Classroom collaborations In relaxed Kingscliff on the far north coast of NSW, Jeff Piggott's Year 7 class has been boiling water. The class is taking part in the International Boiling Point Project . Students are learning the importance of calibrating their thermometers, following exact procedures and making precise measurements, according to project co-ordinator Mercedes McKay from the Centre for Improved Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. By participating in a collaborative experiment, it becomes a more meaningful exercise. Teacher Allan Garbutt said the real-time feedback of the Net kept students motivated and involved.
Children feel a great sense of empowerment through communicating with their counterparts overseas.
Then there is the knowledge that they're publishing to a global audience. All schools place students' work on pin-up boards and in newsletters, but how much more exciting it is to receive a letter from a student in Moscow saying how much they enjoyed the poem. He says that one of the American children visited the Victorian students, and spent a day in the classroom. The school also instigated a Telstra-funded project, Write Away Grandma, in which grandparents became Internet mentors, correcting and supporting creative and factual writing. Together as one With the wave of advertising and publicity surrounding e-commerce vendors pushing their products online, you could be forgiven for thinking the Web was created solely for commercial means.