Kids Connect: Holiday on the Net

Snow and ice are not often associated with computers and the Internet, but for one class of French schoolchildren, they all came together to provide them and their parents with a memorable winter vacation. Last year, 21 students aged 10 and 11 from the Charles Péguy elementary school in Colombes in the Hauts-de-Seine region near Paris were sent on a winter sports holiday.

According to Martine Antognazza, principal of the school, many of the students are from ''difficult circumstances.'' For them, this turned out to be a vacation with a difference.

The municipality had provided the school with computers, and France Telecom had provided Internet connections and training of the teachers.

In the snowy mountains far from home, the children were given a project: to communicate their holiday activities to the school. Equipped with digital cameras and aided by their teachers, they took pictures of each other frolicking in the snow and sent them along with their written reports to the school and to those friends and parents who were connected to the Internet. Parents who were not on-line went to the school every day to look at the printouts of the students' messages.

''At first,'' says Ms. Antognazza, ''they were just writing 'Hi, how's it going?' but as the days passed, they began to write real news reports, describing visits to museums, interviewing the local cheesemaker and so on.''

Back at the school, the stay-at-homes sent back queries like ''Who's that in the photo?'' and asked for more information. ''It was a truly interactive process,'' Ms. Antognazza continues, ''and the kids were extremely enthusiastic about having access to digital cameras and computers. Some have problems writing when they see a blank piece of paper; computers make it easier for them. It opened up new horizons for them on the richness of this type of communication.''

But perhaps it was the parents who most appreciated the project, because it provided them with daily contact with their children. One severely handicapped child went on the trip with her mother, and when a photo was transmitted to the school of her sitting on a sled, her worried father was thrilled to see his child having a good time. ''All the parents were touched,'' says Ms. Antognazza.

What's next? This year, the school plans to create its own Web site, for which a class of nine and 10 year olds will produce a mini-newspaper.

Heidi Ellison