International School's Cyberfair 1996

Entry from Eltham College:
'Environmental Awareness on the Urban Fringe'

Artifacts created 1996.
Reflection written February 2002.

Artifacts

• Website example:
'Environmental Awareness on the Urban Fringe' This web site does not exist in the virtual world anymore but I have been able to resurrect the home page to show the table of contents and the basic design of the site.

• Articles about the school and the Cyberfair entry:
(Click on each image to view the larger document)

'Netting Environmental Honors'
Article in the Diamond Valley News, June 1996.

'Students Gain Recognition On-air and On-line'
An article and photos featured in the Eltham College magazine.

Letter from Cisco Systems, Cyberfair sponsor.

• Paper presented at Computers in Education Conference:
'Cyberschool: Integrated Curriculum on the Net' [pdf]

Reflection: International School's Cyberfair

Describe:

As part of my enthusiasm for the Internet and wanting to work with students on a meaningful project, which involved the Internet and telecollaboration, I entered Eltham College into the International School's Cyberfair competition. A dedicated group of secondary level students and staff met as an extracurricular group to procure material and create a website on the topic of environmental awareness in our local area. As some background, Eltham is on the urban fringe of Melbourne, Australia and is a 'greenie' area whereby residents are concerned about environmental issues. The school had recently put aside 40 acres of its campus (natural bush land) as an environmental reserve to be used for science education and for purposes as seen fit by the school community.
The project itself became multifaceted and included, amongst other items, classroom work from students in Science and Geography, sound files of different birds found on the reserve, transcripts of student led interviews with local council representatives on environmental issues (as broadcast on our own student-based, weekly radio program) and lots of pictures.
The website gained 4th place in its category internationally for the Cyberfair competition. Later in the year I wrote and presented a paper for the Computer Educators Group of Victoria conference about the Cyberfair experience.

Analyze:

The situation represented in this artifact is significant in demonstrating my ability to initiate an integrated project and to work as a team leader within a school. I was able to coordinate students and staff to follow a vigorous schedule to complete all requirements for the Cyberfair entry by the due date. This involved not only liaising with classroom teachers to use already developed science and geography projects but also fostering technical skills amongst the staff and student volunteers to be able to work with graphics and text to create web pages. This project was created and developed outside of normal class times and put high expectations on the participating web design students as website creation was relatively new in 1996 and was not part of the normal curriculum.
This project also shows my commitment to community awareness and students participation in broader issues. The radio interview sessions linked in with the student-based programs I was already producing and gave the students further opportunity to develop interview skills as well as focusing on important issues. To me the two most important aspects of this project were to show the use of the Internet as a tool for communication and that cross-curricular, cross-age and cross-community involvement and combined effort are possible.

Appraise:

My experience during the Cyberfair project led me to see that a school community is an important and valuable part of the education structure. Students, staff and parent/community members worked together with a common goal. The small group of students who tirelessly met after school and were motivated to teach themselves HTML and web page design did most of the hard work. The students benefited from being part of the decision making process and knowing that they were largely responsible for the final website which would be seen internationally. The peer review part of Cyberfair also gave students an opportunity to evaluate other entries from different countries and to compare ideas. There was a profound essence of collaboration and motivation during this project, something an educator does not always see. I was taking a risk instigating this project but as an educator who likes to work on the edge at times I was sure that the benefits to the school and the students would be very worthwhile. It was a growth and learning process throughout. We could have been more organized with our web site plans, a lot of which was adhoc at the best of times. We could have included more environmental aspects, though the site was already quite large, but time was not available.

Transform:

The resulting web site, 'Environmental Awareness on the Urban Fringe', and honorable mention from the Cyberfair competition, along with the ensuing local media publicity was exciting for the project participants. I would like to see this type of integrated curriculum placed in the classroom more so than as an after school event. To an extent it had more worth and intrinsic value as an extracurricular happening as it highlighted the dedication and motivation required to complete it. Looking at education as a whole and the daily school structure it would be possible to include a Cyberfair project into a combined Social Studies/Science/ICT assessment project. To do this would involve flexibility on the part of the timetable structure, teachers and administrators.

Julie Lindsay, February 2002

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