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The major goal of TEChPLACEs is to provide an innovative process tool and a state-of-the-art instructional environment for children from 3 through 8 years of age, with a wide range of disabilities across ages, classrooms, and locations, as children and teachers first build their own communities, using a variety of media, to share with the other classrooms, then engage in a collaborative effort among classrooms to construct a community together on an Internet site.
The first component is a TEChPLACEs Internet site and will culminate as a CD-ROM, TEChPLACEs First Communities, and an ongoing site. The second is a TEChPLACEs home page on Macomb Projects' World Wide Web site (www.mprojects.wiu.edu) which will contain continously updated samples of TEChPLACEs' activities, procedures, and progress reports. The third component is a CD-ROM, TEChPLACEs Construction Kit, that contains documentation, media, procedures, source code, and a 'template' to replicate the project in other locations with similar or different tasks, content, outcomes, and platforms. The CD-ROMs produced in Components 1 and 3 will be packaged and marketed as a TEChPLACEs Construction Set.
The following frequently asked questions have come from teachers, children, and parents involved in a project that introduced most of them to email and the Internet. The project, TEChPLACEs, is one of the Macomb Projects and is in its first year of funding. During the last school year, the TEChPLACEs staff worked closely with teachers and children in classrooms from a Macomb first grade, a Northwest (Good Hope) kindergarten, an Industry kindergarten, and an early childhood/pre-k in Colchester. As often happens, the enthusiasm of the children affected their parents causing many of them to be interested and involved in what it is their children do. As the children discovered and corresponded with children in other classrooms via email, helped in the development of the "All About Us" Web pages, and contributed to the current construction of "Our Community" their curiosity and need to know produced many questions and problem solving situations. The questions are real and the answers are the solutions that are the results of the creative thinking and collaborative efforts of those involved in the project. Future issues of ACTTive Technology will bring you more FAQs from the world of TEChPLACEs.
| 1. If your friend sends you a message while you are sending a message, do Internet messages bump into each other? | 2. How do I email with all the children in my class? |
| While it may seem likely that they might crash into one another, Internet messages do not collide. It could be said that these messages, much like regular mail trucks going in opposite directions, pass each other and arrive at their destination unharmed. | Each teacher will have to discover what works best with each group of children. Some teachers may be able to connect to a large television monitor making it possible for all the children in the classroom to view incoming mail and join in the composition of outgoing messages. Some teachers may have better success with their group reading and sending mail three times a week rather than every day. Depending on the amount of mail received, some may find it easier to read and reply to a portion of the messages as a large group and have smaller groups respond to the remaining correspondence. Other teachers may find it works best to generate outgoing messages and read the incoming mail as a group but then designate a smaller group, which changes frequently, to answer any mail messages. Very young children pose their own challenges. Teachers of these children may find it works best to read one or two messages as a group and rather than construct a reply at the computer, prepare the message away from the computer. The teacher then enters the children's words and sends the message at a more convenient time. |
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3. How do I help three and four year old children understand where email messages go? |
4. How do I send email to my child at school? |
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The idea of regular U.S. Postal mail is hard for most children to understand, but even more difficult is email that is an abstract practice that some adults cannot grasp. One teacher found a way to ease the confusion for the children in her classroom. As a group, the preschoolers prepared and sent a message to the building principal. The teacher and the children then visited the principal and watched as she opened the email message. Lo and behold, it was the same message the children had composed in the classroom and sent earlier in the day. |
First of all, you must have email capabilities and there must also be Internet access and an email account in your child's classroom. In addition, you must know the email address for the classroom. Knowing this, it is likely to depend on how the classroom teacher wants to handle the children receiving email. In many cases, it is easy enough to designate the recipient of an email message by including that information in the "subject" area of the message. For example, if the message is for your daughter Cara, you might put "To Cara from Mom" in the subject box. That helps the other children, many of whom recognize each other's names, know that that message is for Cara. In the message itself, by greeting Cara and her classmates, you will send a special message to your daughter and a message to the entire class, all of whom like to receive and send mail. By doing this, the message includes all the children, even those who may not receive their own personal greetings. |
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DISCLAIMER: This project is supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) PR#H180T70065. Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Education.
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updated August 4, 1999
