontpage Editor.
It is, at the time of writing this, early 1998. We have just installed a new system where each computer in the school is capable of accessing Internet. The school has steadily upgraded equipment. The Government has provided 23 new computers. We now have a number of Pentium 166 computers which load pages fast enough that children will wait to see. The classroom 486 computers are quite a bit slower.
The reactions of 3/4D children when publishing, compared with accessing websites about the Arctic and the Antarctic, was most interesting. They were totally involved when publishing their own research pages but soon tired of watching other websites - their reading skills are still developing so they need plenty of pictures on a page. After they had researched with books and CDROMS, they were interested in seeing the same animals on Internet. Now that they have been involved in the whole publishing process, children at our school are really interested in pages other schools have made that are on similar topics.
Participating in Internet projects being run with other schools is a good way of getting the children involved - they know they have an interested audience for the work they are writing. They also read what other children are writing because they know the writers are real.
Perusing Internet sites is not as absorbing for young children as other activities available on computer - CDROMS have sound and moving graphics. Some internet sites do but the loading times, in early 1998, are still rather slow.
June 1998: We still do not know the answer to the question of whether it is better to publish, to participate or to peruse. It is obviously good to do all three but we have not worked out the best way to apportion time and effort between these three activities.
September 1998: The jury is still out on this one. Children are very involved in their own
publishing of web pages. They have begun to take an interest in pages produced by their
friends and neighbours within the school. This is now extending out to a genuine interest
in the work produced by schools with whom we have close contact e.g. within the
Polygon Project.
For the first two terms of this year only Grades 3-6 were publishing web pages but during
Term 3 every child from Kindergarten to Grade 6 produced at least one page. This work
can be viewed via our class by class index.
During the year the teachers of grades 5 and 6 have begun to set assignments which
require children to find information on Internet. Success with this is motivating children
to use the Internet more seriously for research. Unfortunately, technical problems with
the accessing of Internet have interfered with this confidence-building stage. We are
installing a Proxy Linux Server with a more reliable interface with Internet very soon.
December 1998 : The Linux Proxy server has made Internet searching fast and reliable.
This has made possible an extension to publishing tasks. e.g. 6H read a story called "My
Sister Sif" by Ruth Parks. The class teacher asked if the children could learn about
South Pacific Islands. During computer time, the children were told to use World Book,
Encarta and Compton's Atlas to find information and prepare a web page on the Island
they were allocated. After they had exhausted the local information available and had
prepared their web page(taking 3 or 4 lessons) they were told to search Internet for one
good website about their Island. Each child did that, then made a link on their page to
that site. They then tested out their own and their friends' pages and links.
The Internet access we now have was fast enough and reliable enough to enable each
student to complete their search, add the link to their page and the test the result within
one hour.
Email contact between teachers involved in Internet projects is absolutely essential to get a project organised, to keep up the interest until the project is completed and to ensure that the efforts of all involved are contributing to the main aim of the project.
For us, in our school, I have found I need to limit the amount of emailing the children do so long as there is one teacher and over 400 students. Once class teachers become aware of the resource they have at their fingertips and get involved in emailing, there will be many more ways of using email - one teacher to 30 students is a more reasonable ratio. I firmly believe that all children's email needs to be scanned by a teacher before it goes out and before the student sees it coming in.
We do not have a satisfactory system of email in our school yet (early 1998) - with only two email accounts. One email account comes to the library and is operated by the teacher-librarian. The other one comes to the account that is used across the school and is listed on most of our web pages but there is no time in the school day to handle email - I do that all at home and it takes between one and two hours a day - 7 days a week. This will need to change before email can be used effectively in the classrooms. Each teacher will need to become accustomed to using email regularly themselves - we have begun the process of setting up teachers with Hotmail or Rocketmail accounts.
June 1998: In the future, I am sure that administrators will come to terms with the impact of internet and will work out ways of facilitating the necessary interactions between international teachers - allowing time for emailing within the school day will become accepted and necessary practice. Many of the teachers with whom I communicate around the world are doing as I am doing - emailing within their own time, on their home phone bills, on computers they have paid for themselves!
September 1998 : The email situation is still as described but we have a Linux server on order which will enable individual mailboxes for teachers and classes.
December 1998 : The individual mailboxes are working and training has begun. We will not implement student emailing during 1998. A minimum amount of student emailing is still being done - the old way.
This is a big issue in all countries in the world. There are many organisations and schools now offering excellent projects that fit with Primary School level learning but this does not necessarily mean that each class teacher will find a project that suits them even if they are looking. The project time lines are often difficult to accommodate - it can be quite tricky to work in the Southern Hemisphere and co-ordinate with the school year of the Northern Hemisphere. It depends on the flexibility within the individual school.
Currently, I think it would be fair to say that most teachers think of the Internet as something extra they try to fit in with their already hectic school year. There is no teacher on our staff who could yet say (April 1998) that Internet was a valued and central part of their planned units of work. The teacher-librarian is most excited that Internet publishing this year has become the expected outcome of research work by each child from Grade 3-6.
In our own school, the problem as I see it from the computer co-ordinator's point of view, is to find time to consult with each teacher and know what types of projects are going to run in their own classes ahead of time. Given that information, I could hunt around Internet and try to locate a matching Internet project for them.
If this topic interests you as much as it does me, you may like to read the process by which one teacher integrated Internet in term 1 1998 at our school using the theme of Arctic/Antarctic Ecosystems.
June 1998: At Elanora Heights, the facility of having Internet available in each classroom is still too new to be able to answer this question - we are working on it. We want to come up with sensible, sustainable ways in which to integrate Internet with the curriculum. The curriculum for each Key Learning Area is changing frequently and I believe schools can influence the changes in the curriculum if they document their experiences of adapting their classwork to Internet and adapting Internet to their class needs.
September 1998 : It has been pleasing that teachers in our school have begun to integrate Internet information retrieval with their class activities - e.g. 6th Grade researched about Parliament House and Government before going with their classes to Canberra and Parliament House, 5th Grade have been searching on Internet for information about Bushrangers and Australian history before going to the Blue Mountains and the gold fields.
It is frustrating to me that I did not manage to rise to the technical challenge presented to me by 3rd and 4th grade when they wanted to run a forms/response questionnaire about Pittwater on our Internet site this term. Zip Internet Professionals have kindly enabled CGI scripting on our site and I have not had time to learn how to use it. I am thrilled that these teachers thought of this idea for integrating Internet into their Local Communities Project and still hope to overcome the technical challenge ready for a future request of this nature.
December, 1998 : The children are steadily developing their skills in searching for information on Internet. It has been much easier since the Linux Proxy server went in.
I have now learned how to use a CGI script and used that skill to enable people to respond to the ABC quiz on our site. We will enable CGI scripting on our Linux Proxy Server and practise creating interactive pages on our school Intranet before we add another quiz to our website. This facility has potential for teaching and learning.
June 1998: I think it is fair to say that Internet could become extremely time-consuming within a classroom and that we have not yet worked out the ways to ensure that a balance is maintained that allows for maximum realistic learning for each child.
September 1998: We have ordered a Linux Proxy Server which will also allow for a fully functioning Intranet in our school. My hope is that we develop the skills of teachers and students within the school - have them thinking of interactive projects within the school using the Intranet - then transfer these skills to Internet.
December 1998 : The Linux Proxy Server is working well. The Intranet is available but it is difficult to publish to it as yet. We will set up Front Page Editor to publish to the Intranet. We have it set to allow only the computer co-ordinator to publish to the Intranet initially to ensure that pages are checked thoroughly before being stored on there. As the staff become skilled, they will be given full rights to publish to the Intranet. Staff will prepare their work in their own directories.
Student work will continue to be prepared in their class directories and transfered to Intranet and/or Internet at the discretion of the Computer Co-ordinator.
Internet projects are already available in several key learning areas so it is possible that a keen teacher could be participating in a different project for each area.
There is a wide variety of Internet projects available - many of them require only a small amount of input from each class which then is accumulated on Internet for all to share. These types of projects are good to be involved with particularly if the class teacher can follow up - e.g. help the class to make graphs of data collected by children around the world.
The key is to be able to assess beforehand how much time any given project is going to take within the class schedule (and make sure that more than that is available if necessary.)
June 1998: At Elanora Heights, we have not really begun to address this problem. Please check back later in the year when we might be able to provide more information.
September 1998 : Without email directly available to teachers, projects all need to be handled through me. This problem is about to be solved then we can start working on teachers handling project participation independently of me.
December 1998 : No change on this one yet.
Quick surveys
Sometimes, the project requires each school to just do a quick survey the results of which
are collated for all to see. e.g. Weather on 17th February
Individual reports for global projects
Some projects ask each school to do a short report or story which can be achieved in a 40
minute lesson. e.g. International Stories
Class reports
Some projects have a question sheet which allows for groups of children in a class to do
work which becomes a class report. e.g. Trees and Forests Project Questions
Generating a Project
If you want to mount a project of your own, you need to allow for at least three months of
emailing and interacting with other schools as they go about preparing their contributions
but the rewards are that you develop a great number of friends and you experience the
joys of working with other people around the world. e.g. Trees and Forests
June 1998: It is possible to participate in projects on Internet in many different ways and involve the children in realistic experiences of working with other people in other countries. At our school we are still experimenting with different ways of involving children in Internet projects. We began during 1996 with encouraging children to develop personal email friends on Internet in other schools but we have found over the years that these quickly dwindle to nothing at all. After the children have introduced themselves, they have very little to say to each other unless they are working on a communal project.
September 1998 : There is no further information to add yet.
We have had reports back from other schools who have been involved in our projects who have developed from them whole class units of work that have been most rewarding and satisfying.
June 1998: We ourselves have not yet (early 1998) experimented with a class that starts with an Internet project organised by another school, and then builds that into a focal point for a unit of class work. Come back and read this page in a few months' time and we may be able to give some reports on doing that.
September 1998 : No further comment yet.
December 1998 : 4/5S and 5F devoted quite some time to their work on the Warriewood Wetlands which is entered into The Endangered Nature Parks of the World project organised by Joan Goble in Indian and René de Vries in the Netherlands. This involved research, presentations of their research, an excursion, some artwork, involvement in a community project called The Yellow Fish Road Project and writing poetry plus factual reports.
June 1998: We have not yet (early 1998) begun to do this. I think that we now have enough access to Internet to allow for an individual child or a small group of children to do a project of their own choosing. This would be a good thing to encourage gifted children to do and if you come back in a few months' time, we may be able to report on something of this nature.
September 1998 : There are a number of children pursuing individual research and
publishing projects, e.g. on the Great Barrier Reef, on Ancient Egypt where they build up
a suite of related pages on a topic. (There are none ready to put on Internet yet.) Without
email available directly to them, there are no children involved in interactive projects
individually.
Our 4/5S class is participating in the Polygon Project which involves drawing for and
responding to drawings from children in non-English speaking countries. This is being
achieved mostly when the children come to the computer room at the moment and is not
being driven by an individual child.
December 1998 : The projects by small groups of children about the Great Barrier Reef, and Ancient Egypt are nearing completion. These were possible because Phyllis Parker was working with these children once a week and keeping them enthused and on task.
The Internet searching functions so well now that it will be possible for children to pursue research assignments individually. They have actually worked on their own or in pairs but on topics related to the central theme for the class. Next year, we will see if we can facilitate more children pursuing their own personal interest topics in addition to class theme topics. We may set up Internet Scouts for each Primary Class whose job will be to find the Internet sites suitable for their teacher to guide the class to use.
Go to top of page
| This page has been visited
|
Judith Bennett