3.1 Planning How The Class Will Be Taught
At Moniwadai Elementary School, there is a "PC Committee", principal Kagawa as the leader. The committee is made of vice principal, head of the department of educational affairs, and teachers from each grade. The committee meets to discuss, how to manage and operate PC classes. We met with these teachers and exchanged opinions and ideas. We suggested that we use "Making A Postcard" software like we did at Oshima Elementary School and spend 2 hours a day for 2 days.

At Moniwadai Elementary School, each class has an hour for a PC class, but they did not have any kind of guide of what to teach the students. Now that they do, we can expect the students to acquire the basic skills and knowledge of a computer.

The school wished for us to hold the class, just the way we did at Oshima Elementary School. So we decided to use "Hagaki Studio" during the class. Postcards to be used during classes were donated to the school by Moniwadai post office.

We decided to experiment on 4 classes from 4th grade to see which type of teaching method is the best. A class is held for 2 days which totals to 4 hours with 2 students to a computer. Type A Classes had the students exchange using the computer frequently in a short period of time. Type B Classes had a student work on the PC for an hour and the other student learn by watching the other student. Students were to switch their positions after an hour.

The skills and knowledge that the 4th graders were to acquire by these lessons were basic operation of the mouse, entering kanji by typing Kana, handling of CD-ROM, and being able to save the materials they are working on.

Classes were held on 2nd period (9:40-10:25) and 3rd period (10:45-11:30).

3.2 Conference with homeroom teachers.
We had a last preliminary conference with the homeroom teachers of 4th grades with a teacher�fs manual created by Senior Net Club.

Because it is easier for the Senior Supporters to teach, we decided to only use the method A, which is to switch often. The school permitted our method, and we were to revise as needed after the first session.

By changing the students working , frequently, Senior Supporters are able to pay better attention to the students�f process and switching students working on the computer goes smoothly. Also, it is easier for them to help the student catch up when they are behind.

In 2 days, four periods, each student acquire the basic skills and knowledge of a PC by creating a New Year�fs Day postcard.

A comic-like text book was distributed to each student. The text book�fs illustration was done by Imano Kimie, who works at Shinsei Printing Compnay and was published by Microsoft Sendai Branch.

This was our lesson plans.

4th grade Class 3 Nov. 12&13

Class 2 Nov. 24&26

Class 1 Dec. 7&8

Class 4 Dec. 10&11

Pic. 3 Textbook made for the class.

3.3 Teaching Plans in Details.

Day 1 First Period.
The students enter addressee�fs name and Sender�fs name. Print them using laser printers. Printings are done by Senior Supporters. In this period, students learn the techniques of finding their names and their addressee�fs name from the list of Kanjis, entering 7 digit zip code and finding the correct place from a list, changing han-kaku, zen-kaku and vice versa, handling word palette, entering characters, and deleting, and learning the basics of entering characters. The goal of this period is to print the address side of the postcard.

Day 1 Period 2
In this period, students are introduced to clipart, word arts, and text box, which are used to make the picture side of the postcard. They are also taught how to paste pictures on the card, make fonts bigger, smaller, copying, pasting and change them to Kanjis. In this practice, students learn how the mouse pointer works and how picture files are crossing multi-dimensionally.

The method of changing students frequently, gave the result of students helping each other out more than the other method did. At the end of the first day, students learned to save their documents on hard drive and floppy disk.

Day 2 Period 1
By using the operations taught in previous class, students make the picture side of the postcard freely. Each student has 15 minutes to do so. Supporters help students with technical operations and respect the individuality of the students. When both students are done, save the documents on a floppy disk.

Day 2 Period 2
Print the picture side of the postcard. We asked 3 teachers to help with the color printers. Supporters help the students finish making their postcard.