 |
CyberFair 98 Narrative |
 |
|
CyberFair 98 Narrative |
|
Our project's community encompasses any age visitor with access to the Internet interested in history and electronic travel. The website's authors include students from our own classroom and also students, teachers, and administrators from schools worldwide.
The biggest obstacle we had to overcome was the Ice Storm. Our school was closed for almost two weeks and we were without electrical power across several counties. We learned a lot about communities and neighbors caring and helping each other. But in the meantime, the electric side of our lives stopped and all the e-mails bounced back to the senders. (We had invited other schools to participate and many were writing to us at that point.) When the power came on, we e-mailed to all the other schools to tell them about it and how we were ready to keep going!This section explains how your project addressed the project elements found in the CyberFair Assignment to Schools.
1) How did your activities and research for this International School CyberFair project support your required coursework and curriculum requirements?
Our CyberFair project caused us to "share and unite" in many ways. We broke into small groups, combining and recombining throughout the winter. We divided and shared trips to the Museum and its different exhibits, reading and collecting information from other schools, researching, and solving together the problems we met along the way. There were so very many interpersonal exchanges between our own class members, between students and the local community, and between our class and other people.
Through the Internet, the project was also a new synthesis of education, actively involving the students in their own learning in a global setting. In other school years, our classroom has always visited this particular Museum as it fits with our curricular requirements of studying local Canton history, the Civil War, and New York State. Vice Presidents and vice-presidential candidates are all too forgettable, especially for 12 and 13 year olds. None of these students will ever forget again Vice Presidential candidate Silas Wright, his roots in our community and the important role he played in state and national history. We know this experience will transfer to other Museums, other landmarks, and other lessons in their lives. To quote one of our students, "When we connect with places of the past, we connect to people of the past."
2) What information tools and technologies did you use to complete your CyberFair project?
In our project we used:
These tools helps us to create a visual tour of places many other people will never actually get to see in person. It's difficult to say which tools were the most important. The oral interviews, Museum visits, and archives gathered for us our local information. E-mail and postal mail gave us information from other classrooms and the scanner helped to put pictures on-line for classrooms that couldn't send us stuff digitally. Taking still pictures, scanning them, and making one of us animated on the computer was definitely the most fun.
3) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.
As ambassadors, our classroom contacted Museum officials and local residents by telephone and by e-mail. Students also researched background information for the website by communicating with the National Park Service. Most far-reaching however was broadcasting the invitation to join the website through the listserv Hilites. Our e-mail inbox began to buzz and we wondered who would write next. Classrooms in Spain, Austalia, Austria, and the Virgin Islands told us how excited they were for the invitation and how they want to add their own historic landmark. One teacher in Poughkeepsie, New York said it was the perfect opportunity for her at-risk 3rd graders. And a classroom in Maine had a dedication party for their local lighthouse featuring a viewing of the website and an on-line chat with us. So we have "talked" with a lot of people we never knew before last October, and in a wonderful new way we have visited where they live and they have visited here.
4) What has been the impact of your project on your community?
Our project has established a presence on the Web for St. Lawrence County Historical Museum, something Museum officials told us they had been thinking about. We provided our knowledge of the Internet as a way for them to get started and they helped by teaching us about the Museum. As soon as the page was "up," the Museum Director and Administrative Assistant began providing about its accuracy and its appearance. Canton is typical of many communities entering the Information Age. People have a growing acceptance of the Internet as a way to communicate but do not always have the knowledge base needed. Non-computerphobic 7th and 8th graders have led the way as they physically take many local visitors to their website, from their parents to the School Board to other community members. And everyone is very impressed by what has been accomplished. We know this because they have asked us to help them with their future web pages!
5) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?
Although we have (and thank!) excellent computer helpers within our school, we needed extra help with the graphics. First of all, we wanted to establish a visual theme and we thought it would be really cool if the cardboard image of Silas Wright from the Museum could actually "walk." Then we wanted one of our students to walk on the website just like Silas. And some of the file sizes of photos from other schools were really BIG and we needed help compressing them. All of these problems were solved with help from Natalie Hinman, a local friend who is an Adirondack guide and a computer guide. Since she spends her winters in Florida, there was a lot of long distance e-mailing of advice and pictures.
6) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises
During the course of this project, we have learned a great deal not only about historical facts, but how to be "investigators of history." One thing that surprised us at first was how we had to handle artifacts. For example, those students who studied archive materials were given white gloves to wear. Old things can be very fragile! We also found out that we could learn a lot about people by studying their everyday possessions. Some students read parts of a diary from a mother whose son was overseas during World War I. What a unique way to study a war! Because there is a great deal of local memorabelia at the museum, some students even found their family names in birth records as well as on land maps. These dicoveries afforded students the opportunity to study history on a level much different from the conventional textbook methods. It put them in charge of their own learning and made history real to them. It also made them aware that the common objects they use everyday will someday be studied by someone else, connecting them not only to the past and present but to the future as well.
to our Walking Tour Homepage.