Welford and Wickham Primary School

Berkshire, England

Our reasons for getting connected to the Internet

As the Headteacher of a small rural Primary school I feel it is very important to give children the broadest understanding of the world around them. The present advances in technology offer many advantages that were not available when we were young. I wish to make the global community accessible to my children in as many ways as possible using this new technology. As communication between countries develops and business becomes global it is necessary for our children to learn about other cultures. It is vital for our children to see the similarities and differences between cultures and how best to interact with others who see the world in different ways. Often the only view we get of alternative cultures is through television, advertising and holidays which merely present a superficial perspective. The Internet provides a fast, inexpensive way to interact on a personal global level.

The process of getting connected to the Internet:

As funding to schools is limited budgets have to be spent in an efficient way. I feel that at least one computer per classroom is a minimum requirement. Quality machines are as important a resource as quality books and because many children have access to a computer at home schools should provide up to date machines that children are familiar with. If it is not possible to fund this additional resource through the delegated budget then fund-raising for this purpose must be considered. To put this in perspective my school spent £3,600 updating our computers from BBC's to two 486 multimedia PC's with printers. This worked out to be under £100 per child.
Once the computers are in place it is a relatively small step to get connected to the Internet. The process of hooking into the Internet starts with the purchase of a modem for approx. £100 and subscribing to a service provider for about another £120 per year. The ongoing costs are the telephone charges at local call rates. The only time this will be noticed is if the World Wide Web is used for hours at a time. We use Research Machines who specialise in facilitating schools in using the Internet.
Our first step in using the Internet was through email exchanges with schools and children around the world. Email is composed and read off-line making it a very cheap exercise. There are numerous electronic mailing lists that can be used to find Keypals and the most useful is KIDLINK which offers an opportunity for 10 to 15 year old children to take part in projects throughout the year with schools around the world.

The Internet in the Classroom:

Our first ever exchange a year ago came about after we contacted a school in Point Hope, Alaska. We supplemented the email by using the postal service to exchange Christmas cards and our school magazine. When these arrived in Alaska about two weeks later the children there exclaimed to their teacher that it was a marvellous thing for these cards to come out of the computer!
I was working with the year 5 and year 6 children whose Geographical abilities ranged from level 2 to level 5. This email exchange satisfied the Geography requirements of the National Curriculum at these levels in the following ways:

• By studying weather conditions in different parts of the world.
• By seeing that settlements vary in size and that their characteristics and locations reflect the types of economic activities in the settlement. (How many of us actually go whale fishing in sealskin boats as a necessity for survival?)
• By seeing how environments change and why people seek to manage and sustain their environment.
• By asking questions about geographical features and issues and collecting and recording evidence to answer these questions and then to analyse, draw conclusions and communicate their findings.

The above examples are for Geography only, however, links could be made to History by studying how settlers first arrived in Alaska; to English where children are writing for a purpose and to Science in the study of the Earth and it's periodic changes, etc. etc.

Our next step in using the Internet was to access the World Wide Web to do research on our termly topics. Children are always supervised when using the Internet in the same way that we only allow children to watch television in group classroom activities for educational purposes. I prefer to work with two children at a time in twenty minute sessions. Once the children have received initial instructions from myself on how to carry out their research, voluntary trained helpers can then be used to supervise further sessions.

We have taken Internet use one step further by creating our own school homepages where we display our children's work and the older children can create their own Web pages. In the true spirit of the Internet we are making resource material freely available. Our example has been an inspiration to the many thousands of visitors to our pages who express their gratitude by email on a daily basis. We have recently been visited by educators from Australia and America who wished to see first hand how this new communications medium has helped our children. When these visitors arrived it was wonderful for us to experience the connection between the email we had received from them and their appearance on the doorstep. Without the Internet would a small rural school have had international visitors, the chance for our children to find out first-hand about current world events and the ability to share their perspectives and ideas with others around the world?

Article submitted to The Guardian at BETT '96 by Sonia Crisp, Headmistress.

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