Student ‘Pen Pals’ Wired Into Computer Network

Beverly Hills students are sending computerized letters to students in other parts of the country and around the world as part of a program to create electronic pen pals.

This week, students at Beverly Hills’ Hawthorne School are responding to a batch of electronic mail from a primary school in Adamstown, Australia, said Craig Davis, a teacher and computer coordinator in the Beverly Hills Unified School District.

A letter from Michael Abbott, a fifth-grader at Adamstown Primary School in Australia, read:

“G’day mate! My name is Michael Abbott. My friends are Rod, Mark, Scott, Matthew and Nicky. My hobbies are soccer and swimming. I have two brothers and their names are Jason and David. I am in the fifth grade. My favourite food is fish and chips and spaghetti. My mum works at Kresta Blinds and my dad works on the railway. Do you live near Disneyland? Have you been to it?”

The Beverly Hills students will write similar messages on their classroom computers and send them by way of telephone and satellite to their electronic pen pals in Australia. The writing program is part of a telecommunications project started last year by Davis.

Students from outside the Beverly Hills district may take part in the project by dialing the Hawthorne number: (213) 276-2187. Thus far, 165 students have been given codes to the system. Davis said that those wishing to hook into the system need a computer and a modem.

“There is an educational justification for this,” Davis said. “We want to improve writing skills.”

The telecommunications system is also being used by special education teachers who specialize in speech therapy.