Dundee kids in worldwide storytelling session

Classroom chatter ricocheted from St Peter and Paul's Primary School in Dundee to schools in Canada, Chile and Colombia recently as children from around the world were linked in an exciting project at the University.

Computer and education experts from each of the countries have joined forces to establish the International Storytelling Forum research project, which will have multiple benefits for the children in each country.

Four children from the Dundee school attended the Satellite Receiving Station at the University, where they became the eyes and ears of children at four schools in Canada, one in Bogota, Colombia, and one in Rio Bueno in Chile.

And the topic of conversation? One of the first things all our daily chatter tends to revolve around - the weather!

"Children from each of the different schools had measured the weather in their own countries and each gave a short presentation direct to their contemporaries around the world," said Dr Nick Hine, of the Applied Computing Division at the University of Dundee.

The children also asked questions of receiving station staff member Neil Lonie on behalf of the kids in the other countries.

The forum has been built on the work of the Remote Accessible Field Trip (RAFT) project that will be completed at the end of the year, and seeks to examine a number of open questions that affect the uptake of educational technology in schools. It will explore how children accept different media, give them a deeper understanding of global culture and how their local culture relates to it, give them greater internet awareness and a sense of safe internet behaviour, and allow researchers greater insight into specific areas of educational technology.

"Underlying the project is the practice of social interaction between the children alongside the formal learning activity," said Dr Hine.

"We are trying to explore how young people, the 'MTV Generation', handle all this information they now receive in short, sharp bursts and across all these different media and how they can reflect on and think about the messages being carried by these media."

This initial field trip has been followed by one exploring local music and dance being performed live between a distributed group of students learning Spanish "at a distance" across New Brunswick, Canada and a classroom in Bogota. Other events planned for the near future include connecting to a visit to an Ice Hockey arena in New Brunswick and the St Andrews golf museum.