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Abstract -- Educational Projects Using Networks in Chilean Elementary Schools Education Track
D4: Using Networks for Collaborative Learning

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The author(s) are unable to present the paper at INET'95 in Honolulu.

Educational Projects Using Networks in Chilean Elementary Schools

Laval, Ernesto ( elaval@enlaces.ufro.cl)
Flores, Laura ( lflores@enlaces.ufro.cl)

Abstract

Chilean Ministry of Education is developing a pilot project that builds an experimental school network since 1993. This project has more than 100 elementary schools connected in poor income areas were teachers and students receive professional support in order to help them use technology with educational purposes. This paper describes some of the networking activities developed during 2 years of experience in Chilean schools.

The initial steps in the introduction of technology are taken in the training of teachers that have never used computer nor computer networks in their lives. This training process is facilitated by the use of simple graphical user-interfaces developed specially for Chilean schools. After the initial training period, teachers are encouraged to develop an educational project that was designed by the school previous to the beginning of the experience.

While each school develops its own project, groups of schools begin to work on new collaborative projects designed by themselves or in conjunction with a professional multidisciplinary team located in a nearby University. These network-based projects, have enriched the educational processes in several schools by means of modifying relations among the schools and turning the local work towards innovation.

Some of the network projects are:

"For knowing and telling": Some schools send not-ending stories for other schools to finish them.
"Poetic Dictionary": Schools look for poetic metaphors and its meanings.
"TV as part of my life": Tries to give some orientation about the use of TV with a critical and selective attitude.
"Games": Different schools look for and share traditional, current and new games
"The family all over the world": This project, created in Spain, encourages kids to talk about the family and tries to facilitate the multicultural understanding.
All the projects tend to enrich contacts among schools and teachers, and enrich the collaborative attitude in kids through the exchange of information using computers. But some of the more successful goals of these projects is that they have shown to help bringing closer the educational activities to children's life, which is a prioritary need in today's education.

An initial conclusion about the networking activities in Chilean schools is that they do help student to be active participants of their learning process. When the kids have products of their work that are useful to other teachers and students in the country, they receive a strong feedback that increases their motivation and creativity.