Opening Letter
A Circle publication has a letter from either the Learning
Circle Coordinator, the Production Manager, or from both describing the
collective work of the Learning Circle.The purpose of the letter is to
explain to readers who may not be familiar with computer networking or
Learning Circles the form of distance or tele-collabortion that led to
this publication. It also provides an opportunity to single out special
people who have made significant contributions or to recognize specific
events that were meaningful during the interaction.
A sample opening letter is sent
to Learning Circle facilitators at the beginning of this phase. They can
use this draft and modify it in any way they like or they can write their
letter. Here is the letter that Dianne Nicholson prepared for her Circle
publication:
_________________________________________________________________________
MEET OUR SCHOOLS
Over the past fifteen weeks, the nine schools in our Learning
Circle have come to know each other and to have a better understanding
of our world of communities. We have sent over 200 messages to each other
over the telephone wires -- generating a stack of paper messages nearly
three inches tall and weighing almost six pounds.
We are all different:
We cover the four time zones in North America...and we cross
the International Time Line. We live in rural communities without a main
street or stores...and we live in cities of over 13 million people. We
have three state of the art computer labs per school...and we wait in
line for one of the school's five computers. We learn in two room schools
perched atop mountains...and we learn in huge buildings bursting at their
seams. We speak French, Japanese, Italian...in fact students from one
school come from 70 different countries.
We are all the same:
We listen to the same music (M. C. Hammer & Vanilla
Ice were high on the list.) We read books by the same authors, watch similar
television shows, and play the same computer games. We all share the same
favorite food: Pizza! You will find some of us in each place outfitted
in Bugle Boy, Reebok, Levis, Nike, Guess, LA Gear and Jordache, and some
of us who care less about named clothes.
We learned about important things:
we throw away too much trash for the good of the planet
corn fields, rivers, mountains, city parks, lakes, and fields give us
solitude
cost of electricity varies as much as its use
coyotes, cattle ranches, alligators crayfish and dog sleds
the different faces of Spring
and many more things...
We survived:
hard disk crashes
blizzards, floods, mudslides, and droughts
lost disks and lost files
school testing and report cards
snow make-up days and heat waves
more lost files and hard disk crashes.
AND WE HAD FUN!
To my fellow pioneers--Thanks for making it an enjoyable
journey!
Dianne Nicholson, Learning Circle Facilitator
J. K. Polk School, Alexandria, VA
Return
to ORGANIZING THE PUBLICATION
Copyright © 1997, 2002, Margaret
Riel
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