On the Net: Tele-Collaborative Projects: Monsters.Com‪?‬

Collaborative projects are a natural for the language class because all language is fundamentally communicative and collaboration requires real communication to work. By creating an environment in which students want to communicate in a creative manner about something that is personally interesting to them, we can encourage writing in which the students' true goal is to get an idea across rather than just to complete the assignment (Hadley, 2001; Shrum & Glisan, 2000). In this column we examine a project that brought together elementary and middle school students in France and Canada as well as a Basque school to communicate about a topic of concern to any child who has heard a fairy tale or watched a Disney movie, MONSTERS! It is hoped that other teachers may use this project as a model for similar collaborative efforts, and to this end we mention several other useful tools as well. Dessinez-moi un Monstre! (Draw me a Monster!) is a collaborative project coordinated by Jane Scaplen of Sacred Heart Elementary School, Marystown, Terre-Neuve, Canada. Students of French in grades 3 to 8 from over 20 different schools participated in writing about their invented monsters, sharing their descriptions, and drawing each other's creations. An innovative aspect of this project is the use of the Internet as the medium for interaction, allowing more students to participate and so reap the benefits of the communication while at the same time motivating the participants by providing a larger audience with whom to share their work. Students thus have the excitement of knowing that their descriptions will come alive at the hands of someone who has carefully read their work for its content and in order to actually do something with it. In addition, this person may live in a different part of the world. In this way, the activity brings together the interdisciplinary components of language, art, and technology.