Engaging Russian and American Youth in Joint Activities Using the Internet
This project, conducted between 2004 and 2005, was called "The Wizard of Internet City." It was supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development under auspices of its Foundation for Russian American Economic Cooperation (FRAEC). The main partners were The Institute of Education in the Siberian city of Ussirisk and LCHC, working with local community youth organizations. The project was focused on a joint search for new forms of informal education that would induce teenagers including at-risk teens to get involved in productive social activities, to increase their knowledge of the technology, foreign language ability, and to broaden their professional potential. In addition to experimenting with a variety of ways to get youth in both countries engaged with each other, the research explored the development of new methods of incorporating the twiki technology into the educational process.
It proved possible to motivate teen participation and to use the twiki technology, although the short (1 year) duration of the program made it impossible to develop what we considered deep international collaboration among the youth involved. The project was positively evaluated by FRAEC, but AID's funding priorities changed and all projects in this program were halted. (Principle investigators were Alexander Chizhik and Michael Cole; a summary of Professor Chizik's visit to the Ussirisk site can be accessed here. Sample web pages constructed by the student participants: Cultural Life, Russian Library, Children's Art School, Ussuriysk State Pedagogical Institute, Feng Shu, Travelling in Russia, VDV 75.)