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Many elementary teachers have had more success when groups of children write to
groups of children in another class. This way, the risk of having one or two children
without a response or having problems when children are absent is eliminated. You may
want to try an email project with only one reading group at a time to keep it manageable.
Email exchanges have been most successful when they focus on a particular topic.
Sometimes classes read the same book and share ideas as they go. Another idea is for
one class to write cliff hangers and have the other class finish the stories. Some classes
have done parallel science experiments or conducted surveys and then compared results
with the other class. Instead of using a personal or business email account of the teacher,
you can sign up for a free email account and use it for that project. Gaggle net is a free
email service for students with good teacher controls and filters. N2mail is a free email
service with kid-safe advertising and a filter option that allows you to accept email from
only desired sources. It can be accessed from any computer that has access to the
Internet.
Gaggle Net
http://www.gaggle.net/
This is a free email service for students with good teacher controls and filters. They will
call your school to make sure that you are a teacher before allowing you to sign up your
students. Advertisements are kid safe.
There are online services where experts, in a variety of fields, stand ready to answer
children's questions. Many of these services have archives on their web sites of
previously asked questions. These archives are a rich source of information and may be
searched before formulating a new questions. The answers are often geared to the grade
level of the child who asked the original question. The archives can be used as a stand
alone source of information, even if you do not plan to use the Ask an Expert part of the
site. Some services try to explain the answer in detail and some services provide the
student with further resources to find the answer themselves. Responses can take
anywhere form a few days to a few weeks. Some of these sites use a web form to send a
question and others use an email link.
Note: If your version of Netscape is not set up to allow these email links to work, simply
copy the email address and then go to your regular email, such as n2mail.com and send
your question from there.
The site can also be made available for students to visit individually or in small groups
for gathering further information. In this case, it is helpful to have a graphic organizer or
list of questions for students so that when they revisit the site, they know what types of
information to be looking for and have a way to demonstrate what they have learned.
Web Exhibits
http://www.webexhibits.com/
This index differs from other indexes on the internet because it is focused on illustrated
educational exhibits, not just references. Some of the exhibits are from large
organizations like National Geographic or PBS, while others are smaller, little-known
exhibits from various organizations.
Online Expeditions
http://www.lightspan.com/teacher/pages/onlineadv/default.asp?
_prod=LS&_nav=O3_proj_onlineadv
MY HERO
http://myhero.com/home.asp
Discover real live heroes from around the world. These true stories about heroes have
been written by children.
Kid News
http://www.kidnews.com/
Online kid's newspaper with articles written by kids.
Children's Express
http://www.cenews.org
News stories written by and for kids.
In addition, there are web sites that specialize in providing current information at
appropriate student reading levels. Commercial periodicals intended for children usually
don't post current issues, but they often post some sample articles, related articles or
archive past articles. These sites also post current follow-up articles, related activities
and web links.
Weekly Reader
http://www.weeklyreader.com/
Weekly Reader provides many articles sorted by grade level intended as follow ups to
articles in their printed newspaper. They review the news of the week and present
challenges and writing prompts related to the periodical. Check out "This Week" and
"News Cruise."
Sports Illustrated For Kids - games, fantasy leagues, sports news and more
http://www.sikids.com/index.html
Online articles on current sports topics.
Prior to the virtual trip, the students could read about the place from books or articles.
They could then formulate questions that they have. During the virtual field trip they
could find answers to their questions. In addition, after taking the virtual field trip, they
could compare the information from the text that they read to the information found on
the web site.
Provide students with a graphic organizer or worksheet with questions so their online
time remains focused on the intended purpose and note taking is facilitated.
For general information in short text form, keep a “start page” or bookmark file of
resource sites such as online encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, dictionaries, and
biographical dictionaries for students to use in finding information about people, places,
topics, and vocabulary from their readings. See Reference Sites for Elementary
Students: http://www.lburkhart.com/elem/elemref.htm
On rare occasions, you may want to guide small groups, or individuals, in the use of
Child Safe Search Engines for a particular topic. See Child Safe Search Engines:
http://www.lburkhart.com/elem/childs.htm
As you work with students, model and point out the sources for each web page and why
you feel that the information on them is credible or not.
Houghton Mifflin Project Center: Houghton Mifflin Company keeps a listing of On-line
Projects for teachers.
http://www.eduplace.com/projects/
Additional Resources:
Organizing and Facilitating Telecollaborative Projects, by Judi Harris, February 1995
"Mining the Internet" column, The Computing Teacher, Volume 22 Number 5, pp. 66-69
[Electronically reprinted with permission from The Computing Teacher journal,
published by the International Society for Technology in Education.]
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/Mining/February95-TCT.html
Judy Harris - Activity Structures. This is a great resource of links to examples of a wide
variety of Internet projects. There are many good ideas, but projects are not always
currently available to join.
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~jbharris/Virtual-Architecture/Telecollaboration/more-
telecollaboration.html
http://www.lburkhart.com/elem/internet.htm