94
ing to internationalize the high-school curricu-
lum.
Authors of both articles are to be com-
mended for their contribution of highly reada-
ble articles describing viable international
projects.
Nick Eastmond
Utah State University
Distance Learning Among Mexican and
Texan Children
by Lauren C~-uentes and Karen L. Murphy
[3 Two classes in Mexico City, Mexico con-
ducted school activities via videoconference
with two classes in College Station, Texas in the
United States. The need for collaboration was
established through analysis of poems that stu.-
dents wrote about each other's cultures prior to
any distance-learning activities. Mexican chil-
dren had enough previous experience with U.S.
culture to be able to describe the culture in
poetry accurately. On the other hand, most
Texan children had little knowledge of Mexico
and had to write about their own culture or an
imaginary place, or to refer to stereotypes in
order to create a poem. We also report on some
school activities that brought the children
together successfully to learn with, about, and
from each other. The distance-learning activities
provided for shared understanding.
Backgroundand TheoreticalPerspective
Distance technologies expand the range of
opportunities for students to build relationships
with people of different cultures. In the current
social-constructivist conception of learning,
"education is the shared way of thinking about
one's self, the community, and the world" (Riel,
1995, p. 219). Therefore, schools might play a
significant role in nurturing students' positive
identity formation, spirit of community, and
multicultural perspectives by providing them
with opportunities to build distant relation-
ships. In order to become more tolerant and
respectful citizens, students need to develop
relationships with people from diverse cultures
ETR&D, Vol, 47, No.
and backgrounds (Moffett, 1994). Geographical
and cultural isolation can limit opportunities for
relationship building beyond one's culture.
However, cross-classroom collaboration using
telecommunications technologies allows stu-
dents to connect with distant others from
around the world. The collaborative learning
process has the potential to transform individual
participants' perspectives from parochial to
global (Cummins & Sayers, 1995). Tiessen and
Ward (1998) claim that "computer-mediated
communication technologies can . . . directly
support educationally valuable activities that
would be difficult through traditional media"
(p. 175). They describe such activities as provid-
ing for--(a) many-to-many communication, (b)
distributed learning, (c) a shift from teacher con-
trol to student ownership, (d) a shift from focus
on tasks to focus on understanding, and (e)
shared understanding through collaboratively
constructed artifacts.
On the other hand, Postman (1995) warns
that adoption of technologies without skepti-
cism is a Faustian bargain, potentially paid for in
losses of respect for human judgment, steward-
ship of the Earth, spirituality, democracy, diver-
sity, and the power of language. While we, the
authors, agree with Postman that technology
can be used to promote human isolation, we
propose that distance technologies can be used
to achieve the desirable "End(s) of Education"
that Postman himself describes---"to find and
promote large, inclusive narratives for all stu-
dents to believe in" (p. 144), and "to help the
young transcend individual identity by finding
inspiration in a story of humanity" (p. 171).
Examples of successful telecommunications
projects that have facilitated communication
among multiple individuals for purposes of dis-
cussing issues from different perspectives
include one in which senior citizens corre-
sponded with elementary school students to
share their wealth of knowledge that may come
with age (Brush, 1998). In another (Zeitz &
Kueny, 1998), high schoolers in Osaka, Japan
discussed the murder of a Japanese exchange
student in Louisiana with high schoolers in
Iowa. Such projects broaden learners'
worldviews and facilitate the goals of education.
This study is a report on Mexican and Texan
INTERNATIONALREVIEW
students' poetry writing and sharing prior to
videoconferencing. The writing activity was
used to introduce the concept of cultural ex-
change as well as to inform students regarding
the extent of their knowledge about each other's
cultures. We then report on collaborative activi-
ties among four classes of fourth-grade students
and explore the effectiveness of international
distance learning for cultural exchange. Two
classes in Mexico City conducted school activi-
ties with two classes in College Station, Texas
via videoconference over a school year. Activi-
ties were designed in response to Postman's
(1995) "narratives" that learners should share in
order to achieve the desired ends of education
quoted above. Those narratives indude stew-
ardship of Earth, religion, democracy, diversity,
and language.
Laughon (1998) identified four distinct
phases for conducting online telecommunica-
tions projects: (a) planning the project--devel-
oping an idea into a workable project, (b)
announcing the project to the [learning] commu-
nity and accepting companion classes, (c) coor-
dinating or moderating the activities, and (d)
evaluating the project. As in Laughon's model,
our planning phase involved setting goals and
desired outcomes, designing activities across the
curriculum, creating a preliminary timeline,
establishing a management approach, and
determining how information would be shared.
In another study (Cifuentes & Murphy, in
press), diverse students in a rural school in East
Central Texas paired with predominantly His-
panic students in a school near the Mexican bor-
der. These students collaborated across Texas on
multicultural activities across the curriculum.
The cross-classroom collaboration, Cultural
Connections, enabled students to expand their
worldviews in preparation for contributing in
our increasingly multicultural environment. It
demonstrated that in networked classrooms stu-
dents can connect with distant others to learn
about and from their perspectives and to
increase their self-esteem and multicultural
understanding. It also demonstrated that dis-
tance technologies can foster team teaching
across cultures and geographical distances
within Texas. Four overarching themes emerged
from the data: (a) growth, (b) empowerment, (c)
95
comfort with technology, and (d) mentoring.
These themes permeated each data source and
applied to all participants of the Texas project.
Participants grew personally and intellectually.
They felt empowered to achieve goals, and they
became comfortable with technology. Students
provided and/or received mentoring: they men-
toted and learned from each other, and they also
had the benefit of being mentored by both their
local and distant teachers.
In the current study we applied the Cultural
Connections model with an international team
of teachers. Predominantly Mexican students in
Sierra Nevada Bilingual School in Mexico City
collaborated with diverse students in Rock Prai-
rie Elementary School in College Station, Texas.
The students collaborated primarily via interac-
tive videoconference with occasional e-mail. To
facilitate building a broad wofldview in their
students, educators provided collaborative
learning experiences for social construction of
meaning. As Cummins and Sayers (1995) sug-
gest, telecommunications was used to expand
the range of exposure to multicultural interac-
tions.
Research Questions
Students participated in at least six distance-
learning experiences during a school year. Their
teachers planned the shared units of study both
face-to-face and using telecommunications. We
asked:
• What prevailing impressions did Mexican
and Texan children have of each other, as
exhibited through their poetry about each
other's cultures, prior to their distance learn-
ing activities?
• What school activities brought children of
Mexican and Texan cultures together suc-
cessfully to learn with, about, and from each
other?
Methods
Participants
Four teachers, two in Mexico City and two in
College Station, Texas, partnered for planning
96
and implementation of curricular activities with
their students. The 47 fourth-grade students in
two classes in Mexico City and the 41 fourth-
grade students in two classes in College Station
were active in the partnership throughout the
academic year. Of the Mexican students, 26 were
male and 20 were female. All were Hispanic
Mexican citizens except for 2 Hispanics who
were born in the United States. Of the Texan stu-
dents, 17 were male and 24 were female; 26 stu-
dents were White, 8 were Black, 4 were
Hispanic, and 3 were Asian. All but 2 were U.S.
citizens, 1 being Indian and another South
Korean.
The Mexican school was a private school that
met in a converted home in an exclusive neigh-
borhood of the city. The Texan school was pub-
lic. The school partners in both Mexico City and
College Station were equipped with multimedia
software, Internet connections, and interactive
compressed-video systems at local distance-
learning centers. The project administrators in
both Mexico and Texas helped with planning
and facilitation of connections.
Data Sources and Methods of Analysis
Prior to videoconferencing we conducted two-
hour writing workshops with each of the four
classes. The workshop activities were designed
using Kenneth Koch's (1970) methods for teach-
ing children to write poetry. Students read
poems and listened to lyrics that authors had
written about places. Two examples were "I Am
a Town" by Mary Chapin-Carpenter (1992) and
"Where I Live" by Raffi (1990). The students
noted that the poems did not rhyme but were
instead lists of images that evoked feelings
about a place. They also noted that the poems
included both positive and negative images that
offended or appealed to the five senses. Then the
Mexican children were told to imagine that they
"were" the United States and the U.S. children
were told to imagine that they were Mexico.
They were told to write an "I Am" poem includ-
ing all of the sensory images that came to mind.
If they expressed concern that they did not know
enough to imagine the other country, as many
U.S. children did, they were told to make up an
imaginary place and write about that, including
ETR&D,Vol, 47, No. 4
any images they could associate with the coun-
try that they were imagining themselves to be.
Data sources included (a) the poems the stu-
dents wrote, (b) lesson plans used during the
year of distance learning, and (c) researcher
observations and questioning during imple-
mentation of the lessons. The poetry-analysis
part of the investigation relied on arts-based
methods that are characterized by illumination
of qualities in data in order to establish value
(Diamond & Mullen, 1999). We conducted con-
tent analyses, as described by Emerson, Fretz,
and Shaw (1995), of the students' poems about
each other's nations. During and upon comple-
tion of data collection, we used the two-phase
process of content analysis, open coding and
focused coding. During open coding we read the
poems line-by-line to identify and formulate any
and all ideas, themes, or issues they suggested,
no matter how varied and disparate. This pro-
cess involved writing initial memos to ourselves.
As suggested by Miles and Huberman (1994),
we gave priority to "memoing," which began
immediately as data came in and continued up
to this final report. We then created captions so
that as themes, patterns, and variations of partic-
ular interest emerged we could enter data under
these categories. For focused coding we exam-
ined the poems as well as our memos on a line-
by-line basis, giving special attention to
categories identified during open coding.
Two themes were identified during open
coding: (a) tone, and (b) level of knowledge
about the other culture. Imagery in the poems
reflected both the tone and likely sources of
knowledge. The tone of the imagery tended to
reflect negative, mixed, or positive reactions to
the other culture. Likely sources of imagery
included (a) cues from the poetry-writing work-
shop, (b) life in general, (c) specifics from the
writer's life, (d) learned stereotypes, (e) media,
and (f) personal experience. Sources a, b, and c
reflected little knowledge of the other culture,
and sources d, e, and f reflected progressively
higher levels of knowledge about the culture.
Poems reflected apparent low, moderate, or
high levels of knowledge. A low level of knowl-
edge was assumed if poems included nothing
but inaccuracies, cues from the workshop, life in
general or specifics from the writer's life. A
INTERNATIONALREVIEW
moderate level of knowledge was assumed if
accurate imagery based upon stereotypes was
included in the poem. Poems were regarded as
reflecting a high level of knowledge if specifics
were included that indicated personal experi-
ence with the culture or elaborate knowledge
from media.
We gained consensus on the extent to which
the data sources revealed answers to the first
research question. As a result, we provide rich
description of the poems in order to describe
prevailing impressions that Mexican and Texan
children had of each other prior to distance
learning.
In describing the distance-learning activities,
the investigation relied on case-study methods,
which are characterized by rich description of
processes (Merriam, 1998).We report on the les-
son plans used during the year of activity and
observations of lesson implementation. Obser-
vations took place before, during, and after
videoconferences.
Students conducted ongoing activities be-
tween November and June, 1998-1999. Admin-
istrators and teachers met in Mexico City in
October to plan the project, which involved
establishing goals, designing activities to meet
the goals, and setting tentative dates. All video-
conferences involved preconferencing, con-
ferencing, and postconferencing activities for the
students.
Findings
Observations and questioning during distance
learning activities revealed relevant information
about language, ancestry, interests, and experi-
ences that the children brought to the project.
Through the videoconferences the children
learned of similarities with and differences from
each other. The students learned that all of the 46
Mexican students were at least bilingual in
Spanish and English, and 8 of the Mexican stu-
dents spoke languages in addition to Spanish
and English. Those languages included French,
Italian, German, Portuguese, and Hebrew. How-
ever, only 5 of the 41 Texan students knew two
languages while the rest knew just English. Sec-
ond languages were Hindi, Icelandic, Spanish,
97
Chinese and Korean. As was expected, the two
groups had English in common. Although the
Mexican students spoke English fluently, the
American students had difficulty attending to
the Mexicans' speech. Understanding the strong
Spanish accent via videoconference technology
required great concentration on the part of the
Texan fourth-graders. In addition, that most
Texans could only speak or read in English
proved to be a significant barrier. For instance,
we had to have a Spanish text chapter regarding
the Texas Revolution translated so that the
Texan students could study the Mexican per-
spective for one of the activities.
Learning about and comparing ancestry was
important to the project because it helped chil-
dren recognize that we are multicultural socie-
ties and are interconnected through our
transience. Students across groups had, of
course, different ancestries, but were pleased to
learn of similarities as well. Three of the Mexican
children were born outside Mexico. One was
born in Caracas, Venezuela, and two were born
in the United States, including one who was
born in Houston, Texas. All other Mexican chil-
dren were born in Mexico. Similarly, only two of
the Texan children were born outside the United
States, one in India and the other in South Korea.
Going back just one generation, however, the
students revealed that m a n y of their families
were new to their nations. Of the Mexican chil-
dren, 7 had parents who were born in the United
States and 9 other children had parents born in
six other countries. Of the Texan children, 10
had parents who were born outside of the
United States, and 2 of those children's parents
were born in Mexico.
After students met each other for the first
time via videoconference to share self-portrait
collages, their discussion led them to draw the
following conclusions: "They [the distant class]
are the same as us!" They exhibited the same
taste for pizza and tacos; admiration of hair rib-
bons and watches for the girls; high regard for
Michael Jordan, sports, and fast cars for the
boys; and appreciation of rock music across gen-
ders. The Texans also observed that the Mexi-
cans were different from them in m a n y ways.
For instance, they recognized that all but one
Mexican student had been to the United States,
98
while only two of the Texans had been to Mex-
ico. They also observed that the Mexican chil-
dren all spoke at least two languages; their
names sounded different from theirs; the Mexi-
cans had traveled more; they created more "dec-
orative and colorful" collages; they spoke
English with an accent; and soccer was generally
the Mexicans' favorite sport (while the Texans
preferred football or baseball).
Question 1: What prevailing impressions did
Mexican and Texan children have of each
other, as exhibited through their poetry about
each other's cultures, prior to their distance
learning activities ?
The prevailing impressions that the Mexican
and Texan children had of each other were made
evident through the poems the students wrote
about each other's countries during workshops
held at their own schools. Imagery in the poems
set tones that we categorized as negative, mixed,
or positive. In addition, imagery reflected levels
of knowledge of each other's countries ranging
from low, to moderate, or high. We report first
on Mexican students' tone and level of knowl-
edge regarding the United States and then on
Texan students' tone and level of knowledge
regarding Mexico.
One of the 47 Mexican poems was completely
negative about the United States; 5 poems
included both positive and negative imagery;
and 41 were completely positive (see Table 1).
Negative imagery in the poems included
descriptions of a smelly, noisy, polluted, crime-
filled environment where "the nights are scary."
One student recalled a disaster and wrote, "I am
a tornado, I am killing them all." Another stu-
dent had a more benign complaint: "I am the
fake tacos you like!" Positive imagery in many of
the poems described a pollution-free environ-
Table I [] Mexican and Texan Perspectivesabout the Other Culture
Tone
Negative Mixed Positive
Mexican 1 5 41
Texan 1 14 19
ETR&D,Vol. 47, No. 4
ment. Several poems described happy children
on streets and in amusement parks. Beautifffl
natural settings were included as well as the aro-
mas of popcorn, hotdogs, and hamburgers. Sev-
eral students described successful schools: For
instance, "I am teaching the children, I am turn-
ing them bright," and "I am the school where
every child goes to learn."
Imagery in the poems written by the Mexican
children came from six different likely sources
(see Table 2). Images such as peaches, soda, and
graveyards seemed to come from the cues in the
workshop. Poems also referred to stereotypic
symbols of American culture such as
McDonald's hamburgers and the Statue of Lib-
erty. Some imagery appeared to come from gen-
eralities about any place such as "I am the
rainbow that shines," and "I am the birds that
feed their babies," while others came from life in
Mexico and are not normally considered to rep-
resent the United States: "I am molL." However,
most of the imagery in the Mexican children's
poems about the United States seemed to come
from the media ("I am Bill Gates", and "I am Syl-
vester StaUone") or from experience of U.S. cul-
ture. Examples of lines from poems that we
believe reflect personal experience include--"I
am going down on a toboggan," "I hear all the
waterfalls," "I am the delicious food that is made
that second," "In the night I can hear the grass-
hoppers," "I am the shopping centers," and "I
am the incredible cruises in Miami."
The abundance of imagery drawn from
media or direct experience gave the impression
that the Mexican children had moderate-to-high
levels of knowledge about the United States.
Indeed, most of the children had been to the
United States more than once. Poetic imagery in
the Mexican student's poems included: perva-
sive institutions such as Toys-R-Us and shop-
ping malls; defining places such as Disneyland
Knowledge
Low Moderate High
7 14 26
18 12 4
INTERNATIONALREVIEW
and Las Vegas; prevalent foods such as ice
cream, popcorn, and hamburgers; and symbols
such as the Statue of Liberty and the Golden
Gate Bridge. One student referred to the historic
connection between Mexico and the United
States when he wrote, "I am formed by old parts
of Mexico."
The Texan children, however, were unable to
paint a vivid picture of Mexico in their poems.
One of the Texan poems about Mexico was com-
pletely negative, 14 included both positive and
negative imagery, and 19 of the poems were
completely positive. Negative imagery included
"teenagers who disobey their parents," "pollu-
tion everywhere," and "I am poor and maybe a
little foolhardy." Positive imagery included
beautiful jewelry, delicious food, and a festive
environment with laughing children.
Poetic imagery in the Texan students' poems
came from only four of the six likely sources
used by the Mexicans. First, as in the Mexican
poems, images such as graveyards, beer cans,
peaches, and churches seemed to come directly
from the cues in the poetry-writing workshop.
Second, stereotypical images of deserts, tacos,
sombreros, and pifiatas were included in several
poems. Third, some images from life in the
United States are not normally associated with
Mexico: "I am an old Baptist church," and "I am
a plate full of spaghetti." Finally, the Texans
seemed to draw from generalities of their local
community rather than from pictures or travels
in Mexico. For instance, they wrote of seasons
without knowing for sure that they were
describing Mexico. Many of the images were
neither unique to Mexico nor even characteristic
of Mexico. Inaccurate imagery included state-
ments such as "I think I am in San Antonio" and
"I am the Alamo," as well as "I am a Protestant."
In summary, most of the Mexican children
had enough experience with U.S. culture to be
able to describe accurately the culture in poetry.
Table 2 [] Sources of Imagery in Poems
Cues Stereotypes Generalities
Mexican x x
Texan x x
~
On the other hand, most Texan children had lit-
tle knowledge of Mexico and had to write about
their own culture, create an imaginary place, or
refer to stereotypes. Texans were unable to refer-
ence popular media or personal experience in
their poems. The discrepancy in level of knowl-
edge between the Mexicans and the Texans indi-
cates a need for educating the children of Texas
about their southern neighbors. The following
activities were designed to close the knowledge
gap and to bring children together for shared
understanding.
Question 2: What school activities brought
children of Mexican and Texan cultures
together successfully to learn with, about,
andfrom each other?
The activities in the partnership were designed
to help the students understand each other's cul-
tures by walking in each other's footsteps. First,
all four classes attended the poetry-writing
workshops in which they wrote poems about
the other nation. Second, the students wrote a
story of a day in the life of a fourth grader in the
other country. Both of these activities were
meant to help students establish how much they
did or did not know about each other's lives so
that as the year progressed, they could set per-
sonal goals for gaining knowledge. In addition,
they completed a survey that provided indica-
tions of the values and artistic interests of each
child. They also created student profile sheets
that described their families, favorite subjects in
school, favorite foods, and special interests, and
included their pictures. They shared these
poems, stories, surveys, and profiles with each
other via videoconference at the beginning of the
partnership, and then the teachers made them
available to the students during the school year.
Because most of these documents were not elec-
tronic and the mail system was insecure, they
Personall~e Media Experience
x x x x
x x
100
exchanged documents by sending them with a
messenger who traveled between Mexico and
Texas regularly for unrelated business purposes.
Several of the curricular activities were stim-
ulated by the book, I Felt Like I Was from Another
Planet, (Dresser, 1994). For example, in a pilot
study conducted the previous year, students
conducted an activity on table manners. The
goals of the activity were to learn about:
Cultural adaptations through imitation and trial and
error; cultural relativity--not being judgmental about
other people's ways; the influence of cultural rules and
customs that have been informally and unconsciously
learned and accepted, yet rarely questioned; and what
is acceptable and approved in one culture yet might be
offensive or unacceptable elsewhere (p. 47).
Learners in both Mexico and Texas explored
their own families' table manners, read a story
about a Chinese boy who slurped his soup at a
formal American banquet and an essay about
cultural differences associated with eating hab-
its, and explored their reactions to the readings.
They created and acted out plays via video-
conference to demonstrate the table manners
typical of their own cultures. Then they com-
pared table manners across cultures.
The classes participating in the current study
met twice for 90-rain videoconferences for the
purposes of introducing themselves, showing
collages of images that represented their family
and interests, and sharing personal ancestry.
Following these meetings, students were able to
discuss cultural similarities and differences and
were able to recognize differences in levels of
knowledge about each other's cultures as dis-
cussed earlier in this paper.
In a third 90-min videoconference designed
to help students understand the interpretive
nature of history and the role that perspective
plays in that interpretation, students conducted
an activity on what Texans call the Texas Revo-
lution (the Texan war for independence). Objec-
tives were for students to be able t o - ( a )
describe why the battle of the Alamo occurred,
(b) create a dramatic representation of the battle,
and (c) write an essay comparing United States
and Mexican interpretations of the story of the
Alamo. Prior to the videoconference students
read a short story, "The Battle of Cottonwood
ETR&D,Vol. 47, No. 4
Ridge," associated with events of the battle of
the Alamo. The names Mexico, the United
States, and the Alamo were changed so students
could read objectively. Students pretended to be
a person at the battle. They picked sides and
wrote a diary entry about what they did and
why, and what happened to them. In picking
sides, 38 Mexicans and 31 Texans chose to be on
Mexico's side, while only 6 Mexicans and 11
Texans chose to be on the Texan side. Then, the
teachers revealed to students that the facts they
had read were about the battle of the Alamo of
1836 and that Mexico and Texas were involved.
Next, students read the chapters about the
time of the Texas Revolution from both the
Texan and Mexican texts and conducted sup-
portive reading activities. The classes indepen-
dently identified similarities and differences
between the stories told in the texts. Then each
student wrote a comparative essay regarding
Mexican and Texan interpretations of the Texas
Revolution. In small groups students developed
brief (10-min) reenactments of a story about the
Alamo.
Teachers from each site selected the "best"
diary entry, comparative essay, and reenact-
ment for presentation to the distant audience.
During the fourth 90-min videoconference, stu-
dents alternated across sites to read their diary
entries, perform their reenactments, and read
their comparative essays. After the video-
conference, students discussed and reflected
upon what they remembered from the diaries,
reenactments, and essays, and reviewed what
was learned about the reasons for and events of
the battle of the Alamo and the different per-
spectives of Mexico and the United States.
Approximately a month after the video-
conference in which students explored the 1836
battle for Texas, the classes acted out folktales
and sang folk songs with each other via a fifth
90-min videoconference. In preparation for
another videoconference, students created
murals and shared pictures of murals in their
city and town and discussed their contents. Each
student collected a list of images in the murals of
the two countries and then compared the ty~es
of images used. The classes planned to have a
final videoconference to exchange recipes and
party traditions and have a shared celebration.
INTERNATIONALREVIEW
The Texans were to have a fiesta while the Mex-
icans were to have a party. Because of compli-
cated end-of-school-year schedules this meeting
was canceled.
The students participated fully in the above
activities and took great interest in each other.
Through the activities students tried to "get into
the shoes" of the other culture and acquired
curiosity about each other's perspectives. Each
activity led to a flood of student questioning
regarding the life of the distant others. Students
saw that they were both similar to and different
from each other in many ways. Each of the activ-
ities initiated by the project appeared to bring
the children together for greater understanding
of their similarities and differences.
Discussion and Educational Implications
The story of this case of international team
teaching provides a model for others to expand
their learning communities beyond national bor-
ders. We identified the Texan fourth grade
students' lack of knowledge of Mexican culture
and the Mexican students' high level of knowl-
edge of U.S. culture. This contrast may be
explained in part by the socioeconomic status of
the Mexican students. These students, who
attended an exclusive private school, had had
extensive opportunities in both language learn-
ing and world travel. On the other hand, the
Texan students, who attended a public school,
were quite diverse in their socioeconomic status
and were limited in their exposure to language
learning and travel opportunities.
We used the narratives described by Postman
(1995) to identify activities that would address
cultural understanding in academic ways. The
activities encouraged the "habits of the mind"
that should be internalized by every student:
concern for evidence, viewpoint, cause and
effect, hypothesizing and who cares (Meier,
1995). Intercultural activities in other projects
and sources (Dresser, 1994; Fantini, 1997) pro-
mote sharing of one's culture with another and
studying other cultures. In this project, however,
we developed activities designed to promote
empathy for people of the other culture by hav-
ing students walk in each other's footsteps.
101
Teachers and researchers observed the students'
enthusiasm for the activities and concern for
each other during the year. We believe that the
activities had a positive cultural impact on the
students.
As we continue to explore the research ques-
tions above and gain insight into the intellectual
and affective impacts of distance learning on K-
12 students, we will ask How closely do
students' impressions of their distant partners
match their impressions of themselves? and
How do the perceptions of the other culture
change after a year of distance instruction? By
comparing perceptions and misconceptions of
students before and after the year of experi-
ences, we will gain further insight into the
impact of distance learning on students of differ-
ent cultures. We will also compare the impact of
muIticultural activities that require children to
walk in each other's shoes vs. those that involve
the more typical approach of sharing one's own
culture.
In the future we plan to facilitate integration
of Web boards as well as desktop video-
conferencing to support student collaboration.
By incorporating a variety of distance technolo-
gies, students will have greater opportunities to
gain mutual understanding. []
Lauren Cifuentes is an Assistant Professor of
Educational Technologyin the College of Education,
Texas A&M University. She is the director of
Cultural Connections. Phone: (409)845-7806;e-mail:
laurenc@tamu.edu
Karen L. Murphy is an Associate Professor of
Educational Technology in the College of Education,
Texas A&M University. She is the co-director of
Cultural Connections. Phone: (409) 845-0987;e-mail:
kmurphy@tamu.edu
Special thanks go to Arm Aguerra, Audrey
Gonzolez, and Adriana Geringh in MexicoCity,
Mexico;and Kathy Barker and Charlotte Slack in
College Station, Texas, who helped administer the
project. In addition, thanks go to the Texas A&M
Center in MexicoCity, and to the Center for the
Study and Implementation of Collaborative Learning
Communities and the Center for Distance Learning
Research at Texas A&M University.
102
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ETR&D,Vol. 47, No. 4
Creating a Small, Small World Through
Videoconferencing: SAXophone
by A l P. M i z e l l
[] Schools in England, Finland, Greece, Nor-
way, Sweden, and the United States have joined
together in a videoconferencing project so their
secondary teachers and students can see and
hear each other in real time and participate in
cultural exchange. This monthly opportunity
enables participants to exchange ideas, customs,
feelings, and experiences related to the curricu-
lum. SAXophone (Students All over the world
exchanging over the phone) began in 1995 as a
volunteer project and has grown through word-
of-mouth comments from participation by three
schools to more than two dozen schools world-
wide. This article describes student evaluations
of individual SAXophone project sessions and
how they have helped them understand other
cultures better and make new friends world-
wide. The article further describes the project's
evolution, purpose, operation, and tells how you
can join. A description of the project and a list of
next year's topics m a y be found on the web at:
http://www.mhrcc.org/sax/saxmain.html.
Introduction
The global village described by Marshall
McLuhan (1964) has become more of a reality
today as we daily see the world become smaller
and smaller. As communication has become eas-
ier and less expensive, connecting students in
different locations has become popular in educa-
tion. Educational journals and magazines are
filled with stories and examples of projects that
connect people in different locations in mean-
ingful two-way conversations, courses, and pro-
jects. For example, Nebraska's statewide
network is designed to connect every school dis-
trict in the state through videoconferencing,
thereby enabling rural western areas of the state
to receive courses for which the schools cannot
provide teachers. In addition, elementary teach-
ers use the network to collaborate on common
projects through videoconferencing (Nebraska,
1998). The state-funded Florida High School
(1999) is an example of the use of telecommuni-