Introduction to the student's products In this section you can find a small sample of products, which students made when working together with students from other countries There are examples of reports but also of power point presentations. The power point presentations were presented to their group, language teacher and subject teacher. The reports on viruses were read by fellow students but also assessed by their teachers. The uses of Blackboard They also used BLACKBOARD to discuss their work and also to discuss every day issues. The students followed the same guide to BLACKBOARD and in fact managed extremely well. As a first language exercise the guide was a success and most students managed the three tasks. Many designed their own Homepages (Appendix 2). The students were more experimental than the teachers and wanted to discover all the ins and outs of BLACKBOARD, including 'chatting'. Because of firewalls around some schools some facilities such as the virtual classroom and the 'chat' function were not easy and quick to use. We soon learnt that if it was up to some students they would spend their time chatting and throughout the project students were encouraged to use the 'discussion board' instead. As a medium for foreign language teaching and learning 'chatting' is useful if participators are prepared to exchange useful information, for example about hobbies etc., with people using the target language, but it has its limitations. The exchanges are often extremely short and sometimes lack content; sometimes students use text abbreviations; the exchanges cannot be seen by others (in BLACKBOARD it is possible for the course manager to read chat messages through the control panel: chat - browse classroom archives) E-mail is not the ideal way of communicating because it is not possible to see e-mails you have sent via BLACKBOARD and only the sender and the receiver can read the messages. A much better way of communicating is through the discussion board on which messages are visible to all. The nature of the discussion board is such that a discussion subject is always put on first. Everyone can give an opinion. It provides more room for practise in writing and allows the teacher to step in with help if necessary. Examples of discussions in the discussion board are given in this section Tips Try out BLACKBOARD with your students before connecting up with your partner-school. This will give you some idea of how quick or slow it is (this can vary during the day, also depending on the number of people using internet) In BLACKBOARD you can disable functions. After your trial run, decide with your partners which functions you want to use. Examples of students' work: Microsoft Powerpoint: Wind What is solar energy? Wind turbines Wind Turbines II Microsoft Word: A technical report Examples of communication through the discussion board Examples of assignments and students' work in the first period Interior car equipment made of plastic Introduction to the student's products Leaflet motorbike helmet Mpuissant_viruses Smart Material Smart materials Steel vs composites Viruses Viruses II Wordlist