Download powerpoint presentation of Kasper Boon and Rietje van Dam-Mieras, EADTU, 2004


1.The School of the World makes use of Internet and TransWrite technology
The School of the World makes use of Internet and TransWrite language technology. The main subject of these programs is to enhance the awareness of being global citizen. This is done by means by live Internet meetings of schools from all over the world.

More and more it is felt that internationalization plays a major role in education. This is done by:

• visiting other places in order to experience cultural differences;
• learning different languages;
• learning about different cultures;
• have internet-contacts with other schools;
• organising meetings between schools
• having organisations aiming at international education
  

The "school of the world" is a special project in order to find out what the benefits are of a system that is based on:

• a special language technology to overcome language problems between groups with a different mother tongue
• webcams in order to have real live contacts
• the need of schools to work on an international level with special lessons adapted for "working together", as an exemple a lesson on the importance of water is given on this site.

This site describes the general use of the system. A special project "the CAPIT-project" is described into more detail. This project is directed to the use of the system for educational programs on sustainalble development.

The picture below shows an early example of the design. We see with a webcam the class of a certain school. Just image that you are a pupil of a class in London and the webcam shows you the class in Mnakilu.
There are 3 text fields. The text field on the left shows sentences from wich sentences can be choosen and adapted (TransWrite technology). The field in the middle shows the final text that is composed by the pupils (in London). The field next to it shows the text (translated) of the other so the text composed by the puplis in Mnakilu. So the pupils on both sides only see texts in their mothertongue! But on the other hand they know that exactly the same lesson is done at the same moment at the other school. Of course in these lessons topics can be given that demonstrate cultural differences.
This site describes the lesson "the importance of water"as an example. You can see that such a lesson is divided into tasks. For in stance the first task is "greeting". Furthermore we will start with the help of MSN-messenger to have video and audio contact.

You can easily image the power of such a communication system



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2. A communication environment
Our research is devoted to a communication environment that enables children from all over the world to communicate with each other.
This environment is based on Internet (webcam technology) and TransWrite (simple language to language translation, Albert Sickler bv) to overcome language problems. In order to demonstrate the idea, a simple example is given on this site. This example deals with “water”and it could be part of a project on sustainable development.
Internet gives many possibilities to have all kinds of communication between schools all over the world. But the main problem is language. Children of different nations speak different languages. And also with respect to writing, significant differences will play a major role in disturbing the communication. In fact it seems hardly possible to have a real communication...

The same problem was the starting point of the development of TransWrite. Originally this program was developed at the Dutch Open University by Boon. The basic idea behind TransWrite is that communication is possible if we:

• focus communication on a certain area (for the subject "water")
• arrange all kind of questions and possible answers in such a way that we easily can compose sentences. As long as the “sentences and parts of sentences” have no ambiguity, translation is possible and easy. This leads to the fact that we have to use
  
• a database with the appropriate language elements; and furthermore we need
• an interface in which only the own language (mother tongue) is visible and sentences can be composed easily.

TransWrite was originally developed for business communication. In the Netherlands it is used by many small and medium enterprises in order to do their business communication.
The flexibility of TransWrite is based on the fact that simple choices can be made within a sentence or building block of a sentence.
Just as an example we give a sentence with “flexibility” 4:

Our school is a [primary school | secondary school] and it is
situated it in [the middle of the town | outside the town ].

A final sentence is simply selected by moving the cursor to the appropriate parts between the brackets and by clicking. With 2 clicks 4 possible sentences can be formulated:

• Our school is a primary school and it is situated in the middle of the town
• Our school is a secondary school and it is situated in the middle of the town
• Our school is a primary school and it is situated outside the town
• Our school is a secondary school and it is situated outside the town

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The use of webcams remains essential in order obtain the feeling of having a real live contact
The fact that the children see each other underlines the fact that indeed there is real contact! There is also another point that every teacher knows: children at many levels still have big problems if it comes to formulating their meaning in a written form. They have no problems in formulating their meaning by speech, but if it comes to writing….. Again the TransWrite approach deals with this problem in an elegant way, as possible outcomes are prestrutured. In order to make communication interesting we can think on tasks for which it is unclear what the outcome will be. As an example it is demontrated in the lesson "the importance of water" how children have to vote in order to show how “they think” about a certain situation.

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Research Furthermore it should be noticed that the system is independent of the type of script used. In order to illustrate this the above picture shows the use of another script. The basic idea remains: the children see texts only in their mother tongue and they know that the block “they” always see shows exactly the answers composed by their neighbour-class. We can think of:

• Chinese
• Arabic
• Cyrillic
• Sanskrit
  
  

Example of the screen (first design, see above) with cyrillic text.

In the near future more research will be done. This research is aimed at many topics like:

• the didactics of the system in general
• the use of the system as a platform for schools to contact each other
• the didactisc with respect to specific domains (what can be done and what gives problems...)
• possible improvements with respect to the technical aspects
• the organisation that is needed behind "the school of the world"
• training the trainers

This research will be done by different partners.

An example: ”water”
As an example , a lesson on “the importance of water” is given in many languages.

More projects like the special Hogendorp-Turkey-project
One of the partners of Albert Sickler is the rsg G.K. van Hogendorp, a secondary school in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). For a special project of this school we are investigating possibilities of developing lessons together with schools in Turkey with respect to the European Community. We believe that the approach of the "school-of-the-world" is very interesting if it comes to exploring new possibilities of educational innovation in the framework of the European Community.

Contact: G.K. Soetman, director rsg G.K. van Hogendorp
e-mail: gsoetman@gkh.nl


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More information: e-mail to albert.sickler@tiscali.nl