Bridging a Global Community

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Meg McCaffrey -- School Library Journal, 06/01/2003

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American schoolchildren and teachers living abroad are now linked to one another, thanks to AOL@School, a new series of worldwide education portals. The free online K–12 learning service is the result of a partnership between America Online (AOL) and the U.S. State Department's Office of Overseas Schools (OOS). The aim of the new online project is to build a community—so that a student from St. Louis studying in Cairo can share his unique experiences with a young person from New Jersey studying in Brussels.

AOL@School links OOS's 182 elementary and high schools and the diverse population of 96,000 students it serves worldwide. Many of those students are the offspring of American diplomats, missionaries, and businesspeople. "We want to try to keep them as American as possible," says Keith Miller, OOS's executive director. "We also want to give students the keys to access the latest information as possible."

That information includes a content window powered by OOS. There, the federal office posts important notices, information on educational issues, and special features just for its schools. For example, during the recent war in Iraq, OOS offered online lesson plans, Time for Kids news stories, and resources to help teachers deal with students' feelings concerning the war.

AOL also provides OOS's schools with software so students and teachers can e-mail each other, chat, and send instant messages. The software is controlled by the students' teachers and may be turned on and off. "This is the first public/private partnership for the State Department and a huge coup for AOL@School, which has established international expansion as a key priority," says Tracy Williams, an AOL spokesperson.