1. Description of Our Community
The community of Battle Ground is quite small. There are approximately 1000 people. Many of the residents work in the surrounding communities of Lafayette, West Lafayette, Brookston, Monticello and Delphi. We are also closely connected to Purdue University. Our community has great historical significance. The name of the town is related to the Battle of Tippecanoe. The community has a small town look with the elementary and the middle schools within the town limits. We bus many of our students in from the surrounding rural community. Although farm land surrounds the area, very few of the families farm. There are approximately 450 children who attend our elementary school.
2. Summary of Our Project
In the fourth grade, our students study their state heritage. In our music classes, we continue this study, but we approach it from the curricular areas. In extended studies, the art and computer clubs make it one of their goals to research and interview local artists. The students enjoy researching local artists and finding out about the resources in their community. Many of our students attend the festivals that are held in their community. Within our school we have many talents that we try to utilize by reaching out into the community and sharing. We researched the community and the school events to show how they were linked to one another.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:less than 20
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:1
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dial-up modem
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:4-6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
Our workstations consist of a lab of 30 machines which are Pentium 200MMX, 32 MB RAM, 2.5 GB hard drive. The web browser is Netscape 4.7, and our internet connection is a 128k frame relay line to our Tippecanoe School Corporation central office.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
Our problems were very minor. Perhaps the biggest problem has been keeping the children on task. Many times we would see them experimenting with the colors and fonts with very little work being done on the subject matter. While they loved to surf for images and backgrounds, they were never happy with the ones they had acquired. Involving three different subject areas with four different teachers also slowed progress for the computer club who put the final articles together.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
"This is really cool!" "When will it be up on the web so we can look at it at home?"
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Our fourth grade curriculum covers state and local Indiana history. From the music curriculum we continue to enhance this learning process by learning about our local Indiana musicians as well as our state musicians. Research, oral communication and writing skills are all part of the curriculum. We applied those skills toward our information hunt of local artists. The computer club met after school, so we were able to set our own goals for what we wished to accomplish in the support of the project. However, in anything we do, we try to enhance the present curriculum. The art club members were able to look at other artists to see how art can be applied. Enrichment classes were able to take their research on structures a step farther by applying it to their community and then "publishing" their reports.
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