By James Lerman

Louis Rossetto, editor of Wired magazine, has said that "in the age of information overload, the ultimate luxury is meaning and context." Educators -- especially teachers in large, urban schools -- might disagree. For students, understanding and meaning are not luxuries, they're necessities. Many students drop out of school, mentally or physically, because they don't see the connection between real life and schoolwork.

Meaning and context are extremely important in students' lives. While the applicability of computers in math and science are obvious, many humanities teachers continue to search for ways to use technology -- and the Internet -- that will be relevant to their students.

Some solutions can be found in e-mail. Here are some practical ways to use e-mail to help students speak, listen, read, and write for purposes that seem meaningful to them. These ideas are best used with students in grades four through 12. The more adept students become at these essential skills and the better we become at connecting our classrooms with life in the real world, the sooner the day will come when all of our students achieve at world-class standards.

(Before your teachers can use these ideas in the classroom, however, students will need to be connected with cyberspace penpals, or keypals -- see sidebar).

1. Write a travel brochure. Collect travel brochures from places outside your local area. Ask students to study how the brochures are put together and develop assessments of what distinguishes a good or useful brochure from one that isn't. Then, contact a class in another geographic area to be keypals with your class for this project. Develop with the keypal class an agreed-upon format for producing a travel brochure.

Next, research your local area for all the information that should be included in the brochure. Depending on time, money, and level of computer sophistication, this information can include pictures and graphics as well as text.

Once you have compiled everything, e-mail it to your keypal class. The keypal class will send you its information. Each class develops the travel brochure for the other's area. As drafts are completed, or as additional information or clarification is needed, students e-mail back and forth to each other. The final product must meet the approval of each home class.

2. Assign telementors for students. Mentors -- experienced and caring people who serve as guides, supporters, and coaches -- are nothing new. What's new is the use of e-mail as the means by which the aid is provided.

A national conference on telementoring was held in January 1997. The proceedings include descriptions of a number of model programs, such as Hewlett-Packard's E-Mail Mentor Program, and lots of how-to pointers on how to start, maintain, and evaluate a telementor program. (BBN's Mentor Center offers a telementoring tool that enables students, teachers, and mentors to set up an e-mail exchange.)

3. Write virtual biographies. Have your students contact their keypals and exchange information about each other via e-mail. (Developing a list of interview questions can help get this process going.) Then ask students to write biographies of their keypals, called "An Imaginary Day in the Life of _______." The biographies could include what school is like; what happens before and after school; what responsibilities the keypals have; what their families are like; what they hope to be doing in five years and in 10 years; what they've done that they're proud of; and what they think of their school and teachers.

Keypals review the bios, pointing out strengths, incorrect information and assumptions, and anything they don't want included. The bios are then rewritten and returned. Students next read the biographies of themselves aloud to their classmates. The final step is to ask students to reflect orally and in writing on what they have learned from this experience.

4. Write to Congress. As the saying goes, "All politics is local." You can help students understand that rewriting the income tax code can have just as much impact on them as the local toxic waste site. (The e-mail addresses of U.S. senators and U.S. representatives are on the web.)

5. Compare social problems. It's pretty easy to run out of things to talk about with a keypal after you've covered music, clothes, food, sports, school, and television. To make e-mail more meaningful, try getting your class and your keypal class to agree on the five most significant social problems in your respective areas.

You can do this in a three-stage process: (1) Identify the problems and reach consensus on their definitions; (2) research some possible causes; and (3) describe different ideas for trying to address the problems. Share information with your keypals at each stage of the process. As a concluding step, write about and discuss what your class has learned, including new or unexpected information and how group or individual perspectives have been affected.

6. Impersonate a literary character. Collaborate ahead of time with keypal teachers to select a character-rich short story or novel that both classes are reading. Have students choose a character from the piece and recreate an event, telling it from the character's point of view, keeping the character's name secret so the keypal must guess who it is.

7. Conduct a cultural exchange. Keypals from down the hall, across town, the next state, or around the world have aspects or characteristics of their culture that they can compare with your class. Having your students exchange this kind of information with other students will be more effective in helping them understand cultures that are different from their own than simply reading about these differences in a book. Appreciation of the diversity of their keypals can instill in your students greater knowledge of themselves as well as others.

Topics to consider in cultural exchange correspondence can include personal biography (family, hobbies, chores, arts, crafts, origin of one's name, sports, hopes for the future); notable geographic features in their areas; local history; major holidays (special festivals or observances); famous people from the area; the students' heroes or who they admire; current fashions; current or traditional music; what they eat; pets; transportation; the types of homes they live in; who lives with them; and how their families earn a living.

8. Compile a knowledge docket. Pair up keypals, one from each class. Have the keypals correspond about once a week on two specific topics: one thing I learned this week that was interesting, and one thing I want to know more about or that I'm having trouble with. For the first topic, receiving keypals may respond with an affirming statement or a follow-up question; for the second, they can confirm the topic or offer assistance.

This activity becomes a "knowledge docket," or record of learning, as the e-mail messages accumulate over the year. Students can read their knowledge docket from time to time as an interesting reflective experience. The docket creates an electronic portfolio that gives teachers insight into student likes and dislikes and what students find troubling about their learning experiences.

At first, it can be helpful for teachers to model the activity for the class as a whole group experience. It can take students time to get the hang of this activity, but once they do, student interchanges are often meaningful.

This activity works well on a one-on-one basis, but it can also work with groups of three or four. The power of this variation lies in the sense of community formed within the class groups and between the class group and its keypal group. In addition, working in groups helps students focus and clarify their ideas and brings greater precision to their use of language.

9. Ask an expert. When your class really gets excited about a topic or develops questions that can't be answered through a trip to the school library, ask an expert. Many experts have made themselves available online and will gladly respond to an e-mail query. Students should understand that most of these people are not homework helpers, but practicing professionals in their fields.

An excellent place to find experts is the Ask An Expert site maintained by Stevens Institute of Technology. This is a well-organized page with links to virtually all the ask-an-expert services online.

10. Adopt a grandparent. Students and teachers might sometimes think they are the only ones using e-mail, but many senior citizens are online, too. Some seniors enjoy corresponding with young people on just about any topic. In fact, nearly any subject a student discusses with another student via e-mail can just as easily be discussed with a senior citizen. One of the great things about seniors is that their perspectives can be quite different (and sometimes surprisingly similar, too) in comparison to those of students' peers.

To find seniors to adopt as grandparents, see the chat page at SeniorCom, or post a request for keypals on the Seniors Site Bulletin Board.

I'll end with a note of caution. E-mailing to keypals and others can be rewarding to your students. However, just as we warn students not to accept candy from strangers, we must train them in safe practices in exchanging e-mail on the Internet:

* Don't give your full name; use your first name and last initial.

* Don't give your address or phone number.

* Don't send your picture to anyone, especially a picture of yourself alone. Group pictures are better.

* Never agree to meet anyone in person whom you've met online without adult supervision.

And make sure parents know about and approve of your students' participation in school-sponsored e-mail exchanges. Talking with your students about why these precautions are necessary and important will help them understand the need to protect themselves -- and let them enjoy their e-mail activities with a sense of security.

James Lerman is supervisor of staff development and cochair of the Educational Technology Planning Committee for the Paterson (N.J.) Public Schools. He is also an Internet consultant.