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Project Overview
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Core ConceptReach In - Reach Out is a suite of community and classroom activities using information and communications technology. Some activities promote communication, between remotely-located Lockhart River students and their families, friends and community. Some other activities in Reach In - Reach Out, embed the Lockhart River community and cultural projects and activities, into the school curriculum. Using technology and the Internet to promote literacy at school and in the community is central to all activities.
There are a number of components of this project.
Family Connections
Lockhart Buddies
E-mail Home
Media Gallery production as a virtual tour
Reaching Out to the world from Lockhart River
Developing a curriculum framework
Family Connections
Using the Internet, families communicate with Lockhart River students who are living away from the community. A community liaison officer and the Reach In – Reach Out coordinator in Lockhart River community, work with families in community centres including the school to reach out to their children. In collaboration with boarding schools and boarding facilities, Lockhart River students send images, voice messages and electronic mail to their parents, family and friends. Special facilities contain webcams, teleconference systems and microphones to enable away-students to talk to their families.
Lockhart Buddies
Lockhart River Buddies are stuffed toys sent to Lockhart students living away from home in schools and boarding facilities in Cairns, Townsville and other places. Each buddy is sent on a mission from a Lockhart class who are investigating school, learning and life in places outside of the Lockhart Community. Buddies travel with a knapsack containing a diary and photo album and personal belongings that buddies need when travelling away from home. While away buddies collect data and send it back to Lockhart SS by email. Buddies also have a web page and an online journal which records their adventures. Buddies love going away to school.
Media Galleries - a new technology-based genre
Students in co-operating schools are developing media galleries for Lockhart River students to read. The galleries tell stories in a theme and enable connections between schools to be developed or enhanced. Lockhart River Students and community members are developing media galleries for children away from home. This enables children to keep in touch with home and use this as stimulus for literacy activities in their new schools. Galleries are a preliminary activity for Virtual Field trip participation.
E-mail Home
E-mail home is a project where students are supported by teachers and tutors at their boarding schools to send e-mail to peers and friends and family. Families in communities participate in training workshops and special sessions to learn to reply. A weekly timetabled spot provides the structure to ensure every student receives mail and has their mail answered. Teacher aides are included in this training program and weekly sessions.
Virtual Tours of Lockhart River
Students at Lockhart River State School build virtual tours of events and activites at school and in the community. This forms an integral part of the schools' learning technology program and provides away-children with news of home. The media galleries provide an easy way for children to publish.
Reaching Out from Lockhart
Lockhart students will be involved in a series of global telecommunications projects so they can develop and practice skills while learning about global culture and community.
This component extends the learning technology program at Lockhart State School and enables students to develop and practice a range of learning outcomes while extending the students’ perceptions of the global nature of the world.
Lockhart River State School Curriculum Framework
Lockhart River teachers are developing a learning technology-centred curriculum plan which meets the needs of its local students and community. This is manifested in some Lockhart River Rich Tasks which are recorded on the web site as Buddy missions and gallery curriculum tasks.
Activities and content for curriculum draw from local cultural and environmental contexts. Teachers undertake a process approach to curriculum and enable students to achieve learning outcomes classified by what they know and can do. Outcomes about what students can do will be developed in the following categories: Thinking and reasoning skills, communication skills, information literacy skills, IT skills, Literacy and Numeracy skills.
Activities in the Reach In – Reach Out project will enable students to achieve outcomes from the Curriculum Framework.
Acknowledgements
Travel Buddies and Virtual Field Trips were conceptualised by and belong to the oz-TeacherNet team in the Research in Information Technology Group at Queensland University of Technology. Reach In - Reach Out thanks the RITE group for their support.
More information
More information about this project and its rationales can be found in the Conceptual Framework Section of this web.
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