 | to develop these experiences, |
| to provide schools with an efficient equipment for this type of work |
| to help teachers who would wish to start this program in proposing them an initial and continuous training. |
INTERNET TO PRIMARY SCHOOL, IS IT REALLY REASONABLE ?
Realization of a site on the web
François Pignot
Abstract
Convinced of the importance for the scholastic establishments of an open structure on the world to enrich pedagogical teacher activities and to wake up pupils to the world of the communication and the information that surrounds them, I have put my experience acquired abroad to help my colleagues teachers and to join with them the tools and services exploitation linked to highways of the information.
Several tracks appeared very important for us and we will try to explore one by one:
1) to facilitate the access of teachers to external multimedia resources that are found on systems of communication in France as well as abroad (the famous sites Web).
2) To favour the communication between pupils in classrooms through cultural and linguistic exchanges of an international dimension in the teaching way (the fast replies times being an advantage of the electronic mail).
3) to favour the development of new method of work leaning on the co-operative work and putting resources and competence in common between classrooms or schools ( exchange of texts, inquires, works realized by pupils).
4) to facilitate the diffusion of pedagogical practice with the help of new technologies and local productions, perhaps national or international (constitution of a scholastic newspaper " on-line " on the Web, exhibition of a gallery of pictorial or graphic arts, with the possibility to join our creations to those of other schools with which children are in contact).
5) to favour self apprenticeships through a rational and directed utilization of the different educative sites that we meet on the highways of the information (to learn how to " surf ").
Keywords
new technologies, information, communication, primary school
- Introduction
If our end of century should be summarised in two words, I believe that information and communication would appear at the head of list with the terms of commands policy or economic (universalization, neoliberalism, productivity, profitability, flexibility, etc. It is of our duty as teacher to wake up and initiate the children to the techniques giving access to these means of communication and information and especially to allow them to sort and to evaluate the data which freely circulate, in order to check them not to fall into the misinformation, which would be contrary with the targets required.
T
hese new information’s and communication’s technologies like audio-visual and data processing are some tools which it be appropriate to standardize the use, first near teacher (even the more reticent), then near pupils who attend already or will attend in a short term (school, college, high school, life professional...). The too famous Internet network which everyone have heard about in television or in the press, but which very little of people have practised can bring some answers to our questions offering a virtual window open to the world.II. Start-up of project
1995, coming back to France after working in Brazil, I was sad to see the computer room deserted by the pupils and the teachers. During an internal teachers’meeting, I talked about an idea of informatic project allowing pupils to discover and to adapt the computer tools. My proposal was well accepted, and I started to work in a project which interest the partners of the school responsible for logistics and finances.
After the project’s approval by the Headmaster and the colleagues, I have presented it to the authorities. From this day, started a long waiting full with deferred meetings.
In parallel, my contacts with the persons in charge of the server of the Educational regional service was interesting, but the mysteries of the administration helping the delays accumulated. A few months later, six new computers arrived at school, to the big joy of the children, enthusiastic with the idea that this hardware was intended to them. We was ready to start our project.
Some pupils, the older, took part in the cleaning of the room and the installation of the hardware allowing connection to the network
A printer, a scanner and a numeric camera will come to complete the basic equipment.
III. Developments
The project really start in September 1996. First, we explore the network, initiating students with the electronic mail. Our first intensive use was the complete browsing of the site of the 900 years’anniversary of the basilica of Saint Sernin in Toulouse who arrived after a visit of the cathedral and allowed us to answer the questions which have born after the visit .
It is at this time that we have to put limit in connection because the cost of telephone would have been excessively raised and our experience could have stopped for logistic reasons.
The problem could be solved with a saver of site which I discovered in the specialized press. This software copies all the pages of a site defined from the hard disk of the computer and once disconnected, we can check this site quietly without worrying about the future telephone bill.
After a short initiation with computer (precaution with respect to the hardware, name and use of the various parts, peripherals of input and output, etc.), we began an initiation to word processing. This familiarisation with the computerized writings enabled us to better apprehend the tool computer and to monopolize this tool at ends of search and production that was the initial target of our project.
a) The multi-media resources for the teachers
- Information’s at home
Many teachers spend a lot of time looking for documents or books to help himself to prepare their class. Library, bookshop are well known by teachers looking for a special information. With Internet, it is possible to search at home or at school and the area of searching is larger.
2) EDUCASOURCE, a French project with future
To perfect search on Internet, the Ministry of the National Education create a service giving access to electronic resources of information for all the teachers in France. It is easier to search with this data base because it is a special data base made by teachers for teachers. Everyone can submit a data and the ministry team do a selection.
b) The communication between class
It is certainly one of the most interesting things for children of primary school. The major advantage is the rapidity of transfers of the information.
1)The correspondence by electronic mail
From its origin, Internet is at first a way of communication. The principal advantage of Internet is its low cost and the possibility to communicate with the whole world. All documents (texts, drawings, photographs, sound recordings, etc...) are prepared quietly in class, stocked on the hard disk of the computer, and once a day, we send or we receive mail. In a few seconds, once the connection is established, we send and we receive what is waiting in our mailbox.
To illustrate the rapidity of the exchange, I will tell an anecdote of a mail that we have received from Rio of Janeiro, a lady congratulating and encouraging children for drawings exposed in our potential art gallery ternet she concluded her letter by asking some questions:
Where is Rio?
What is the Sugar Loaf?
Immediately, children have undertaken researches on the atlas, on the encyclopaedia to be able to reply to the questions of this lady. A message left the school the same day with the fruit of researches realized during the day. There has not been lost of time and the return was almost immediate. Next morning, a new mail from Brazil waited us with in rewards some pictures of the Sugar Loaf of Rio de Janeiro.
The interest has not time to blunt, the enthusiasm have created an important dynamic. It is evident that such exchanges encourage children in their motivations The goal is near, the reply almost instantaneous, the motivation is real.
Important: Students realize that it is important to write correctly and clearly if they want to be understood at the first time.
It is more authentic than kind of exercise: I am suppose ”to write to my grandmother or to my aunt for such or such reason“.
2) International exchanges
The example above, illustrating the rapidity of the electronic mail could have also illustrate this paragraph on international trades. It is evident that international trades are simpler when they are made in French with Canadian pupils or Luxemburger for example. But it is interesting to note reactions of children in front of messages written in a foreign language (English, Portuguese, Spanish,..). As they learn English, they are very proud to recognize such or such word that they have learnt and they are able to write a short message of presentation as they learnt with their English teacher.
Other students, from foreign origins will be particularly proud and valorized by recognizing, one such a word in Spanish, another such other a word in Portuguese or Italian. It is equally important for children to discover by their own experience that Canadians speak French or English, that Brazilians speak Portuguese and luxemburgers French.
Our web homepages on Internet had pleased to an American scholastic system (Scholastic Network) which has (with our authorization) recopied and translated some pages to an American site, we have received lot of mails of young Americans who wished to communicate with pupils of our school to correspond, to exchange or simply to comment the work undertaken on the site and to speak about their studies in America States or elsewhere.
Some organization like KIDLINK can help to develop an international communication with students under 15 years old.
c) The development of new works’methods
1) The co-operation
There are several levels of co-operation at school with the use of Internet.
First, there is the local co-operation based on the sharing-out of machines, individual researches and the work of creation. It needs a work in team and not as an individual, to produce a document that will be exploited at school or send to correspondents more or less distant.
It is also important to create an emulation between the different friend homepages. A co-operation on line can born rapidly when someone is in front of a problem and when the problem is shared with the mail-friends. These friends will invest the problem and bring solutions.
At least, there are exchanges of files between schools, that bring an important motivation for children. For example, a school has sent us a file about bears of Pyrenees (coming from Slovenia!) and other has helped us to end our search about the channel between Atlantic and Mediterranea or about Sant Saturnin because they will be concerned by our work. The accomplished work is profitable, not only to the class which has elaborated, but also to children who are going to receive it, to evaluate it, to appreciate it and, why not, to resume it and to complete it.
2) The common resources between schools
By exchanging files and specified documents, we can create on a local, regional or even international level, small scholastic database realized by children of the primary school. A such experience is working with Canada and with our colleagues of Piquecos (small village in France near Toulouse) about their inquiry on the water, and a CD-ROM has been published. This event has been a consecration for children who have participated to this work.
d) The exchange of pedagogical practices
After the discovery of wonders of Internet, we have decided to pass to a new level, more active, by creating our own site at school. Once presentations realized (school, city, municipal youth Council, …), we presented our pupils’creations: the newspaper (that existed already in a paper version) and an art gallery that would display the work of our pupils.
1) The newspaper " on-line "
Nobody can no longer deny the importance of the realization of a newspaper at school. To publish a scholastic newspaper which will be distributed to relatives and friends, it is well. But to know that your newspaper can have 50.000.000 potential readers by the world, that is an aim to the initial motivation which plays a dynamic role. Since our experience with American students, we have observed that we had between 400 and 500 potential readers each month. It is a good beginning, but it remains a lot of work to arrive to the fifty millions waited.
When we know that we can send and receive pictures, drawings in colours and even audio documents and videos, you imagine that the communication on Internet becomes an indispensable tool whose it is impossible to escape.
To close this paragraph, I will add that the newspaper "on-line" on Internet offers one more advantage: It is possible to develop it and to improve it day after day, without waiting a new edition.
2) The virtual art gallery
Last step, plastic arts have also their place on Internet. The exhibition of pictures, drawings, collage, paints and other artistic productions does not limit to the classroom, school. Works of children are exposed on the system to the view of all what are concerned by childish artistic productions. I will not speak about the joy of children when they find in the mailbox a message of congratulations concerning one of his work. The fact of having an important public is a motivation which encourages the creation and the production. A child does not make its drawings for the master or for its relatives, but also to put them on the web.
e) the self learning
1) Researches of children
The research of information on the web is an excellent apprenticeship. It obliges the child to well define what he is searching, to define a theme, key words. It is a perfected initiation to management of the data bank. Making sorting, doing choice, crossing information will be very important in the world of tomorrow which is overflowed by information’s. There is too much information that it will be necessary to select, to verify, and possibly to retain. The importance will not be to know the information, but to know if it exists and where to find it.
2) The recovery of information
To know where to find information does not dispense recovery, classification and sorting. It is indeed important to know how to recuperate a datum on the system to support and improve your research work. However, it is important that the pupil knows to make the difference between his own production and the different productions that he will have to glean on the web. It is good for him to benefit from a lot information, but this does not have to harm to the personal creation neither to drive to the plagiarism.
3) The problem of the truth
Internet is a medium, a little different of the others, but this medium has a role in the democratic and social life. It will be important to educate our pupils to allow them to become active citizens knowing to ask the good questions:
What is an information? How is it created? Who chooses, who selects the information? Why?
Education to the citizenship is important for our democracy and we do not have to dispense us such questions in front of the children who are confided us today. It is particularly important that pupils are could doubt and that they are obliged to verify the information found by crossing other information from others sites or other media.
4) From the highways of the information to the labyrinth
I will resume, to conclude, purposes of Jacques Attali in Le Monde of 09/11/95 and that described highways of the information as labyrinths of the information. He saw there a errance full of go, return, spirals, impasses, distant proximity’s and deceitful distances. He advises readers about dangers of these virtual walking.
To avoid these reefs, it is to us teachers to prepare our pupils to these navigation by learning them "virtual orientation on the web" and by making them understand that the Internet is only a tool, efficient indeed, but only a tool which is able to help them if they use it with perception.
IV. Conclusion
This experience has allowed us to see some possibilities that offers this opening on the world. Our action has created a dynamics and a need. I think that it would be impossible to us to go back and to shut the school doors at Internet as it was before this project. Despite the difficulties and the extra work to build our site, it is evident that nobody at school thinks about giving it up.
On the contrary, we have many tracks to explore, many contacts to establish with colleagues which we have launched in this adventure. From these exchanges would born new methods of work (we begin to feel them , but it is again too early to formalize them). However, the technologies of the communication’s utilization in teaching is going to modificate the educative system. These transverse exchanges between schools, between regions, between nations are made rapidly, but with the risk of skids.
For teachers who begin to use the new communication’s and information’s technologies, it is important that concrete measures could be taken, specially:
| to develop these experiences, |
| to provide schools with an efficient equipment for this type of work |
| to help teachers who would wish to start this program in proposing them an initial and continuous training. |
Then, Internet to primary school, is it reasonable? Well, yes, of course !!!
Personal address : 16 rue du Val d’Aran |
School address : Ecole élémentaire publique |
Author
Teacher of Ministry of National Education - France, actually in primary school, formation in French for foreigners, webmaster of the school, Kidleader-French Manager in the Kidlink project.