Classroom Makes A Virtual Connection

The Age

Wednesday December 11, 2002

JENNY SINCLAIR

At Chandler Secondary College, the Internet is helping bridge the ``school excursion gap".

The 550-student school doesn't have a lot of resources for school trips or guest speakers but it's broadening its students' horizons via the Internet.

Teacher-librarian Suzanne Flavin has spent this year revamping the use of the library's IT resources. Her showpiece is a virtual connection with Queensland-based writer Anita Bell.

Ms Bell, best known for her personal finance books, devotes much of her free time to writing thrillers and children's books.

She met the Chandler Secondary College's book club students this year at a seminar at the Australian Centre for Youth Literature. An online connection was her idea and the technicians at Chandler Secondary College helped set up two Internet chatrooms and a one-way webcam connection so she could see the students. They couldn't see her but had an audio connection.

The one-hour chat about books and writing ran into three hours and Ms Slavin says it was even better and ``more personal" than previous sessions with visiting writers.

Two weeks ago, Ms Bell helped launch the school's middle years reading collection.

Ms Flavin said the online chats were typical of what she's trying to achieve with the schools' use of the Web.

Rather than trying to go out to the world, the students are reaching out over the Internet.

There are plans to have guest speakers in subjects such as history next year and one group of students made contact with the Prime Minister's office online over the issue of the death sentence handed down to Nigerian woman Amina Lawal. Because it's not rolling in funds, the school is also finding innovative ways to personalise the students' use of computers.

Its PCs are mostly in computer labs and the library, which had four new ``computing pods" installed this year. The PCs run on a Windows-based network, with most of the data stored on a central server, but systems manager David Chung hopes to introduce tiny pen-like data storage devices soon. They plug into a computer's USB port and hold about 64MB of data, enough for all a student's work.

The school network is also to be upgraded to wireless soon.

The school does not use laptops, which Ms Flavin sees as expensive, heavy and easily broken.