Mrs. Stillwell's Home Page

    A new project this year is an exchange program with a classroom clear around the world in Taipei, Taiwan.  As a part of the Globalization Initiative of the University of Missouri, our 3rd graders are sharing and collaborating with 3rd graders in Hsing-Ya Elementary School in Taipei.  Mrs. Briedwell's 4th graders are also participating in this project.

During the planning stages of this project, Mrs. Briedwell and I participated in some conference calls directly with the team of teachers and the school principal, Mr. Song.  It's challenging to make direct contact since there is an 11-hour time difference.  For example, we talked to them at about 7:00 on a Sunday evening and it was about 8:00 Monday morning for them!  In August and September, we have exchanged emails with Jay Hung, who teaches English to the Taiwanese 3rd graders.  Taiwan has suffered through a major typhoon which caused damage to Hsing-Ya Elementary, so we have had a slow start.  We also exchanged gifts of books about our schools and communities.

In October, we have sent emails with digital pictures of our Life Cycle of a Butterfly project along with narrative comments from my 3rd graders.  Jay responded that he received them and enjoyed our exchange.  He was anxious for their school to get back to normal so that his students could also get involved.  Late in October we received an email from Jay inviting us to visit his web page where he has developed the Missouri Zone.
http://w3.hyps.tp.edu.tw/~hy075/
We enjoyed visiting his page and found a greeting from Alex, a 6th grade student from Jay's class.  We also found some student powerpoints, so we emailed Jay a powerpoint about our class.  The file was so big that it did not work well so we have put it on a CD to be taken to Taiwan in December.

In November we shared Halloween celebration pictures and  plan to develop and exchange information about the seasons in Hallsville, MO compared to Taipei, Taiwan.  We will also share and compare a day in the life of a Hallsville and Taipei student.  A project chart was developed to serve as a timeline as we continued.
In December, we continued to communicate through email.  We visited Jay's homepage regularly.  Since there has been a problem with Jay's class getting to our class website, we burned a version on a CD and sent it over with Woei Hung.   We also shared more about our traditions and celebrations with a Thanksgiving powerpoint.  Several students collaborated to develop a "Day in the Life of a Hallsville Student" powerpoint.  Jay also posted a student powerpoint about "A Day in School" in Taipei in his Share Ground.  This project has been a great learning experience for students on both sides of the world as we trade information and explore life from a different culture.
    January 2002 brought our first successful video conference session!  It was so exciting to visit directly with our friends with this technology.  When we visit it is 7:00 in the morning in Hallsville and 8:00 at night in Taipei.
    Share Ground postings included Chinese New Year powerpoint and the return of Woei with a video showing students cooking traditional foods.
In February we sent our Seasons photos and collected monthly temperature and precipitation data to be sent in Excel charts and graphs for comparison with Taiwan weather data. We also continued the student participation in polycom video conferences.  The students chose food for their first topics of conversation.  At the breakfast conversation, students brought in packages, pictures, samples and recipes of favorite breakfast foods.  Mrs. Stillwell brought a waffle iron and batter and cooked waffles for her students.
March through May brough many polycom meetings.  We split each session to  include academic topics such as seasonal changes for our science project exchanges as well as some high interest kid-to-kid culture exchange conversations on favorite video and computer games.
 

The projects carried over into summer with a trip to Taiwan by Mrs. Stillwell and her daugher Ellie.  They visited three schools in Taipei, spoke at teacher's meetings and to some classes and were honored to participate in the 6th grade graduation ceremony at Hsing Ya.  The visit was shared with the students in Hallsville's summer school program through polycom videoconference sessions and by regular uploads of digital pictures to the ShadowNet workspace.
 

    While in Taipei, Mrs. Stillwell and Ellie visited many places and were invited into the homes of several students.  More will be added to this webpage as we tell the story of our activities during this school year.

    The 2002-03 school year has started with a series of videoconferences with 8th & 9th Grade English Literacy students from Fu Hsing school in Taipei.  Mrs. Stillwell and Mrs. McCreary are leading session which include book studies and using ShadowNet to post questions and discussions about vocabulary words.  Dr. Laura Diggs has been a frequent visitor/participant in these class sessions.

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September 2002 Suzanne Stillwell Hallsville Elementary School 411 E. Hwy 124 Hallsville, MO 65255 sstillwe@mail.hallsville.k12.mo.us