EVALUATION

I've tested a short Internet and asked the pupils involved to evaluate it. I think it's nice to tell you about this so you may use this experience for yourselves.

• The project lasted from October to mid-January.
• It involved a class group of 26 pupils (16/17 years old).
• The principle was an email exchange and work on a particular topic (the principle is based on the I*EARN Mini Circle project idea), the topic chosen was "racism".
• The schools involved : two highschools from Massachussetts/USA, one school from Australia and one school from Germany and us.
• Work on the topic in France: The class was (once a week) arranged in automomous groups and each group worked on a different aspect of the topic for an hour, I asked the English assistant to help me:

  Racism, what does it mean? a definition
  Racism at school : a questionnaire and a small inquiry within the school
  Racism in France : scapegoats change through history.
  

• Personal exchanges were going on at the same time and messages were sent about other topics teenagers are interested in.

• Photos were taken and sent too.

• Now our very kind German partner is going to print a little book with the most interesting messages and send them to the other school so the pupils can "touch" a souvenir of the project.

"Hi everybody,

You really are fine pupils and we have been happy to exchange emails with you :-))))))))))))

In class, all together this morning, we tried to draw conclusions from this "mini circle" project, positive and negative, and here they are :

- it has enabled us to learn more about the way you all live, your traditions...

- we have been able to express ourselves in English, use this foreign language with a different purpose (it usually is only academic, you know, exams and tests!), we have realized that English is a vehicle language.

- you have given us an opportunity to express and exchange personal opinions and it was very nice to do that with people our age instead of pupils or cassettes! By doing so we have had a first contact with email and realized that such projects are possible only thanks to the Internet.

- we have become aware of the fact that inspite of our geographical and cultural differences, we all have the same preoccupations : school, work, unemployment, our future, AIDS, family, racism, boy/girlfriends, driving tests...etc...

Unfortunately we have also had a few difficulties :

- our major problem was technical, we had no connected computer until the beginning of December and this made our work extremely difficult : our lessons were disorganized, our teacher was always on edge, she had to correct our work, type it, send it from home, print it, hand it out in class...Then one of our friends helped her with the typing..imagine the mess it was, when suddenly dozens of emails were coming in from your different countries!!!
Then we eventually got one computer in a small locked room somewhere in the staff room, nothing changed.

- we also found it very hard to exchange with pupils who speak and write perfect English. For us, writing the messages was a real effort, but it was worth it.

- now that the project is over we feel frustrated because we would like to keep some relationship with some of the pupils.

All in all, it will always be a wonderful school memory for all of us here and we thank you in Massachussetts, we thank you in Australia, we thank you in Germany, we thank the teachers for this great experience.

A bbbiiiiigggg kiss to all the boys from the girls and to all the girls from the boys ;-)

La classe de PremiËre L2, LycÈe de Beauregard, Montbrison, France."

They have experienced the potential of Internet exchanges and their frustration is in fact positive.

They have had the opportunity to talk their hearts out with other teenagers (you know, the only ones who can "understand"..!!)

As far as I my behaviour is concerned, the kids evaluation is clear enough!

I would advise teachers to start projects like this one knowing how they are going to get organized. The pupils love this sort of exchange but they always like it when the teacher behaves like a teacher and guides them, so stick to guidelines and follow a basic topic to start with (I was far too messy because not used to this kind of project).

Nationalities are important in a way and it is nice to start a circle with pupils who have different native languages (I made a mistake and I should have foreseen the linguistic problems but I was too involved in the technical organization).

It's also got to fit in with the curriculum otherwise the pupils wrongly feel they are wasting their time and this is a very good exercise to develop writing skills and language registers. Be ready to have a lot of work correcting messages, but we wanted to use the project in a pedagogical way and correct the pupils mistakes.

I can tell you that their marks have gone up after this experience and they are much less afraid of essay writing.