THE NAROD NETWORK PROJECT 1999

Armenian Internet Based Educational Project forSchools Worldwide

On May 9^th, 1998, Armenian students from the United States, France and Armenia participated in an Internet videoconference. During more than an hour, they collaborated using video, voice, a "chat room" in Armenian and a shared online "whiteboard". Their common task was to find Armenian monuments and landmarks on the World Wide Web, to locate them on a map of Armenia, and to test each-others’ knowledge about them. This was one of the high points of the current Narod Network Project (NNP ’98). Started in January of this year, NNP ’98 links ten Armenian schools in five countries in an educational network. During a period of six months, students from participating schools devote one or two class hours every week to a set of Web based activities specially designed to acquaint them with each-other, the Internet and their shared Armenian heritage.

This document briefly describes some key aspects of the Narod Network Project and outlines our plans for NNP ’99, its upcoming expansion phase. We will attempt to present the motivation behind the Narod Network, its educational content and organizational structure, as well as the human and technical resources involved in it.

Introduction

The Internet is recognized as an important factor in creating and reinforcing a global culture. This unifying instrument, often sited as one of the most positive developments of new telecommunications technologies, is also accused of having a negative homogenizing effect. But the Internet, while acting as a forum for the encounter of cultures, also has the potential of reinforcing each of them. We believe that it is precisely those cultures most in danger of disappearing through assimilation into more predominant local identities, which have most to gain by building a global critical mass. Armenians have existed in a globally dispersed state for many generations. We are convinced that this project will contribute to the unification of the different manifestations of Armenian culture, and that it will help demonstrate the potential of the Internet for sustaining heterogeneous identities.

A prime objective of this more fluent communication between Armenians is to bring the intellectual and human resources of diaspora Armenians to Armenia, providing it with a permanent educational resource. At the same time, diaspora Armenians can benefit from this virtual connection with the physical source of their cultural heritage. Armenia has a demographic density of Armenians and a level of Armenian cultural activity unequaled anywhere in the Diaspora. It also has a future as a national entity, which is much more long-term than that of any given Armenian organization. A very large number of Armenians have never been to Armenia and know little about what it means to live there, yet many consider Armenia their other homeland. This project aims to explore how diaspora Armenian students and students in Armenia can contribute to the sustainable development Armenian culture and education worldwide.

The precedent: NNP'98

The 1998 Narod Network Project (NNP'98) is an innovative Internet based educational project that began in January of 1998. It links ten Armenian schools in five countries around the world (Armenia, Canada, France, Lebanon and the United States.) For a trial period of six months, NNP'98 provided students between the ages of 12 and 18 the opportunity to collaborate on activities designed to introduce them to Information technology, to each-other, and to their shared Armenian heritage. The students spent approximately two class periods per week, lead by one or two teachers, collaborating on the different project tasks, using Armenian as the main working language.

After overcoming the usual technical barriers and witnessing the reaction and feedback of the participating schools, we are now confident that this is a highly beneficial and viable effort both from an educational perspective and in terms of its contribution to Armenian cultural awareness. Due to the devotion and enthusiasm of students, teachers and principals at the participating schools, the Narod Network Project of 1998 has set an innovative and successful precedent for an "Armenian School Network".

NNP'98 can be accessed through the e4d institute's bi-lingual (English and Armenian) home page at www.3noor.org. The results of NNP'98 has been posted.

Goals, Structure and Methods

The Narod Network Project uses telecommunications technologies to create a learning network of Armenian schools worldwide. By creating a critical mass of interconnected schools in Armenia and the Diaspora the NNP aims to achieve the following objectives:

• To broaden the perspectives of Armenian students around the world by making them aware of their peers in different countries.
  
• To supplement the traditional curricula of Armenian subjects in schools with more novel and alternative materials and methods.
  
• To create a culture and infrastructure of communication between different schools in order to obtain a forum for the exchange of ideas and the development of educational programs.
  
• To train students and teachers in the use information and telecommunications technologies in general and the Internet in particular.
  
• To help those students who are fluent in Armenian in using the Armenian language on the Internet, and to help those who are not fluent in Armenian to maintain their connection with their Armenian peers.
  
• To contribute to the unification of Armenian curricula, and to a mutual transfer of technological and cultural resources between Armenia and the Diaspora.
  
• To provide Armenian educational material to students who do not attend Armenian school, and to give those students a point of contact with other Armenians in the Diaspora and in Armenia.
  
• To become a benchmark for the use of telecommunications technologies in dispersed and minority cultures worldwide.

The Narod Network Project targets a wide constituency composed of students, teachers, parents, school boards as well as sponsors and the community in general. Each of these has a vested interest in the Project, complementing those of the e4d institute. In turn, the Project provides benefits in the form of resources and services to each of these. The table below outlines the investments and benefits concerning direct participants in the Narod Network Project.

Pedagogical principles and objectives

The e4d institute is in the process of constantly developing and enhancing a basic set of pedagogical guidelines, a network of professional consultants and expert advisors as well as core educational material and databases. The basic principals and objective which are the result of the Institute’s experience to date, include the following.

• Maintaining an innovative and motivating approach to educational material. Education should enhance students’ and teachers’ perspectives, should be hands-on and encourage creativity and initiative-taking.
• Transmitting Armenian subjects as living and exciting material to students. These subjects should be seen as relevant to students’ daily lives and broader interests, and should go beyond stereotypical studies of folklore and traditions.
• Promoting the use of the Armenian language outside Armenia both as an important tool for accessing the Armenian cultural and social heritage and as a link with Armenia and Armenian communities in the global Diaspora.
• Catering to students who do not attend Armenian schools in order to include them in the community of young Armenians who share common values and cultural ties.
• Being sensitive to cultural differences and special social circumstances both within Armenia and between different communities of the Diaspora.
• Building up a basic set of resources of readily accessible educational material for students and educators. Each project should build on and contribute to a growing set of educational resources.
• Strengthening the ties between Armenia and the outside world. Exposing students in Armenia to the rest of the world, and giving Diaspora students access to resources in Armenia.
• Encouraging multidisciplinary study by providing source material to a wide range of subjects within schools. Tapping into the human and other educational resources in different school departments.

Curriculum integration: towards a flexible common framework

Our approach in designing the Narod Network Project is based on the principals of a phased approach and a complementary relationship with existing institutions, schools and educational or technological initiatives. The aim of the Project is not to form a closed network of schools, but to build common grounds for leveraging and amplifying the input of teachers, institution and students in a unifying framework. In particular, at the basis of the Narod Network Project are two principals regarding the educational curricula of participating schools.

1. The Project makes no attempt to impose or replace educational content in participating schools. The reasons for this are simple. The e4d institute does not have the resource or pedagogical qualifications to take on basic curriculum design. Just as importantly, because it deals with a global constituency of participating schools, the Project must respect the diversity of educational techniques and pedagogical content inherent to each institution. Rather, the e4d institute relies on a team of highly qualified consultants, including educators at the schools themselves, to provide a framework for amplifying existing curricula, giving local resources a global reach, and providing educational material and contexts for the implementation of the teaching activities already targeted by each school.
   
2. On the other hand, one of the aims of the Narod Network Project is to help set the basis for curriculum integration in Armenian subjects across schools. It is our belief that by sharing certain educational materials, activities and methods, schools in Armenia and in the Armenian diaspora will enjoy the advantages of a common critical mass of curriculum design. Just as important is the link that the Narod Network Project establishes through the Internet between participating students. This inter-student contact has a unifying function across schools, and is an educational process in its own right.

The expected contribution: What is in it for students and teachers?

The Narod Network Project aims to add value to the educational programs of participating schools in the following ways.

• Students will establish contact with their counterparts in different schools around the world. These contacts have the potential of being maintained and nurtured through ongoing communication over the Internet, by personal contact or through other complementary projects.
  
• Student will gain further insight into Armenian culture and language, as well as the current realities of Armenians living in different parts of the world. In particular, students in Armenia and in the Armenian diaspora will learn about their respective lifestyles, finding as many shared aspects and differences.
  
• Both students and teachers will receive an intensive introduction and hands experience regarding the Internet, the World Wide Web and their related technologies. They will become acquainted with techniques for finding and publishing information on the Web. In particular, they will find out about the Armenian aspects of the Internet, from seeking out Armenian Web sites, to exchanging email in Armenian.
  
• Teachers will also have at their disposal a wealth of information, resources and contacts that they can readily assimilate into their teaching program. From reading material found on the Narod Web site’s Storyweb (see below) or social and cultural information in different communities, to suggested topics and activities with Armenian themes.
  
• Teachers and students who participate in the Narod Network Project naturally become trainers and instructors to the rest of their school’s pupils and staff. For those who typically have little or no prior experience with the Internet, or with Information Technology in general, the Narod Network Project is an effective and user-friendly first step.

The Armenia connection

The Participating schools in Armenia have proved to be some of the most active participants in the Narod Network Project 1998. This has in part been due to the role of Armenia as an obvious focal point of the emotional and cultural ties linking Armenians together. Also, because of their inherent enthusiasm for hard-to-find technological resources and their natural facility with the Armenian language, the participating students in Armenia have contributed to the level of excitement and the educational content of the project.

This active participation, however, must be contrasted with the low quality of Information Technology and telecommunications equipment available to the schools in Armenia or in most Armenian homes. During the course of NNP ’98 students from the two participating schools in Armenia have had access to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) center in Yerevan where they have conducted their weekly NNP sessions. In NNP ’99, we plan to add at least two more schools in Yerevan, and possibly in other parts of Armenia. The most likely scenario, in terms of connectivity for these schools, will be a continuation of the NNP ’98 model. Possible candidate sites are well-connected educational or social centers such as the American University of Armenia, the UNDP center, or a school equipped with special telecommunications technologies.

For the Narod Network Project, the active involvement of Armenian schools is crucial because of the following benefits.

• The transfer of technological know-how, pedagogical methods and management skill into Armenia.
• The contribution of the participants from Armenia in terms of their linguistic and cultural aspects.
• The positive impact of the Project as a prototype or proof of concept for complementary initiatives.
• The advantage of tapping into the under-exploited human resources in Armenian in terms of both technological contributions and pedagogical content.

The Partnership "contract" with schools

By its very nature, the Narod Network Project is a partnership with the participating schools. As we point out elsewhere in this document, the e4d institute provides the technology, programmatic activities (exercises, content, software…), the necessary training for teachers and the staff, as well as the maintenance systems and the organizational for the Project. We are convinced of the importance of including the Project in the schools' programs by integrating it in their curricula. Additionally, the e4d institute requires the following of participating schools:

- To devote at least two class periods per week to the project activities.

• Assign one or two teachers in charge of the project.
• Register for the NNP'99 by completing an official registration form (sample available upon request).
• Pay the contribution fee of $500/year (this fee is waved in some cases such as for Armenia.)
• Approve a two-year commitment to participate in the Narod Network Project.
• Ensure telephone lines and Internet access within the school.
• Devote the necessary computer infrastructure and facility where available. The e4d institute will subsidize schools that cannot afford the necessary infrastructure by contributing Hardware and software and/or connectivity.

Training activities

The Narod Network Project 1998 confirmed that for the effective use of information and telecommunications technologies, as well as for logistical purposes, it is important that each school have a "facilitator/coordinator" assigned by the e4d institute or the school. This person should be based in the area where the school is located. The facilitator/coordinator will be responsible for the local day-to-day training of the teachers and school staff, assisting them in the implementation of the project, troubleshooting, as well as supervising and coordinating certain aspect of the work.

In addition to the local facilitators/coordinators, one global staff member will conduct general training throughout the project using online instruction, local focused training sessions as well as a general training workshop during the 1999 NNP seminar. This general training will target two groups: teachers within schools and parents in public awareness-building sessions. The goals of this ongoing training activity are:

• Motivating teachers and school staff.
• Instructing teachers on different aspects of the project and assisting them in implementing their curricula within the Narod Network Project framework, and helping organize the Narod Network classroom in their school.
• Collecting feedback and input from teachers, staff and parents.
• Interfacing with parents and the general public by regularly distributing informative newsletters, organizing public presentations and/or workshops and getting parents' input and comments.

The e4d institute's contribution to the Project

In addition to the e4d institute staff and assets, the Institute brings the following resources to the Narod Network Project.

- Experience gained through the design and implementation of NNP '98

- Research and Development capabilities for developing educational activities and content

- A wide network of consultants, volunteers, and area experts

- The current network NNP'98 schools, and more than ten schools currently being added for NNP '99

- A working model and accurate information regarding practical and immediate Internet access in Armenia

- The skills and resources of the IAN.net Workshop for Web development and consulting

Equally important as the above resources is the existing Web site of the e4d institute. The following are the features of the site that are currently available, or that will come online before the launch of NNP '99.

1. The NNP '98 repository containing a wealth of material generated by students and staff over a period of six months.
2. The NNP '99 Web pages which house the basic resources and provide all the functionality necessary for the upcoming phase of the Narod Network Project.
3. "The Storyweb": a growing collection of illustrated stories, all of which are posted in both Eastern and Western Armenian versions, for three different age groups (almost 20 stories are online as of this week, and the site grows at the rate of 2 to 3 stories per month.)
4. "Miniatures": An innovative gallery of professional photographs of Armenian children. This is a special feature aimed at teachers and parents, as well as the general public.
5. "Creative Fingers": A set of arts and crafts projects aimed at developing children's creative thinking and manual skills.
6. An information resource on Armenian schools around the world, including a growing survey of all-day schools and Sunday schools.

The e4d institute Web site where the Project is housed.site serves the purpose of a forum for the exchange of email messages between students or between the teachers and staff of the Project. The Web site also acts as window into the Project for the general public and those interested in taking part in the project activities on an informal basis.

NAROD NETWORK PROJECT 1999

An overview of the Project content and activities

NNP ’99 is divided into three consecutive activities running from the Beginning of October 1998 to the beginning of June 1999. (Schools in the Southern Hemisphere, namely in Argentina and Australia, will participate in a more extracurricular mode in December and January.) Students will spend one or two weekly sessions for a total of 1½ to 2 hours every week on the Narod Network Project. The first of the three Activities is designed to bring participants up to speed with the use of the Internet and related technologies and tools. The second aims to familiarize students with one another, and with the social, family and community contexts of their fellow students in different countries. The third is a collaborative activity culminating in the production of a global guide to the focal points of modern Armenian history and culture in Armenia and the Diaspora. Below is a brief description of each of these activities, stating each activity’s objectives, implementation details and some illustrative examples. This section is followed by the description of a pilot initiative to target Armenian students in the Diaspora who do not attend Armenian day schools, with the aim of expanding the Narod Network Project to include that important segment by the end of 1999.

Activity 1 – "Networks" (4-6 weeks):

GOALS: The goal of this activity is to introduce students to the Internet and the World Wide Web, to familiarize them with the tools they will need during the course of the project, and to train them on the use of Armenian on the Net.

MEANS: Students will follow an introductory tutorial and perform the following exercises:

• Sending email to team members in other participating schools
• Using a Web page design tool to produce and upload a personal page
• Producing multimedia email attachments such as image, audio or video files
• Searching for specific information on the Web

EXAMPLES: The search exercises will consist in helping solve an imaginary problem by finding information on the Internet. For example, the students could be asked to help a foreign company establish its product development operations in Armenia. Can they find the address of a patent lawyer in the city of Gyumri^*, or a translator from English to Armenian, on the Internet? More specifically, they will be asked to organize the "First Annual Mashtots Avenue Festival" with resources from the Web.

Activity 2 – "People" (8-10 weeks):

GOALS: The goal of this activity is to introduce participating students to one another, and to expose them to daily life in countries other than their own. By finding out about the social realities, family structure and community context of their peers, participants can gain a broader and more global perspective, while becoming personally acquainted with the students with whom they will collaborate during the project, and hopefully even beyond it.

MEANS: In order to elicit a franc exchange of information and capture the interest of students, this activity will take the form of an interactive game. Rather than asking students to introduce themselves directly, the game will consist of several rounds during which students have an opportunity to reveal both objective data about their family and social context, as well as their concerns, interests and ambitions. The game will be designed to achieve three complementary effects: (1) To ensure that students examine and familiarize themselves with other participants’ contributions, (2) to avoid having students "paint a rosy picture" of their environment, or simply transmit a stereotypical image of their culture, and (3) to make the whole process fun and exciting for the students.

EXAMPLES: Although the actual nature of the acquaintance game is still under development, there are several candidates which satisfy the above requirements. One of these is a guessing game whereby participants reveal incomplete information about themselves, challenging others to guess which city they are located in. In a subsequent round, this picture will be completed, revealing the details of life in that city. For example, students will be asked to describe a current event in their city which is of concern or interest to themselves or their parents, but which may not be known to the outside world. Place names or other obvious clues might be omitted in this phase. Each participant will then have a chance to guess at the identity of the authors. Points will be gained by successfully guessing others’ identities or by legitimately hiding ones own form foreign participants while revealing it to compatriots. The questions can address a number of aspects from family structure, parents’ professions or expectations of the future, to preferences in entertainment, culture, etc. Students themselves can devise questions aimed at eliciting answers which are both revealing and of interest to them.

GROUP I VERSION: Activity 2 includes a less demanding version of the acquaintance game designed for the younger (9- to 12-year-old) participants. Group I students will take on the task of generating an online "quilt". Each of them will initially contribute a thumbnail image (approximately 1 inch by 1 inch) which is either a photograph of themselves, a drawing they have done, one of their favorite objects, or any other image that they would like to use to represent themselves. For each team, these images will be assembled into a quilt or grid of images. By clicking on any thumbnail image, participants and the general public alike will be able to access information about the participating students’ lives, families, interests, etc., which they will add during each subsequent session. The game in this case will consist of trying to guess the location or identity of the students, which will be revealed in the last session of Activity 2.

Activity 3 – "Places" (16-20 weeks):

GOALS: Activity 3 has three parallel goals. At one level, it will lead to the creation of a student-produced information resource about Armenia and Armenian communities around the world. At the same time, it will introduce students to a project-based, collaborative method and work ethics. And finally, it will educate them about the recent history and current reality of Armenia and the Diaspora in a novel way, complementing the more traditional history/geography/literature curriculum they are otherwise exposed to.

MEANS: A map of the world will act as the visual reference for organizing the students’ work. Starting in August and up until the start of Activity 3, the Narod Network Project staff, volunteers and participating teachers will compile source material on places which are significant for Armenian communities in Armenia, in other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent states, and in the rest of the Diaspora. This compilation will be a synthesis of existing sources, and will include points of interest due to demographics, current or historical socioeconomic and cultural centers, and important monuments or other structures. This database will be referenced to the dynamic (clickable) world map, and will serve two purposes: to directly educate the students regarding often neglected aspects of these focal points and, more importantly, to act as examples to students and teachers of the kind of material and style of presentation that students can use for their contributions. Students from teams of schools in different cities will then be asked to collaborate in completing and complementing the world map by following three phases:

1. Students will communicate over the Internet in order to decide which cities on regions they will work on (their own, those of their team partners, or others that they may decide to adopt.) During this phase, they will organize their work program for the following phase.
2. Each week students will gather material (text, photos, video, anecdotes, ideas) about their target regions, in order to post them for review and processing by their team partners.
3. With the material gathered during phase 2, students will organize and implement the presentation of their material which will then be linked to the dynamic map as a series of Web pages.

It is important to stress that the material produced by the students is not meant to be comprehensive or authoritative. The stress is on a positive and innovative work method, and on the kinds of results that offer novel insights both to the students and to their potential audience on the Web.

EXAMPLES: The following are three hypothetical scenarios of Activity 3 projects, describing some details of their successive phases by way of illustration.

Scenario 1: Aftermath of the Genocide – A theme-based example

Hypothetical team: Boston, Yerevan, Beirut.

Students in Boston, Yerevan and Beirut work on tracing the route of some Armenian families through their cities in the Aftermath of the Genocide.

• NNP staff illustrate a fictional Armenian family’s post-Genocide migrations based on K. Beledian’s recent novel "Semer". The novel begins with the author inheriting a box of old photographs which he uses to reconstruct the family’s deportation from historical Armenia and their migration from Syria, to Greece, Lebanon and then France.
• Students in Boston contact the photography archive of Project Save in order to gather photographic source material on the lives of post-genocide families. They coordinate their search with students in Beirut who attempt to trace the path of families which arrived in Lebanon in the early 1920’s and migrated to Soviet Armenia in the late 1950’s. The trace is picked up by students in Yerevan who locate those immigrant families and document part of their experience. Did any of their sons and daughters end up in the Boston area? Students in Boston attempt to close the loop by finding traces of those families.
• As material is gathered and the search progresses, the students upload their findings and unanswered questions to the site. Fellow students from other teams are encouraged to contribute by asking their family members for leads. Finally, the findings are referenced to the world map as an open-ended multimedia presentation.

Scenario 2: Armenian business ventures – A comparative example.

Students in Yerevan, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires compare and contrast Armenian-owned businesses in the Diaspora and businesses in Armenia owned by Diaspora Armenians.

• NNP staff present examples of a variety of Armenian-owned businesses in traditional Armenian communities such as Fresno, and more remote locations such as Hong Kong. In parallel, they present new business ventures recently established in Armenia which have Diaspora ties. The operations of the businesses, their clients, ownership structure and suppliers are briefly explained.
• Students in Yerevan focus on some businesses, established by Diaspora Armenians, which they are aware of through their everyday interactions. They attempt to understand how these operate, and to interview their management or owners. Students in Los Angeles contact the US counterparts of some of these businesses or join students in Buenos Aires in documenting key Armenian-owned businesses in their cities, tracing their recent history, and understanding their place in the local economy.
• The results from these findings serve as the basis of a comparison of different businesses. In what aspects are they similar or different? What are the future plans or expectations of their managers or owner? What role do they play in the students’ daily life.

Scenario 3: Armenians in Europe – A regional example

Students in Marseilles, Michigan and Gyumri document one aspect of the Armenian presence in Europe/France in General, and Marseilles in Particular.

• NNP staff give examples of key aspects of the Armenian presence in Italy, based on sources such as the AGBU Newsletter of February 1977, including material on the Moorat-Raphaelian school and its present fate, the publisher of the "Documenti di Architettura Armena" and Key personalities in Rome, Milan and Venice.
• Students in Marseilles propose to focus on a part of their city’s recent history. A division of labor is established, whereby students in Michigan will work on researching the general background of Armenians in France based on books and online resources; Gyumri students take on production tasks such as write-ups, Web page design and drawing a map; and students in Marseilles commit to going on a field trip to one of the famous tenement housing blocks which housed the first Armenian immigrants to Marseilles, take pictures of it, and interview some of its former tenants. A schedule is established and work begins.
• Students exchange material and information about their progress, getting feedback from each-other. Work-in-progress is uploaded to the project site and available for all to see. Once the information-gathering phase is completed, the team completes the presentation of the material, and the resulting set of Web pages is linked to the world map.

GROUP I VERSION: Activity 3 includes a less demanding version designed for the younger (9- to 12-year-old) participants. Group I students will be asked to populate the world map, and particularly the cities of their team, with virtual institutions, buildings and places. For example, students in Sidney may "design" their ideal music conservatory, draw a clickable picture of the building, describe its programs, and schedule, as well as the curriculum vitae of a visiting piano teacher from Armenia, provided by their team partner in Yerevan. Students in Yerevan might "build" a new zoo, choose its location on a clickable map of the city, and ask students from participating schools in different countries to send them scanned images of one of their indigenous animals to populate the virtual zoo.

Two age groups

NNP ’99 will be divided into two groups by age. Each school can choose to participate in one or both of these age groups.

Group I: 9- to 12-year-old students

Group II: 12- to 18-year old students

The project contents and activities are different for each of these age groups. Although the general theme of the activities are the same, the level of initiative expected from the students and the type of material they are expected to produce are adapted to the expected interests and abilities of the groups.

The team structure

Due to the increasing number of participating schools, the NNP ’99 participants will be divided into teams of three schools for Group II (12- to 18-year olds) and teams of two schools for age Group I (9- to 12-year-olds). The routine interaction among the students of schools within a team will be more intense during the course of the project activities than the interaction among students across different teams. However, in order to give students the broadest possible exposure to other participants, cross-team interactions will also be encouraged on a more informal basis, as well as through tasks specifically designed to encourage exchanges across teams.

One criterion for the grouping of schools into teams is diversity. Given that approximately one-third of the schools are located in Armenia, and another third in the US, most Group II teams will include one school from each of those two countries, and another from a third country. A typical team might combine Yerevan, Los Angeles and Marseilles, or Gyumri, Boston and Buenos Aires.

Internet videoconferencing

One tool which we intend to use much more extensively in NNP ’99 is Internet videoconferencing. Each team of three schools will use Internet videoconferencing where possible in the context of the project Activities. The videoconferencing sessions will serve several objectives:

• To complement the students’ personal acquaintance through email by establishing real-time contact, including video and voice.
• To familiarize students, teachers and staff with one of the more advanced aspects of communication technologies using the Internet.
• To enhance the process of collaboration on project tasks by facilitating face-to-face dialogs.

A note on extracurricular demands

The activities of the NNP put a premium on personal initiative and extracurricular efforts, specially on the part of students, but also for the participating teachers and coordinators. This does not mean, however, that the NNP relies heavily on time spent by the students outside of the 1½ to 2 hours dedicated to the Project per week. While encouraging and rewarding extra effort, the NNP ensures that the required tasks can be carried out within the classroom context, through the following measures.

1. The NNP activities will complement existing class subjects whenever possible. Armenian language classes, geography or history classes, computer lab hours, etc., can use the NNP as a hands on application of their regular curricula. In this way, the Project will have the benefit of material generated and tasks undertaken in the context of those classes.
2. The NNP Web site will provide a list of online resources which facilitate the students’ research from within the classroom and, in some cases, from the students’ homes. These resources include email addresses of academic and other specialists in universities and institutions around the world, who have volunteered to act as occasional mentors during the course of the project. Also available to the students will be a list of Web sites relevant to the activities they are involved in, and other basic references and tips on how to make the best use of them.
3. NNP activities always begin with a set of sample tasks and suggested projects, many of which do not requires extracurricular effort or the availability of first-hand sources. While some teachers may be able to direct students to the more open-ended examples, others may decide to adopt a more controlled subject, stressing a creative approach and a deeper analysis, rather than putting the stress on exploration and generating original material.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

Project alumni and publication task force

Currently, only one class participates in the Narod Network Project from each school. This means that students who participated in the Project in the previous year may not have a chance to build on the skills and experience they gained and the contacts they established during the course of the project. In order to address this problem, the e4d institute has initiated an Project Alumni program which aims to maintain the continuity across NNP participants of different years. This program has three main features in NNP ’99:

• An NNP participant email directory. Those students who participated in NNP ’98 and who do not have email addresses of their own, will receive an email address from the e4d institute. Both those addresses and the particular email addresses of students who already have their own, will be listed in the Project Web site in order to facilitate contact between students.
  
• The Student Page. NNP alumni will continue to have access to the Narod Network Project Student Page, through which they will be able to communicate with their peers through public postings.
  
• The NNP Publication Task Force. NNP ’98 participants did not have a chance to complete the third and final activity initially programmed for them. This consisted in producing a publication (online and/or on traditional media) which documented and analyzed the results of the first two activities of the project. The e4d institute will now provide a small group of NNP ’98 participants in a number of participating schools support in completing the publication activity as an extracurricular effort. This "Publication Task Force" will be an experimental self-organizing group coordinated by a teacher or project coordinator in each school, with the assistance of the NNP staff.

Pilot track for students of non-Armenian schools

The e4d institute targets different segments of the young Armenian population around the world. In order to best assess the impact of its programs, the Institute relies on different segmentation schemes, by geography, age, access to media, schooling, language skills and dialects. Two of the important segmentation schemes to consider for a program such as the Narod Network Project are language and schooling. By maintaining a completely bilingual site in Armenian and English the NNP has made a commitment to address both those who are fluent in Armenian and those who can only access the project in English (limited resources have not permitted the consideration of languages other than English at this stage.) However, the Project has primarily been targeted to students attending Armenian schools, with close collaboration with the participating schools, and heavy reliance on regular weekly sessions in the classroom.

The e4d institute has now initiated two parallel efforts to expand the NNP target audience to students who do not attend Armenian schools. The first initiative involves partnering with US and International organizations in order to participate in educational programs aimed at linking students from schools in Armenia with students from schools in the US and other countries. The second consists of including, in NNP ’99, a pilot track explicitly aimed at student not attending Armenian day schools. These could be young Armenians participating from home, students attending Saturday or Sunday schools, or students of public schools who join the Project in an elective track.

The Pilot Track

The pilot track runs through all three activities of the Narod Network Project and is open to any and all 9- to 18-year-olds wishing to participate through the Internet. This track has a more organized nature when it comes to Group I, the pre-teenagers, and a looser, more flexible nature for Group II, the teenagers. This choice is based on the fact that the Group II activities require more personal initiative and can support varying levels of involvement, while the Group I versions offer more guidance and support to the students, and need a certain level of organization. The NNP staff will actively work to recruit Pilot Track participants with varied and representative backgrounds and geographic locations.

The following are two scenarios describing hypothetical developments of the Pilot Track for Group I and Group II students respectively.

Group I Pilot Track Scenario – The special quilt

Several students from a public school in Los Angeles, students from Saturday schools in the US, Paris, Melbourne, Milan and Uruguay, as well students connecting from home in different locations, sign up to build a special quilt similar to the one described in Activity 2 above. 40 students sign up in total, and begin contributing thumbnail images and related material about themselves for a quilt composed of a 7x7 grid of 49 squares. 9 squares are left open for participants who might join in later in the year. 16 more participants appear during the year, such that the quilt is expanded to 7x8, and is published on the Internet along with the ones produced by the regular participants. The more active Pilot Track participants then go on to participate in Activity 3 during which they build a virtual movie studio in Armenia, with visiting actors, directors and writers from the home counties of all the participant.

Group II Pilot Track Scenario – Friends in Fresno

A small group of teenagers in Fresno, California follow the progress of one of the regular participating teams studying the Migration of Armenians to the US in Activity 3. They propose to join in by providing source material on families in Fresno and by giving assistance and suggestions to their adoptive team. The regular Team then asks the group in Fresno for specific information on a family in that city which now has relatives in Yerevan. The Fresno group interviews that family, and uploads an excerpt from the resulting audio file to the Web. Other Pilot Track participants form their own international groups, or work individually or in a school activity setting to link additional information to the world map of Activity 3.

CONCLUSION

A Final word on motivation

One of the most entertaining and, at the same time, informative contributions to the Narod Network Project was a submission sent at the end of April by a participating student from Yerevan. Under the title of "Lezoo yev Barabar" (Language and Dialect) this 14-year-old student, who had never used a computer until several months ago, had produced, digitized and uploaded a sound file to the Internet. In it, he had recorded the same phrase (a simple greeting) in six different dialects from different regions in Armenia, prefacing each one with the name of the corresponding region, in his own voice. This is just one example of the everyday impact of the Narod Network Project. Contributions such as this sound file, or a Los Angeles student's map of Armenian institutions in the San Fernando Valley, or a survey of fellow students undertaken by a group in New Jersey, illustrate a number of the project's criteria: Students learn about the technology, and their heritage; a valuable resource (on dialects, for example) is made available on the Internet; and the school's educational programs find a far-reaching outlet for their activities.

On a more macro level, the sum total of all the students', teachers' and staff contributions, together with the process of collaborating on the Project activities, clearly leads to an invigorating cohesion among schools. We see the Narod Network Project's mission as contributing to a complete and open network of Armenian schools, an "extranet" linking students and teachers together, both within and across borders. By leveraging and amplifying the efforts of Armenian educators, institutions and schools worldwide, we can reach a critical mass of educational activities which can make a substantial difference in the upcoming years.

Click on the globe below for a list of participating schools