CENTRAL : GARDEN GROVE : Students Learn From Pen Pals Via Modem

Sitting in front of a color monitor, Jairo Gaona, 11, clicked the button on his computer mouse twice and watched the modem nearby respond with a row of flashing red lights, a high-pitched hiss and jumble of tones.

A few moments later, he electronically zapped a message to his pen pal in Boston.

“I said where does he live and that I like to play football,” he said later, adding that getting to know someone via computer, especially someone he otherwise would never have met, made him “feel happy.”

Jairo is one of 12 fifth- and sixth-grade students at Clinton-Mendenhall Elementary Schoolin Garden Grove who are participating in an educational program that links students through an international computer network. Every few days, students exchange messages with other children from as far away as Kenya, Japan and Russia.

“It’s better than books” for learning about the world and people who live far away, Jairo said.

“It’s bringing the world to the classroom,” said teacher Vonnie Phillips, who started the program a few months ago.

Most of the students in the program are limited-English speakers and Phillips said their interest in writing via computer has spurred language growth as well as improved their knowledge of geography and computer technology.

“These are kids who were brought up on videos,” she said. “Even though it’s not as fast-moving as a video game, the electronic media is something they relate to. I think every classroom should have this.”

Within the next year, she plans to expand the program to 120 more fifth- and sixth-graders.

For now, students are primarily corresponding with Josiah Vick, 6, whose family lives in Kenya. His most recent letters described a vacation to a game reserve in Nairobi, where he saw baboons, mongooses, and a rhino that threatened to attack his family’s truck.

“It’s exciting because you get to talk to people in other places that you’ve never heard of before,” said Alison Decker, 11. “It’s like you’re talking to someone right next to you, but they’re really far away. You get to answer their questions and see what they want to know about you.”

Alison said she enjoyed the program and was especially interested in everything about Josiah’s life in Kenya. While corresponding with him, she realized how different life in other countries can be, especially when she read that Josiah did not live near a pizza parlor.

She said in amazement, “I thought every place had a pizza place.”