arbara Tice-Simons knows how difficult it is to motivate kids to write. As a teacher at Martin Luther King Middle School in Oceanside, California, she crusades endlessly about the importance of writing well. "It just goes in one ear and out the other" for most students, she says. But that changed when her students entered the "local attraction" category of a Global Schoolhouse contest with a website for the wild animal park in San Diego."When they know someone else will be looking at it besides their teacher, it's a whole different thing," says Barbara. "They recognize that they have something to say in the community, and that inspires them." King is one of a number of schools in 25 countries that have joined the Global Schoolhouse, a cyberspace project linking kids with educators, businesses, and government and community organizations around the world. "Through this project, students are learning what it means to be part of a global community," says Yvonne Andres, head of the Global Schoolhouse. "They are working with groups of children around the world, each group putting their local community online." Participants have also discussed environmental issues with Jane Goodall and re-created the Eratosthenes experiment, which measures the north-south circumference of the earth by comparing the length of the sun's shadow at noon on the same date at locations around the globe. Student projects are being showcased as part of the International Schools CyberFair 96, a yearlong Internet event bringing together young people from diverse cultures. Some students will have a chance to act as "student ambassadors" and work with their local communities to show the world what is special about the place where they live.
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