The best thing about this project: This is an exciting project allowing students around the world to exchange information about themselves. The best aspect of this project is that the information is easy to provide and access. The project site includes a simple form by which participants can provide interesting information about their everyday lives such as the location of their school, ethnic backgrounds that are represented in their class, languages spoken by their classmates, favorite holidays, favorite dinner foods, favorite junk foods, favorite entertainment, etc. The information is then posted to the "Participant Pages", which is also very "user friendly". Other positive features of this project include sections on classroom lesson ideas and assessment resources. This project is definitely attempting to create a global network of classrooms.
The worst thing about this project: One unfortunate characteristic of this project concerns the issue of foreign language. Information has been provided by elementary schools from a large number of countries around the world, however many of them are written in the language of that country. While this is to be expected, the information is not accessible and prevents a major goal of the project from being reached.
What I would change to improve this project (and why): I'm not sure how it could be done, but I would attempt to find a way to work through the language issue I noted earlier. I know there is a wealth of fascinating information about a large number of cultures that is being lost due to the language barrier. If this project is to succeed in truly creating a global network of elementary classrooms, and not just for those that use English, the issue of language must be addressed.
Joined by: Mark Heidel
Date: Tuesday, March 4, 1997 9:20:33 PM