Where in the world did our e-mail go?

Each letter has a sticky dot to show the location. We were able to find all of locations by the end of the school year! We were so excited because we had received over 250 by May 1, 2000!

Technology is bringing our world closer together. As a third grade teacher in a district on the plains of eastern Colorado, I had the opportunity to teach all third grade students geography and to invite people from all over the world to help with this learning process. Our project started on March 1, 2000. My English class had the task to create the first e-mail letter. The children had to come up with some ideas to inform the reader of the information we needed to complete our project. Other students then helped to edit and add their own ideas until the first e-mail was ready to send on March 5, 2000. (our first e-mail) I sent the first copy to a friend of mine in Delaware. He quickly sent it to some of his friends and by the next day we had 20+ replies to our letter! Next we sent the letter to a few people in the school, several of my friends, and a couple of addresses brought by my students. We sent out a total of 10 e-mails. As the project progressed, the letters began to come in very quickly. My geography students then had the task to learn to read the map and find the location where the e-mail had originated. The students really enjoyed reading all the exciting facts and looking at the pictures that were included in the answers. We quickly found it much easier to locate cities with the use of the index, legend, and the distance key. The clues and tips that were included in the letters also helped us find the locations. We received over 250 letters from nearly every state in the United States and from many other countries.

My students and I want to thank every person who helped to make this project such a success. (thank you note) Without your answers and bits of information this project could never have been done. You were all wonderful!! I will include a few of the web sites that came with letters as well as a picture of a map which was sent to us from one of our e-mail readers.

Thanks again!