From Maine to California

NEA Today, Apr 2000

Call them key pals, not pen pals. Elementary teachers on opposite coasts join forces and link their classes via E-mail.

Who:

John Thurlow, fourth grade teacher, Dora L. Small Elementary School, South Portland, Maine, and Lin Kondrick, fifth grade teacher, Toler Elementary School, San Diego, California

E-mail:

john@thurlow.com and jdavis4@mail.sandi.net Inspiration:

The students of John Thurlow and Lin Kondrick provided the chemistry that ultimately made a bi-coastal E-mail relationship take fire, but the spark came by way of the Road Runner Key Pals project, co-sponsored by Time Warner Cable.

The cable company made the introduction between the two Classrooms-which, Kondrick says, eased her fears about safety on the Net-and also provided a free, high-speed Road Runner cable-modem connection.

"Time Warner made it easy for us, in that the company did the connections on the Internet with Road Runner," Kondrick says. "Without that, it would have been like a dinosaur getting our E-mail to work. It was instantaneous gratification, and the kids enjoyed it!"

Once connected, the two teachers developed specific learning around the technology. They took advantage of their schools' locations to develop units comparing and contrasting coastal southern California with coastal Maine.

"Both our cities are very dependent on the sea as part of our economy and our tourism," Thurlow explains. "We were able to address all those concepts through our units."

Thurlow and Kondrick developed units that integrate content areas such as geography and economics with technology language arts, and communication skills.

Lesson:

Students did more than just send personal E-mail to a partner on the opposite coast. With the help of a team of students, Thurlow produced a Web site (hosted by Road Runner) dedicated to the project. The site includes links to Maine-based sites so that students in San Diego--or anywhere else--can log on and explore.

The two classes exchanged video "tours" of their classrooms. By digitizing the images, Thurlow uploaded a portion of his video onto the project's Web site.

Both classes collaborated on a storybook writing activity. Story sections were transmitted back and forth by E-mail, with each class adding another piece. When the narrative was completed, each teacher printed a copy and split it into picturebook format so students could illustrate it.

The E-mail exchange, says Kondrick, at one point started petering out. That's when she and Thurlow started the story project.

"The students got interested again," notes Kondrick. "You do need to spice it up."

For Kondrick, who was not a "techie," the plunge into Key Pals was worth getting wet. The project has helped her get past her hightech anxiety.

"And," she points out, "we went much further than John and I believed we ever could have."

Thurlow, who is no newcomer to long-distance learning projects, agrees.

"This project added a whole new dimension to the traditional pen pal!" he says.

Click:

"You need not be worried about using this type of technology," Kondrick reassures. "If you never try it, you'll never see the kids get excited."

"The challenge for the teacher," she continues, "is to be literate enough and daring enough to do it. But teachers also need to make sure they get the technological and administrative support they need to make it successful."

For more on the South Portland/San Diego Road Runner Key Pals project, go to http://home.maine. rr.com/johnthurlow/keypals/keypals98.html.