May I make an introduction on behalf of Melissa Byte, fifth grade teacher at Silicon Elementary School. Melissa teaches in a very modern school district - one that is determined to be a leader in the area of educational technology. Miss Byte has been teaching for 3 years and is very comfortable with technology. Her school has a computer lab with full time technology teacher, and she has four computers in her classroom. The library has twelve computers in a mini lab situation. All computers at Silicon Elementary are Internet capable with a full T1 bandwidth.

The school district has written an elementary curriculum that incorporates a technology component in every teaching unit. The district is determined to be a leader in integrating the core curriculum with technology. Melissa's class visits the computer lab three times a week. During that time Melissa and the technology specialist work together as a teaching team.

Unfortunately, over half of Melissa's class has yet to purchase an Internet ready computer. However, with the generous amount of computer time provided at school, Melissa has been able to move ahead full steam. Melissa heard about Nibble University from a teacher friend working up state. At the beginning of the class's lab time, the students log in to NU to do the reading and language arts daily questions. Later in the day the class will discuss the answers to the questions and often choose a topic to expand upon. The bulk of the computer lab period is spent working on the technology modules that correspond with regular curriculum.

Back in the classroom Melissa schedules the four computers so each student gets plenty of opportunity to catch up on work started in the computer lab. She also assigns each student one Nibble University Today In History date per month. The student uses the Internet to do further research on his/her topic and presents a short 1-3 minute oral report in class on the important event. Melissa calls it - "And now for the rest of the story…". Students are also responsible for submitting one Nibble University writing activity per week.

Once a week Melissa's students visit the library for research. She divides the class into teams of two and accesses Nibble University's Internet Activity. The NU lessons help the students learn proper search techniques and provide activities that allow students to find information from Websites written at high school/university level. Many of the Internet Activities are designed to send the students to material written at the appropriate grade level. Students practice paraphrasing material into their own words and citing sources to give credit to the author. After finishing the Nibble University activity, the team goes to the shelves to find material that corroborates the information gathered on the Internet. Some NU Internet Lessons teach children how to evaluate a Website based on several established criteria.

Melissa's school has established a school Website on their own Web server. Each classroom is given space for a classroom web page. This is Melissa's primary method of communicating with parents. She realizes that some of her students' parents are not yet online, but her fantastic class Website and the fact that parents feel they're missing something important, has motivated several to make new purchases. Of course, a link to Nibble University is provided from the class home page.

Melissa's school performs all communication, attendance and grading over their network. Parents have started to communicate with Melissa via email, and both parties agree the quality and timeliness of information has improved dramatically.