10:00 AM - 11:00AM
October 15, 1998

Mt Holly MS: Gaston County
Cabarrus County Sch: Brenda Lange
South Smithfield: Primary school in Johnston County
Joe: Carteret County
Tconnect: Teachers Connect staff
Mt. Pleasant Elemen: Cabarrus County
Repass: Teachers Connect

Mt Holly MS: Welcome to Teachers Connect's Third Town Meeting!
Our guest for Cool Technology Projects is Brenda Lange from Cabarrus County.

Cabarrus County Sch: Good morning. I'm Brenda Lange from Cabarrus County Schools. I'm an instructional technology specialist for a K-5 school. It is my job to facilitate things like on-line projects with my classroom teachers. Welcome everyone!

The very first on-line project that I participated in was with the North Carolina Teacher Academy Trainers. After much discussion we decided on a theme of "Popcorn". Everyone chose a project that somehow related to his or her curriculum AND popcorn.

Mt. Holly was one of the schools that participated in the Popcorn Project. Perhaps Glenn can tell us about the many things students did from there.

South Smithfield: This is Mr. Williams, the Technology Specialist at South Smithfield. We will have a number of second grade classes watching the conference.

Mt Holly MS: Popcorn project - Mt. Holly MS in Gaston County, Grady Brown Elem. in Hillsborough, Beverly Hill and A.T. Allen Elem. in Cabarrus County, and West Carteret High School in Carteret County... also Sharon K's school in New Hanover County.

Mt. Holly MS students popped Orville Redenbacher, Harris Teeter, Blivens, Food Lion, and BiLo brand popping corn to see the number of unpopped kernels and volume of popped corn. Students also wrote about what they thought it would feel like to a be a kernel from the shelf to the popper...

Cabarrus County Sch: The students in Cabarrus County did science experiments. They took 1/2 cup of popcorn and subjected it to different temperature tests first before they popped the corn. Then they counted the popped and non-popped kernels and graphed the information. Glenn, I remember those stories your students wrote about "A Day in the Life of a Kernel of Popcorn"....they were great.

Mt Holly MS: Students here wanted to know if they could eat the popcorn... and would like to hear from another school that took part.

Cabarrus County Sch: Yes, the students managed to include popcorn eating into the project.

Mt Holly MS: We would like to know of some of the other projects...

Cabarrus County Sch: Collaborating from remote locations is indeed one of the best parts of on-line projects. Another favorite one I help facilitate is the annual Santa project.

Students in third grade write letters to Santa and ask him not just for things but questions that they've always wanted to have answered. Like, how many times a day do you feed your reindeer. What do they eat? What is your house made from?

Mt Holly MS: Tell us about the project!!! It is almost that time of year!

Cabarrus County Sch: When the letters to Santa are written, we e-mail them to our Santa partners (who are actually high school English students). They create this HUGE web that details all the questions and how they're going to answer them. Then individual teams of students write responses back to the third grade students. We try to have them arrive on the same day that Santa actually visits the school. We've had the responses both on e-mail and via snail mail with positive results.

Cabarrus County Sch: One third grade student didn't manage to get his letter written, but Santa wrote back anyway telling him that it would be important for him to do his homework and how disappointed Santa was that he didn't get a letter from this student. It made a difference for that student and he did put more effort into his work for quite awhile. I would suggest that you pair with a different school district or a different feeder school because if the high school students are older brothers and sisters of the elementary students they might give the "secret" away.

Other variations on the Santa project are to write to the Tooth Fairy during February (Dental Health month). We also tried writing to story book characters like Ramona, but didn't have as much success with that venture.

Mt Holly MS: The student at Mt. Holly... eighth graders would like to team up with some elem. students...

South Smithfield: We would like to email someone in Florida, Colorado, Mexico and Alabama. These are a few sites the students picked

Cabarrus County Sch: Andy has also participated in a Santa project through the global schoolhouse. Can you tell us about that experience?

Mt. Pleasant Elemen: Our partners were in CA. we had about 170 kindergartens to dictate letters to the teachers, 4th graders typed onto Alpha Smarts then we uploaded the files. Our partner school was 1 middle school.

Cabarrus County Sch: Andy, did your kindergartners get their letters back in time for Christmas?

Mt. Pleasant Elemen: Yes they did - Our partners had some technical difficulty and the elves had many evening pizza parties.

Mt Holly MS: We are located in Gaston County, which is west of Charlotte.

Cabarrus County Sch: Johnston county, Rowan County and Cabarrus County wrote a grant to collaborate across the curriculum, across the state, and across the K-12 grades. We wanted to have the high school write science experiments for the elementary students to complete, then have the middle school students graph and analyze the information and write it up to report to the high school students. Unfortunately the grant was not funded, but I'd still like to try that project someday.

Cabarrus County Sch: If you could choose any project to do on-line, what kinds of projects would you like to do?

Mt Holly MS: Mt. Holly MS, Brookside Elem, Sherwood Elem, Battleground Elem, and Love's Memorial Elem participated in a Positively Trashy Environmental Project. It took place in February 1996. The first three schools are in Gaston County and the other two in Lincoln County. We all collected information about the trash that was generated at each student's house. The data was exchanged through e-mail. Each school also reported on a type of trash... glass, plastics, metal, organic matter, and paper. The results were shared through a non-linear Hyperstudio stack.

TConnect: I have!

Cabarrus County Sch: What did you like about Journey North?

TConnect: Classes at my school have used the Journey South portion extensively. The butterfly project connected a lot of areas of the school.

South Smithfield: We have participated in the Journey North program. Our Science resource teacher has worked with the Monarch butterflies in each of her classes.

TConnect: The science resource teacher, Spanish teacher, classroom teachers, art teacher, etc all took part in creating the butterflies, writing about them, fixing latitude, longitude and sending off the package!

Cabarrus County Sch: I've had third grade classes participating. I like the idea that you can do as much or little as you like. We planted tulips, kept track of when a tree leafed out and then mostly monitored when spring occurred across the world.

TConnect: I like the little or lot aspect a lot also. I also had a class that did the JN project in depth for the whole spring semester. But a class could also monitor a minute portion!

Mt. Pleasant Elemen: Yes last year we had at least 2 classes involved and hope to have some involved again this year. We had 1 second grade teacher who introduced his students to the Internet through Journey North- They would track the migration from the JN reports.

Cabarrus County Sch: Did the butterflies come back to you in the spring, along with real butterflies? We didn't participate in the butterfly portion so I'm not sure how that works.

TConnect: Yes, we got the butterflies back, but not the ones we sent. We got back the same number we sent, but they were from different classes. The students were really excited!

Cabarrus County Sch: That was certainly an unexpected way to collaborate on-line. Did any of those new butterflies become keypals?

TConnect: I don't think there was any information included with the butterflies that would let you become keypals.

Cabarrus County Sch: Reading the information from the experts that were tracking whales and turtles on JN was wonderful....especially since they let our students ask questions that WERE answered.

Mt. Pleasant Elemen: MayaQuest would have been great except for the cost.

TConnect: I've had classes work with MayaQuest. I am not sure about AfricaQuest, but with MQ there are ways you can participate without paying.

Cabarrus County Sch: Can you share those ways? I'm sure many schools have chosen not to participate just because of the cost and it is a wonderful idea.

TConnect: With MQ you could read the reports sent back and view the pictures, interview, etc. You just don't get the curriculum support materials and ability to vote on decisions if you don't pay.

Joe: That possibility still exists.

Cabarrus County Sch: Could the students in Mt. Holly think about where they could create a setting for a ghost story in Gaston County?

Mt Holly MS: I think that the team may be interested in starting the story... the students are excited about this technology!

Repass: I just saw that project advertised this week!

Cabarrus County Sch: Where is it currently located, Grace?

Repass: I'll check and see if I can find it real quick.

Mt Holly MS: I can also send the URL of Jerry Christy's trip down south...

Cabarrus County Sch: Great idea - you write Chapter 1 in "The Great North Carolina Ghost Caper" and we'll follow up with Chapter 2. Pat, are you game for Chapter 3?

Mt Holly MS: That is a go for Chapter 1... we need e-mail addresses...

Cabarrus County Sch: Send to mlange@ctc.net for Chapter 2; Chapter 3 is pstedwell@hotmail.com

Repass: Go to http://www.win4edu.com/minds-eye/monster/ to sign up for the monster project. They are only taking the first 500 schools.

Repass: Thanks to all the students for being involved today! It has been great to see you.

Cabarrus County Sch: Thanks Mt. Holly. We're looking forward to reading your ghost story.

Mt Holly MS: e-mail Mt. Holly mcginnisn@gcs.gaston.k12.nc.us

Mt Holly MS: This has been a great sharing time... thank you Brenda and all schools that participated.

Cabarrus County Sch: You're welcome, Glenn. See you again at 3:00.