Many other schools have adopted a similar community strategy, developing electronic pen-pal relationships with schools across the country. Science projects such as tracking the migration of the monarch butterfly, reporting local weather conditions or analyzing acid rain become more meaningful when the students' work is shared with other schools and included in databases of information collected by scientists at universities. A few years ago, Mr. Greenwald says, he needed to prepare juniors and seniors with poor writing skills for a new state graduation requirement that included an eight-page research paper. He received a grant to install a computer at a nearby retirement home and then recruited 20 residents to correspond with the students via e-mail, critique drafts of their work and encourage them to improve their writing. Hearing it from the senior citizens made a difference to a number of them.
Kids love computers.
Second-grader Barbara Williams reluctantly removes her earphones and steps away from her Macintosh, where she has been mouthing sounds along with the computer as part of a remedial phonics program at Boston's Trotter School. My mother says she'll buy me a computer because I like it so much. Indeed, many schools say attendance improves and discipline problems drop when computers are available in classrooms. Brent David, a senior at Plainfield High School in Plainfield, Ind., says he was getting a C-minus in modern U.S. history last year until he got excited about doing a multimedia presentation on the development of the atomic bomb. I did book research, too, and I rented movies.