By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
They're not your father's field trips.
Friday afternoon Jon Leazenby's McKinley Elementary School first graders "visited" Pennsylvania to read a Dr. Seuss book with one of the five first grade classes at new Schuykill Elementary School, near Valley Forge and 25 miles from Philadelphia.
Other McKinley classes have videoconferenced with 76-degree Texas (when students heard how much snow Dowagiac had they asked if polar bears live here) and the United Kingdom (students must wear uniforms, it rains a lot and they were hard to understand because they speak English, not American slang).
The McKinley students completed an exercise with the "ch," "sh," "th" and "wh" sounds, then they turned to their interactive reading of Dr. Seuss's ABC book.
The Pennsylvanians read words that start with each letter, then ask Dowagiac to respond with their own.
"Butt starts with B" touches off a torrent of first-grade giggles.
Kids lighted up when they entered the media center at the sight of themselves "on television."
Each Dowagiac school is expected to conduct five such videoconferences this year.
Bradley asked the Dowagiac students how many first grade classes McKinley has (two). His school is twice the size, 560 children to 250, but so new that it doesn't yet have a playground. The Pennsylvania students were envious to hear 103-year-old McKinley has two.
"We wish we had one," their teacher said. "They're still building it. We have a lot of indoor recess."
Each group asked the other if its school was "fun."
"Yes," came a loud chorus in response.
Dowagiac and the 27 Pennsylvania students share such "specials" as library, art, music and gym, but the Eastern school also studies Spanish 45 minutes a week.
Pennsylvania wanted to know what professional football team for which Michigan students root.
The two Super Bowl contenders, the victorious Indianapolis Colts and the vanquished Chicago Bears.
Sorry, Detroit Lions.
It seemed to be warmer and sunnier in Dowagiac than Pennsylvania, although they were envious of a foot and a half of snow because they only had five and one snow day to Dowagiac's five.
Schuykill asked McKinley if they would like to become pen pals, so the two schools will be exchanging letters.
This story begins in February 2006 in Berrien Springs when U.S. Rep. Fred Upton participated in an announcement at Berrien County Intermediate School District (BCISD) of its award of a $350,000 Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development office.
The three-year grant will provide Polycom video conferencing units to 35 middle and elementary schools in Cass and Berrien counties, including Dowagiac, Niles, Cassopolis, Edwardsburg, Marcellus and Buchanan.
McKinley library para-professional Barb Schuldt said there are now 80 polycams in Berrien and Cass counties.
Schools were selected based on high "rurality" scores as defined by the township population from 2000 census data and high poverty scores from the national school lunch program.
Almost every high school in the BCISD's service area was already equipped with a Polycom unit to allow students to participate in video conferences and video field trips thanks to a similar grant in 1999.
Janine Lim, instructional technology consultant with the Berrien County Intermediate School District in Berrien Springs, developed Read Across America, which expanded into what is now known as Read Across the Planet, which connects classrooms across the country or across the ocean.
Distance learning, as it's called, allows students to interact without the cost of travel. St. Joseph journalism students March 6 hooked up with a high school in Taiwan's second-largest city.
For March – Reading Month – Lim organized 80 videoconferences across Cass and Berrien counties March 1-9, with 1,350 classes participating worldwide in Read Across the Planet.