Elanora Heights Home Page Trees and Forests Page

International Schools CyberFair 97
Project Narrative


International Trees and Forests Project


Information About Our Site

  1. Here are the links to the project :-

    The Australian link - International Trees and Forests Project.

    The Californian link - International Trees and Forests Project.

    Please note one thing. We began our web site in January 1996. At that time, we put counters on only two of our pages and for Cyberfair 96 it was easy to remove those two counters when transmitting the site to California.
    Our web site is growing so much that we now have counters on nearly every page so that we can tell over time which pages are never accessed and can be culled. The counters are for our own use but for Cyberfair 97, there just has not been time to remove all those counters when transmitting the site to California. Please ignore the question marks at the bottom of each page if you are accessing this project from the Californian site. Thank you for your understanding.

  2. The finishing date of this project entry into Cyberfair 97 is March 7th.

    However, we feel we have a commitment to all those schools who are making a "Year in the life of our tree" as their project and will continue to display their work on our Australian site as it comes to us.
    In that sense a work that is about the life of trees and forests and their wellbeing now and in the future can never be "finished".

    3. School:

      Elanora Heights Primary School

      District:

      Elanora Heights

      City:

      Sydney, New South Wales 2101, Australia

  4. Teachers or Classes:

    Project Co-ordinator - Mrs Judith Bennett
    Most of the 425 children in our own school have been involved.

    We have also enabled more than 80 other schools around the world to publish information about their local tree or forest on our web site. This was all done via Email as some of the schools who have participated have only limited or no access to Internet. The Email contact was sometimes a parent or friend of the school who had an Internet account.

    The following is a statement from Ms Richards,
    Principal of Elanora Heights Primary School
    26th February, 1997.

    All the teachers and students of Elanora Heights Primary School have supported the project during its formulation, and have worked as a team, thus ensuring its successful culmination in our special Science Day, despite the unanticipated absence during February, of the project co-ordinator, Mrs Judith Bennett.

  5. How many students worked on this project?

    425 in our own school
    Plus more than 1000 children from 80 other schools in 23 other countries.

    Their ages ranged from 4-15 years.

  6. Project Contact Email: Judith Bennett

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    Project Overview

    We entered our Web site in CyberFair Category:

    7. Environmental Awareness

    Description of "Our Community"
    The community comprises the teachers and students of schools around the world who are interested in having their students focus on environmental issues. In particular, the environmental issues connected with Trees and Forests.

    Our own students have studied 4 trees and our own school bushland.
    Summary of Our Project
    Schools from around the world contributed questions about trees and forests. Each school then based the answers to the questions on the tree and/or forest that was closest to their school. They sent their findings via Email to Elanora Heights Primary School where they were mounted on WWW pages.
    Our own students found out about 4 of our own trees, made a study of our own bushland (e.g.how it regenerates after a bushfire), found out what is flowering each month, collected fruit and propagated trees which they planted back into prepared areas.
    Our students plus many students in participating schools prepared activities for a Global Trees and Forests celebration day on February 26th 1997 which was a time of international sharing. Teachers from around the world have generously shared their support ideas (Science, Literature, Links, etc) on the theme of trees and forests.
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    Project Elements

    This section explains the project elements found in the     CyberFair Project Assignment.

    1. Supporting curriculum requirements.

    2. Using tools and technologies

    3. Being Ambassadors

    4. Impacting on your community

    5. Involving helpers and volunteers

    6. "Share and Unite" with community


    Project Elements Top of page

    1. How did your activities and research for this International School CyberFair 96 project support your required coursework and curriculum requirements?

    • Coursework

      Each term our school adopts a whole school theme around which teachers can link their work in all subject areas if they wish. Teachers are free to have other themes during the term as well. For Term 1 1997 our whole school theme was "Trees and Forests". The Internet project was designed to widen the scope of the theme for all the children in our school as well as contributing to the work of teachers in other schools.
      • Many aspects of technology were used in conjunction with this project and they are listed under question 2.
      • Several classes organised excursions to bushland areas or to areas of our own school bushland to cover aspects of the science and the environmental studies sections of our curriculum.
      • Every class in the school was involved in propagating trees.
      • Science classes conducted experiments about plant growth and learned about parts of plants and observed minibeasts.
      • Children were involved in both factual and creative writing throughout the project.
      • Children experimented with the mathematic ideas presented in the project.
      • Children have located on world maps the various countries that are participating in the project.
      • Children have become vividly aware of seasonal differences between the Northern and Southern hemispheres and the effect of seasonal changes on trees.

    • Wonderful and exciting discoveries.

      • It has been most exciting to be involved, via Internet, with the excursion being made from Saudi Arabia to a Sumatran Rainforest. (The school in Saudi Arabia have invited virtual participation from any school in the world.) In connection with this, it has also been a delight to hear reports from the children "on the ground" who live near this rainforest in Indonesia.
      • Susannah Power and Jonathan Vea, of Sydney Australia are travelling on their world trip to take in a visit to the Gunung Leuser Ecosystem and work with the children there on scientific studies of the rainforest. Both these young Australians have degrees in Environmental Studies. They arrived in Indonesia at the beginning of March and by March 7th had made their way by bus, ferry and train to Padang in Sumatra and still had quite some distance to travel to the north end of Sumatra where the International School of Lhokseumawe is located.
      • There is an amazing diversity of trees in our world and there are many, many people around the world most anxious to preserve them.
      • There are wonderful, friendly, dedicated teachers working in schools all over the world and these people can make jokes and communicate and work together co-operatively without ever meeting face to face.
      • There are thousands of children around the world who value trees and are actively working towards looking after them.
    Project Elements Top of page

    2. What information tools and technologies did you use to complete your CyberFair project?

    Technology the children used in our school:

    • Children from 2nd to 6th were involved in wordprocessing tasks using Microsoft Works and Windows Notepad related to the Trees and Forests project.
    • All children have become familiar with viewing Internet pages - we have netscape running across the school network accessing WWW pages that are stored on our fileserver.
    • There are children in each Primary class that know how to use the scanner to transfer photographs to the computer.
    • Many children have become familiar with using Netscape and Internet at home to demonstrate their work to family and friends.

    Software we used

    • Windows
    • Windows Notepad for creating and editing HTML files.
    • Paintshop Pro
    • Netscape
    • Pegasus Mail
    • FTP
    • Microsoft Works
    • Encarta 96
    • Rainforest Explorer
    Project Elements Top of page

    3. In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person?

    • The project has been advertised on the front page of our site for several months.
    • The Aussie Schoolhouse has this project listed.
    • We advertised this project on the UK schools list and on Kidproj mail list.
    • Schoolworld have this project listed with their current projects.
    • Globalearn have promoted this project.
    • Every school that has approached us for keypals in the last few months has been invited to join the project and a number of them have done so.
    • Letters were sent to a number of schools that were listed on Web 66, inviting them to join us.
    • Many of the participants in this project were told about the project by other schools who were already involved.
    • Each month we published reports on the progress of the project in our school newsletter. The response has been most enthusiastic - families who have Internet are inviting their friends and neighbours in to see the work their children are doing.
    • Parents with Internet at their places of work have shown our project to their workmates.
    • We have invited a local newspaper to run an article on it later in March.
    • The Gesamtschule Haspe in Hagen have had press coverage of their involvement in their Forest in the Westfaelische Rundschau newspaper on Thursday, 24. Oct. 1996.
    • There has been radio coverage of this project in Sydney, Australia, organised by Cisco Pty Ltd as a general promotion of Cyberfair 97.
    Project Elements Top of page

    4. What has been the impact of your project on your community?

    • The aim has been to involve children in the excitement of working with other people around the world and I think that aim has been taken up by teachers enthusiastically. I keep getting reports from teachers about their children's reactions to seeing their work appearing on the pages. The children's responses are a direct result of the attitude of those wonderful teachers who have transmitted the anticipation and enjoyment.
    • Many children have done an excellent job of proofreading the work that is being published, picking up both their own mistakes and mistakes made by me. This is a most valuable skill for them to develop and it also lets them understand that Internet pages are easily edited.
    • Many teachers have related how their students are marking up on large maps the location of the various trees and forests in the project.
    • Teachers have reported after that their children had completed their own research they were fascinated to watch the reports by other schools building up - they could relate to what was being done in the other countries.
    • Some teachers have used the links supplied on the pages in the project to communicate directly with other schools in the project and forge new relationships.
    • Some students have communicated directly with other students in the project.
    • I have found that although most of the Email during the course of the project was about specific aspects of the project, I also gained some wonderful insights into the culture of the people who were writing.
    • Many schools have sent graphics for their pages either by Email or by snailmail for us to scan in. "A picture tells 1000 words". Wayne Wengert, of San Martin in California, very generously offered to scan photos in for any school who wanted to save postage charges from the USA to Australia.
    • Many of the schools participating have had generous help from parents, friends and other community members in scanning photos and emailing them to Australia.
    Project Elements Top of page

    5. How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

    We were fortunate to have a number of people to help us complete this project.
    Sally Fisher, of Cicada Glen Bush Plants, has been involved in a voluntary capacity with our school bush regeneration program over the last 8 years and we greatly appreciate her dedicated interest in our school. Identifying and propagating native plants is not easy but Sally is wonderfully patient with us.
    Phil Parker, tree surgeon, is married to one of our teachers so I have to thank his wife for persuading him to help out. He has a wonderful amount of knowledge to impart.
    Megumi Bennett, of Imperial Gardens Bonsai Nursery, agreed to share her love of Bonsai with our school before knowing that I would make Internet pages for her Nursery as a Thank You.
    Ludger Humbert, of Gesamtschule Haspe, Hagen, has been a strong support from the other side of the world including an attempt to set up a mail system for me.
    Wayne Engert, of San Martin-Gwinn Elementary School has generously scanned photos in for some of the schools in Canada and the USA then emailed them to me.
    There are many people who have provided extra information for the resources section of this project and I am indebted to each and everyone of them but one teacher has been outstanding in her support and that is Lauren Deane, of Pennsylvania. She has provided an enormous number of extra resource materials for this project and has given a great deal of support to this project, including recommending the project to others and putting me in touch with people who are looking for this sort of resource.
    International offers of help from people like Ludger, Lauren and Wayne make running a project of this nature a most rewarding experience.
    The Web66 list of International Schools on the Web was the key to my finding the schools that have participated in this project. This Web66 list has also been the way in which a few teachers have found our school and then our project and have enrolled and participated.
    Project Elements Top of page

    6. What other things have you done at your school to "Share and Unite" with your community?

    • We display the logo of Zip International Professionals on our front page. In return, they charge us only the standard fee for Internet and do not charge us for the extra storage and access that running a big project like this generates.
    • Pittwater Council, our local government organisation, have taken an interest in our Trees and Forests project and we are assisting them in their Road Safety project.

    Possible additional questions:

    • What barriers/technical obstacles did you face during this project?
      We have two computers connected to Internet and only two email accounts. Student emailing involves me in a lot of manual manipulation of text files so I just do not have the time or data security to allow for many students to have access to email.
      Only two computers can access internet simultaneously so only a few children have been able to use the resources available on the theme of Trees and Forests on Internet. The children use what we download onto our fileserver.

    • We access internet via dialup modem. During 1996 we had a computer in the computer room connected via modem to Internet.
      Early in 1997, the New South Wales Government, installed a computer in the library with a dialup modem connection to Internet.

    • I, Judith Bennett, have been away from school on sick leave since my daughter took ill in the first week of February and although sometimes have been able to work on the computer, have often been too weak to do so. By the end of February, there were reports from many schools not entered onto the pages. These reports have been updated before the deadline of March 8th and now there is just some material from our own school that may or may not get entered up before the final deadline of March 16th.
    • This project narrative was prepared in January before my daughter was rushed into hospital. The guidelines I used were those published early in the project. The suggestions for the narrative page have changed a little since then and I have not been able to modify this page to entirely fit the new guidelines. I am sorry for any confusion this causes but trust that overall, the information on this page is coherent.
    Project Elements Top of page

    Link to our CyberFair 97 Entry (on Australian web site)


    Link to our CyberFair 97 Entry (on Californian web site)

    Link to our School Home Page (on Australian web site)

    Link to our School Home Page (on Californian web site)


    International Schools CyberFair 97 Winners