For BEACON INTERNATIONAL NEIGHBORHOODS
Summary: This activity introduces students to the components of the telecommunication system.
Preparation: Computers should be bookmarked to the various web pages and tested before class. The mail client should be ready to go. Important: You might want to have pages of the site printed out before class in case you cannot connect. Prepare your class for "down times" during which the computer does not work. Anything supported by a computer, and in our case, a set of different computers, will have times of not working. Anything. It is a teaching opportunity when the computer or Internet connection does not work; you can talk to your students about how much does work when things are going well.
Materials: Writing to Schools in Another Country
GO
Activity Steps:
Browse "The International Neighborhood"
1. First go to the Project Home. Discuss the metaphor of a quilt. In quilt-making, many people come together bringing their own pieces to make a more elaborate design. Explain to your students that they will help build their international neighborhood using pictures, descriptions and data from their explorations. Each one of them has something important to contribute.
2. Look at the navigator bar below the quilt. These are the main telecommunication support places. Weekly Assignments holds the activities, While this is mostly for teachers, there is no harm if students want to take a look! Data Exchange takes us to Cleo, where we will enter some exploration data, and The Neighborhood takes us to Telecommunication Central.
2. Now go to The Neighborhood, a part of Connecting Up Villages, and type in your name and password.
Point out some of the key features:
You might want to start by pointing out that this was developed by Alan Shaw while he was a graduate student at MIT, and that his wife Michelle helps run it. Click on the About Music button on the Sidebar. It is useful for students to realize that computers and their programs are designed and run by real people.Community
The community button takes us to the "street" connecting our schools, their land, water and art galleries, and any other area we would like to create! Point out to students that we can change the pictures to make sure that the best representations of our neioghborhoods are displayed.
Visit a few buildings, starting with your school, if it is there. Note in the Sample Building that there are doors to different kinds of rooms, like discussions, picture galleries, databases or calendars.
Participants, E-mail, and Messages
If students or student teams will have their own e-mail address, show them how we have entered their names and have them select their icon. This might be easiest by distributing a page of the icons and having them initial the one they want.
Participants can be linked here, so e-mailing is easy.
If there is time, you might also show the other features:Calendar
Contains the schedule for Beacon International Neighborhoods Project.
Chat
We can have regular times and discussion topics for open 'real time' discussions.
Announcements
Copies will, I believe, go into the general e-mail
Discuss How It Works
1. Discuss the difference between
hardware and software. Software is a language written to
be understood by some part of a computer. The Neighborhood actually
now "lives" on a computer at MIT, but it was designed
(in its software) by Alan Shaw. Alan and his wife make a living
designing special software, and they want it to be useful for
communities of people who work together.
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2. Discuss Browsers. Browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer are software packages that help computers "see" and even "hear" as well as "read" information on the Internet. The Internet is an enormous network of computers that can speak to each other if they follow the same protocols . You need to turn on a browser once you are connected to the Internet and then give it an address, in our case, for Beacon International Neighborhood (http://www.concord.org/intl/beacon/index.html).
3. Discuss Search Engines. What is the best way to look for information? for information that is high quality? Search Engines look over the Web and locate information that you need. They have developed different strategies for helping you find it. Infoseek and Yahoo and Alta Vista are typical search engines. Search Engines that are particularly useful for students include Ask Jeeves for Kids and Yahooligans. They also include some advertising. How hard is it to keep in mind what you are looking for?
Extension: You might want to try out an Advanced Infoseek Search.
home l activities l data exchange l webbed neighborhood l resources