INTERNET – THE NEW WORLD?

IT is the big issue right now. Everbody talks about IT. More activity and the technical progress is growing. To effact society, it's important to know how IT works. At the fair, Links-98, you could see how other schools use IT in their education. How do the students use computers and IT at schools in Sweden?

Links-98 was an international coference about IT and learning.
This year the fair was held in Stockholm, at the International Fair, Älvsjö, between the 26th and the 28th of October. There were over 100 exhibitors from all over the world, from Hawaii to northern Sweden. They hoped to get new ideas about IT in education for both pupils and teachers. The purpose with this conference was to get new ideas, share experience and establish new personal connections.

We were six people, two teachers and four students, from Parkskolan who went to the fair. Staffan Hagström, Social sience teacher, and Hélène Strömmer, Swedish teacher were there all four days. The rest of us were there two days each. The editors for Freeway, Erik Moberg and Andreas Nordenmark were there the first two days and helped with technical equipment.

THE SCHEDULE FOR THE FOUR DAYS

On Monday evening there was a big reception at Vasa muséet, for all the participants at Links-98. The warship Vasa is famous because it sank after a couple of minutes on its maiden voyage in 1628. And in 1961 it was salvaged. At this muséum the fair had a buffée in the evening.

Our show-case at the fair

Rebecca Olsson and Hanna Hedberg took the plane down to Stockholm on Tuesday morning. When we reached Stockholm we went to Älvsjö by the commuter train. When we arrived Staffan and Hélène were already there, and they showed us our place of work for the next two days.
We were placed with the other Eu-projects. It was a perfect location of the show-case.

Freeway was shown on two computers, and we also had a lot of brochures about Freeway. We had three flags that represented the co-operation teams in Freeway.
Our commission was to interest people about Freeway. It was mostly teachers who came up and asked questions, and many of them wanted to get some ideas of how to make an internet paper.

THE RECEPTION AT THE CITY HALL

Rebecca, Hanna and Staffan at the City Hall

In the evening there was a reception at the City Hall. There was a buffé for all the participants at Links-98. When we went into "Blå hallen" (The Blue Hall) , we got a welcome drink. Then the high commissioner of Stockholm made a speach and welcomed everybody. After dinner we took the chance to go upstairs and have a look att "Gyllene salen" (The Golden Hall). When the reception was over, we went to the Old town and found a nice little café, where we had a cup of coffee.

Next day we were invited to "Speakers Corner", at the fair. It was an opportunity for all the projects to make PR for themselves. Everybody had 20 minutes to make people interested.

The Speaker's corner

When the fair ended there was a finishing ceremony. Pernilla Björk who's the person behind the whole fair started to talk about how she had experienced this year's fair. Of all 100 projects at the fair, Pernilla Björk had choosen our project, Freeway, as the best one. So Hélène and Hanna went upstage and talked a bit about how they thought the fair had been.

Links98 was well organized and everything worked just fine. If you wanted help you could ask one of the boys or girls in blue shirts whose duty was to help.

The KK-foundation is behind the fair. The mission is to introduce IT in the Swedish society. KK-foundation has financed many of the projects at the fair. One of them is the project "E-mail and softbears" at Årsunda churchschool, which is a comprehensive school. It's a cooperation project that is about understanding cultural and cooperates languages more. The Årsunda school cooperatie with one school in USA and one in Canada.
When you study at university level you will have the opportunity to study by distance with the help of computer conferences and fysical meetings. One university that has this education is the University of Karlstad .

THE NEW AID FOR SCHOOL?

Almost all schools in Sweden use computers and IT in education. People of all ages from children at daycare centers to students at university level can use IT for learning.
When students start Upper secondary school education at Parkskolan, everybody gets their free internet access and their own email address. We, the students, use the computers mostly for school work, but we can also use the internet in our sparetime.

At Parkskolan we have 7 computer room. But in every staff room there are at least 3 computers more, that we can use if we need.
When we have problems with the computers or our login name, there are three men who work in at a computer institution and they are willing to help us.

We made an inquiry in our class about the computers at our school. The purpose was that we wanted to know if the students were satisfied with the offering of main computers. Our head question was if they thought that they had enough computers in school. See the result below.

Most of the students like the computer situation at our school. They thought that it is was sufficient with both computers and aid for them.

So today all schools in Sweden have computers and access to Internet. The computers seem to be more and more important in work and in schools around the whole world. The KK-foundation has done a great job. The Internet fair in Stockholm was a great success to get people together and share ideas with each other. It's good for us to get experience from other projects and countries, about how they work there, and they can get to know how we work. The result is a terrific teamwork all over the world.