how
they started and
progressed... a teacher's point of view
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Barbara Dieu, May 2001
Coordinator Foreign Language Department
EFL teacher at the
Lycée Pasteur
São Paulo, Brazil
Every time I look at what the kids around me are doing, the people I have met, the interest and energy everyone puts into the projects that were completed or are being carried out, I feel a wave of excitment and a sense of accomplishment. I would have never imagined until 4 years ago that after so many years of teaching (27) I would have so much fun and satisfaction - as a learner and as a teacher. Becoming acquainted with this new technology , the problems faced and using it productively and effectively is what I would like to share with anybody who feels unsure about it or thinks going into it is not worth the trouble.
There are no quick or foolproof recipes since each experience is unique and the people involved are different. However, I believe that reading what others have done, adapting it to your situation, asking around, looking for information, being curious, listening, accepting the fact that students and other people can teach you a lot, planning, taking some risks and reflecting on what you have done makes your grey cells more agile and puts you in contact with a world of knowledge, new opportunities and adventure which you, with your work, help others participate in. On the other hand, I have not yet found a way to make money with it....so if you have any clues, share them....they are more than welcome. :)
[e-mailing] [writing project and trip] [ activities] [Twinsite]
Although I bought my first computer, a Pentium 166 , in May 1997, I only started using it during July holidays after my teenage son had deigned to spare some time to explain how e-mailing and the Internet worked ...much too quickly for my abilities. As a teacher I noted this incident down as a reminder.
After technical difficulties , many frozen screens and panic at a hypothetical virus onslaught, I managed to survive and moved ahead contacting several teachers I had found on the e-pals site. I was extremely lucky to meet some extraordinary people, some of whom I have become close friend with and to whom I owe eternal gratitude for their patience, help and support (thank you, Mr Erickson). You cannot always count on this as I learnt later. We planned together a framework within which we would operate. My students had had two years of English (EFL) and I wanted them to start communicating in English for real through an e-mailing project with the American schools I had made contact with. The students reacted very favourably when I told them about it and most were thrilled to participate. I had three classes of about 25 students each, some students willing to correspond with 3 or 4 students from different schools at the same time. It was an excellent exercise for all in organization, deadlines and follow-up.
At that time at school, we only had 2 computers in the teachers' room so the first months I almost wore my fingers out as I typed , at home, most of the letters the students had given me on paper in class. As soon as the answers started pouring back, I had practically become an extension of the computer since the children couldn't see me walk down the corridor without asking "is there anything for me today? or "could you send this letter for me?". The students were reading, comparing their letters, asking for vocabulary, writing back and practising their English all the time while my typing skills improved enormously, my mail-box was sometimes filled with more than 90 incoming messages and the printer was spitting out paper all day long.
At Christmas we exchanged books the children signed, photographs , little souvenirs and cards with the participating schools. This was a very special moment.
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Writing
Project /Film and Trip 
Our enthusiasm and the USA being on the program in different subjects made me plan a trip with the same classes the following year so that the experience would not belong to the virtual realm only . E-mailing was crucial to make contacts, set dates and arrange all details. In the meantime, voluntary students participated in a writing project in different languages with Sycamore school and both schools filmed their neighbourhood, several student activities in class and a students' fashion parade so that the correspondents would have a better idea of what the others were like and how they lived and reacted. Lots of cultural perception and discussion there. Great for informal oral work.
We started school in 98 with 7 new computers in the library and a computer room with 8 machines used mostly by the Physics and Biology teachers (none of which with an Internet connection, though). Many students already had a computer at home so the letters from then on had to be on floppy disks. The students used Word (their parents family or friends helped them as at that time this was not on their curriculum at school), saved their work , which I collected, scanned with the latest anti-virus, copied, pasted and sent from home. We kept correspondence with the same schools so before the students travelled in October 1998, they had found information about the places they would visit and had arranged to meet with two of the schools involved.
The whole trip was documented live online, thanks to the Physics teacher, Mr Mores (who accepted to be the webmaster and taught me informally and very efficiently the basics to most of what I know today). Almost every night during our 15-day trip, after the students had been put to bed at the hotel, the photographs (taken with a digital Mavica we had received before the trip) and messages of the day would be sent from a cyber shop(Kinko's) to our webmaster back in Brazil. We felt like Indiana Jones and every time all went well....the little tune of the film would come to my mind.
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/Survey/Newspaper/Yearbook/E-zine
In 1999 we were perhaps too ambitious as we participated in too many projects at the same time. A survey and correspondence online with Ellis School and an e-zine with a school in Canada with other classes. We also started a newspaper and a yearbook online - which proved to be very interesting. However, these year long activities were much harder to manage and keep going. Some very good articles came up and students were pleased to see their work published but the contributions were sporadic and we could not set deadlines because our timetable and programs did not allow it. We would have needed more team work and responsibility sharing, time to get together and discuss and more flex time for the students to work outside the classroom, which was impossible within the rigid structure we were in. Those were very enriching activities which must be re-thought and started again. I hope that the new programs and ministry directives will give the school the opportunity and means to work on them regularly in every classroom.
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TwinsiteAt the end of 1999 we were invited to participate in two Dutch projects: Twinsite 2000 and This is Our Time. The aim of Twinsite, as the name says, was to build a site together with a Dutch school on a topic we had to decide together....The invitation came in September and after much brainstorming and e-mail exchanges we thought Time would give us much material to work on... I believe the second project, This is Our Time, triggered our imagination towards this field together with the fact that the project was due February 2000 and 2000 was a magical number at that time.
Our fiercest enemy was time itself ...the voluntary students who had accepted the challenge were almost at the end of the year and facing exams...I had other classes to take care of...so we had very little time to meet....e-mailing and ICQ in the evening after classes were precious allies.
In November we finally came to an agreement on the areas we would cover (not an easy task as time is, at the same time, short and vast) : an exhibition we visited at the Amro bank in Sao Paulo gave us the idea and the material to work on a Brazilian -Dutch timeline and many students had also found quotations about time in books or the net, together with articles that came up in magazines... The Dutch students decided to illustrate this time paradox - long and short and the name for our site became a play on words - The Time of Your Life.
The different seasons on the two continents were also a constraint as our school in Brazil enjoys its long summer holidays from mid-December to mid-February and I did not know if I would see any of my students working once they had started vacations. So together with the Dutch school we decided on the layout and themes before that and we worked, each on our side of the world, exchanging e-mails and chatting. At Christmas, one of the students sent me the flash flag which illustrates the timeline...I couldn't have received a better gift. Another one worked on the scanning of pictures and the content of the timeline. We were racing against time but managed to present the project some hours before the deadline.
It was a great experience for the students who participated, as they saw that, by working hard together, it is possible to have results, a good example for the others in the class who had felt like doing it but had given up and a tremendous challenge for me...to keep things going. I do not regret a single minute spent on it, even though, when I look back, I think there were better ways of having dealt with some aspects. But one cannot be perfect and you learn from experience. This is why I decided to invest my time (and my husband's "patience" and money....the phone connection to the internet here is slow and costly) in building this website.
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Also in 1999 we got the second invitation to participate in This is Our Time. The first one had come back in July 1997, when I had started on the computer and I had not read or even seen what a project online was like. This time I accepted it gladly as it encompasses many areas, offers many activities and can be easily used in interdisciplinarity. The participation and outcome can be seen on our websites. It started timidly for us and it gained force as more and more teachers and students became involved locally and world-wide. Last year, at school, we joined two projects around the same theme and worked together with very positive results. 2001 is the third year we are in it and we have become a homebase for French- speaking countries...a challenge we hope to meet successfully!
From my point of view, there is still much to be done. Technically, the equipment and time online are still very expensive . Structurally, change comes slowly and sometimes painfully so it has to be integrated into the system judiciously in order not to hurt sensibilities or discourage people. Events like Eschola week are very important to raise awareness, tickle our imagination , provide a context and a meeting place for the whole teaching and learning community. Locally, schools must consider essential steps like teacher training, teamwork and allowing the means (time and money) for teachers to talk about their experience and plan together . On a personal level, I believe the basics a teacher cannot do without nowadays are: an open mind and the commitment to learn and share.
Feel free to e-mail me if you'd like further explanation or comments.