Next year we plan to set up a keypals program to match some of our students with students in other schools who are working on similar projects. We are looking at HyperStudio 3.1 as a possible replacement for the ClarisWorks e-mail and project templates. This software will not only allow the templates, but also work with Netscape to perform Internet search and e-mail functions. Buttons or icons can be set up that correspond to the mentors' e-mail addresses. Other buttons can guide the students to appropriate sites for research.
Students can point their cursors to the buttons and click to immediately accomplish their tasks.
A possible solution for the lack of phone lines may be a software package called Webwhacker. With this program, we can download entire Web sites and load them on all lab computers. These can be selected sites that are deemed appropriate for the seventh- grade research. Netscape can be used to view these sites just as if they were online. This may also solve the problem of finding too many Web pages, which was the case for many students while they did their online searches.