Start with the basics: integrating technology at your own speed   Betty Foster shows how starting simple gives students time to learn the basics.   By Alicia M. Bartol SCR*TEC

eteran teacher, Betty Foster, is busy teaching her second generation of Cornhuskers at Jefferson Elementary in Grand Island, Nebraska. A few things have changed since she began teaching 20 years ago. Foster's third graders learn keyboarding now, not typing, and they have key-pals, not pen-pals. Yes, Foster has taken the plunge, and has brought the Internet into her classroom. Foster has given us a few tips on how to get started. She advises us to see the computer as a tool, to start with something simple, and to integrate the Internet into your classroom at your own speed.

I really wanted my kids to be able to be current and up to date with computers and the literacy that goes with it," says Foster. Seeing an opportunity, Foster applied for a grant in 1995 to get a computer in her classroom on as part of the Nebraska Art and Technology Integration grant project. Being awarded the grant, she and her students were given the opportunity to use the computer, "as a tool for communication, for research, and to extend understanding and cooperation between different types of people."        Because of the grant, Foster was able to get her students online. She brought the collections of art museums across the country into the classroom. However, rather than immediately designing a huge, time-consuming unit around great art, Foster used the computer to enhance a unit she had already been doing for years: "The school post office." Students learned to navigate to The Museum of American Art , then they selected a work of art, and with permission from the Museum, printed the images off the Web. These images became the front of postcards that Foster's third graders wrote to the second graders. "People get the idea that you have to jump into everything full-blown, and you don't," says Foster. She thinks it is a good idea to begin with something simple in your own building.

tarting simple gives students time to learn the basics. Most elementary-age kids are still honing new keyboarding skills, so Foster advocates teaching point-and-click navigation as a good first step. "The first thing they've learned," says Foster, "is how to navigate from our school homepage to the newspaper . . . what they're learning is easy navigation." She teaches navigation to everyone by the end of the first quarter. She accomplishes this by starting out each day with the weather. Every morning, two students are in charge of navigating to the local newspaper's weather page, and posting the weather on a graph. After Foster initially shows them how to do it, "the kids do it all."

Students in Foster's third grade class.

nce the kids have learned to navigate, there is a wealth of information at their fingertips. Foster tries to establish that, "we have a tool, and you can use it to find information." From that point, the teacher can begin to create lessons that require the students to use the computer as a reference. In one of Foster's lessons, for example, the students researched favorite fruits. Initially, one group had trouble finding information on kiwis, "but we went to a site in New Zealand that raises kiwi," says Foster. By the end of the year, use of the Internet as a resource becomes a natural step for students in her classroom.

f course, there's always the concern of children straying off task into uncharted cyberspace. Foster controls this by setting them up with bookmarks and kids' search engines, like Yahooligans. Foster says about Yahooligans, "it's fairly easy to get there, and you don't worry about where they go . . . that's a nice thing." Searching skills can be something that students and teacher learn side by side. Foster encourages her students to work in groups. They should discuss which sites seem to report the information they want to learn, and what they should select from each site to report back to the class. Teachers who want to integrate the Internet will also have to spend some time surfing, as Foster did, to find informative sites that complement their lessons.

Third grade student with class pet, Freddy, on his shoulder.

ccording to Foster, teachers can start off small, "get only as involved as [they] want," and build on integrating the Internet into their classrooms as they learn. Many sites on the Internet make this easier, because they are designed with teachers in mind. Entering the Internet initially, Foster felt "like a blind person." She was assisted by a resource site from her grant: Community Discovered. Other sites that teachers can visit to get lesson ideas, partner teachers, and pals for the kids are: Australia-based School World Internet Education, St. Olaf College's Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connections, Houghton Mifflin's Education Place, SCR*TEC Explorer, and SCR*TEC Trackstar. These sites often give teachers a place to meet online, and to advertise for partner teachers who are interested in collaborating. With the help of these sites, and cooperating teachers, Foster's third graders have successfully completed a number of projects with classes in the United States, Germany, and Australia.

nce teachers have had a little practice, the possibilities are endless. Foster explains: "What we can do is fantastic!" Indeed. After only two years of trial and error, Foster is successfully helping her students become more conscious of the world through the Internet. Just this year, her third graders took part in Journey North: the Second Annual Symbolic Monarch Butterfly Migration, a project hosted by Annenberg/CBP Projects. Foster found the site while searching one day, and thought it would be perfect for her class. "We integrated our: science, which was on living things [and] the life cycle; social studies . . . [learning about] Mexico City; . . . and art and math, using symmetry and design in art, and symmetry and geometric figures in math," explains Foster.

Foster's third grade class with their construction-paper Monarch butterflies.

er students were among the thousands of children from the United States and Canada who learned about Monarchs. They sent construction-paper butterflies to Mexico City's Papalote Museo del Niño (Children's Museum), where they will spend winter, cared for by participating Mexican students. "I signed us up, so we could report findings on Monarchs, and oh my! It was just unbelievable; we had this great time! We had seen the butterflies before the weather began to change . . . they were going south and somebody had caught a Monarch and brought it to school, and we let it loose, and by george, it went south!" In nature, North American Monarchs spend winter in the mountains near Mexico City. When they return north in the spring, the children in Mexico will write messages on the paper butterflies and mail them back.

side from nurturing a global understanding in students, projects like Journey North give a boost to the increasing number of language minority children in our classrooms. As Foster notes, "It's really kind of exciting, because we have a number of children who are Spanish-first . . . and who have relatives in Mexico City." This link not only gives them a tie to their heritage, but it increases awareness in the other students. Their awareness is heightened when the children actually communicate with students abroad and see some of the differences and similarities between cultures.

The Monarchs fly south for the winter!

sing the Internet to communicate is one of Foster's main goals. By the end of the year, her students will have written back and forth to children in Australia, who are exchanging class pets. This is one of the ideas Foster found two years ago on the St. Olaf site. Previously, the students have exchanged "pets" (teddy bears and plush frogs) with children in the States. The perks of such exchanges come in the cultural discussions they elicit, and the spur of the moment learning possibilities they present. Recently, a student asked Foster, "How far is Australia?" Foster immediately went to the map and held a mini-lesson on straight line distance versus Great Circle distance. They were amazed that it was almost 4000 miles less when flying along a Great Circle.

oster points out, "the children become so much more aware of the world . . . the Internet is a jumping point." Not only is it a jumping point, but it also brings joy into learning. During the class pet exchange, each child takes the pet home and then writes a journal or letter explaining the adventures they had together. To know that the Australian kids will read their story makes a difference. "It's so much fun," says Foster," to write for a real reason."        Foster gives the children plenty of real reasons to write, including a chance to be published on the World Wide Web. Soon, Foster's students will begin a unit on family relationships by integrating works of art by American artist, Carmen Lomas Garza. When the children finish, they will all have created their own versions of a family Lotería, a type of game they will learn about from Garza's art. When Foster shared this lesson idea with teachers through Community Discovered, a representative from the National Museum of American Art, told Foster to send pictures of her students' Lotería games and the museum would, "put them on the site with the other stuff about Carmen Garza."

"Even my kids who have trouble learning can do this, because we've done it as groups, and we've talked about it."

oster is very pleased with the progress both she and her students have made in integrating the Internet into the curriculum. Whether her students are learning how to e-mail Australians, or are following the Iditarod's mushers across Alaska, as they did last year after reading Balto, her third graders are succeeding with the Internet. "By the end of the year," brags Foster, "they were in cooperative groups, and it was so easy . . . this was what I wanted." She wanted them to use their knowledge of the computer as a tool, and "take the information and turn around and apply it, which they did, and it was just beautiful." Perhaps the best outcome has been that all of her students have gained something. "Even my kids who have trouble learning can do this, because we've done it as groups, and we've talked about it, and all these little things that you weave in make it meaningful."

o teachers contemplating a move toward integrating the Internet into the curriculum, Foster gives hope. According to Foster, the key to education is, "communication and understanding, and you can do these things a little bit at a time." Integrating the Internet should allow the teacher time to learn alongside students, at a comfortable pace. Learning is a process for all of us, but as Foster puts it: "the Internet [is] information [and] communication. That's what I do anyway."   View a lesson plan created by Betty Foster.

Nominate an educator for Feature Teachers. Copyright. © 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997 ALTec, the University of Kansas