Ideas for Using Internet in the English Class

(Editor's Note:  The following is taken from a discussion on KIDPROJ in
KIDLINK. It is a good description of how the Internet can be used in the
classroom.  Readers are invited to submit their own success stories of
using internet in the classroom.)
 
Ideas for Using Internet in the English Class
--------------------------------------------------
Here are some ideas from our school for using the Internet in the English
class: 
 
Last year, I experimented with two online services -- WorldClassroom and
America Online.  I used these services to connect my journalism and
English students to other kids around the world.  The English students
joined AOL's Scrapbook USA writing project as well as several special
discussion topics in AOL's Electronic School House. They also joined and
started discussions in WorldClassroom conferences.  I tried to guide them
into discussing books and topics which were part of the curriculum in our
English class. They also discussed the books they were reading
independently. 
 
     This was great fun and it worked well.  However, it was
   only a small part of the regular English class, and I wanted to get
   more students and teachers involved in telecommunications, but I
   wasn't having a lot of luck convincing teachers that it was worth
   the effort to learn new skills.
 
     One problem was time.  I didn't have time to squeeze
   more activities into my English class, and I didn't have a lot of
   time to learn about Internet.  Internet seemed to be the new wave
   and my principal wanted someone in the school to learn about the
   Internet. Therefore, my principal and I decided that it might be
   useful to give me and Sandi Eberhart, a computer teacher, an
   experimental telecommunications class.  By giving us a class to
   teach together, we could help each other learn and we would have
   some time to teach other teachers, too.
 
During the summer I took "Mining the Internet" from the University of
Utah, and I also did my own independent study by using four Internet
reference books to help me as I "played" on the net.  With minimum
knowledge and the vision that Sandi and I had for the class, we began our
experiment.  Our physical resources were twenty-four 286 IBM computers,
one of which had a 2400 modem and was connected to a phone line.  We have
been teaching the class since September and we are almost finished.  It is
a one-semester class. 
 
Sandi Eberhardt, is my co-teacher.  She is a terrific visionary and she
has lots of useful friends who volunteered to visit our classroom.  We
decided that we wanted the kids to leave the class with a great desire to
learn more about the world.  Our plan was to show them how important
global contacts are.  Every other week, we brought people in to talk about
global contacts. Sometimes we went off campus to see them. For example: 
 
   *    A salesman from a brine shrimp company told them
   how global communications made it possible for Salt Lake City to
   sell brine shrimp in the global market.
 
   *    A U.S. West representative explained the
   technology of cellular phones and told why he was going to Russia
   to help set up a cellular phone system.  Now that the
   representative is in Russia, he corresponds with the students via
   Internet.
 
   *    A college teacher who spent a year teaching in a
   junior high in Japan told about the Japanese culture which helped
   students understand more about their keypals in Japan.
 
   *    A woman who was born in Germany in l937 and who
   had escaped from East Germany after World War II told about German
   history which helped them understand more about their keypals in
   Germany.
 
   *    A woman who hiked the mountains of Nepal told
   about Nepal's people and geography.  After the interview, students
   used Internet to post several questions they had about mountain
   climbing in Nepal on the soc.culture.nepal newsgroup.  Two people
   who knew this region well sent e-mail answers.
 
   *    Two community leaders with different opinions
   regarding "Hosting the Olympics in Utah" came on separate occasions
   to plead their cases.  After collecting reasons for and against
   hosting the Olympics, students wrote an e-mail letter explaining
   the debate and then used several Internet resources to request
   world-wide opinions.  Opinions were received from Germany, Norway,
   Japan, Canada, South Africa and the USA.
 
   *    To see for ourselves how technology and global
   contacts are being used in the business world, we took a field trip
   to our school's two partners-in-education, Thatcher Chemical
   Corporation and Construction News.
 
By visiting these people and bringing them into the classroom, the kids
saw how community members made global connections. At the same time that
we were doing this, the kids were making their own global connections. 
For example: 
 
   *    Students used Internet to send E-mail, locate
   information on gopher systems, upload and download files, use
   newsgroups, telnet and ftp.
 
   *    Students joined KIDLINK, a global network for kids
   ages 10 -15, where they not only found keypals, but they also
   initiated and joined several online discussions and queries on a
   wide-variety of topics including the environment,
   conflict-management, gangs, trends, nuclear war, meteors, violence,
   dating, drivers' licenses, pets, UFO's, mountain-climbing, poetry,
   favorite books, and multi-cultural holidays.
 
Whenever possible, we tried to have the students connect what they were
doing on the Internet with their other school work.  As a class we wrote
to a classroom of German students.  Our students who were taking German
language classes wrote in German. We also told the German students what
the 8th Grade American history class was learning about the American
system of government and we asked questions about the German system of
government. 
 
With all the writing we were doing, we had to teach some writing
techniques.  This instruction took the form of brainstorming, drafting,
responding in groups, and editing. Sometimes we had to do library
research. By teaming our research, we could learn more about a topic in a
short amount of time. And this led to teaching speaking skills because we
gave oral reports on our research.  The writing was done on computer and
this meant we needed to teach basic wordprocessing skills, too! 
 
The kids, Sandi, and I have all loved the class.  We've been learning
together.  Team teaching has made it easier to teachthe variety of skills
needed for the class.  It has also allowed us time to learn more about
resources on the Internet, which grow bigger every day. And it has given
us time to "convert" and teach others. We have convinced 17 teachers to
get Internet accounts and we've been teaching them how to use the Internet
during computer classes, consultations and after school.  We're beginning
to see small successes:  the geography teacher is in the process of having
his students join KIDLINK. 
 
I don't know what will happen in the future.  I suspect
World Telecommunications will become an elective computer class and
it will only be taught by Sandi. Our biggest hope is that most of
our teachers will find ways to connect some of their curriculum to
global learning and use the Internet as a resource.
 
Donna Graves, English, Journalism and World Communications Teacher
Olympus Junior High, Salt Lake City, Utah   USA